Top 10 Stories

After lecturing the world about how its autocratic controls protect users from malware, Apple has been forced to pull apps from its app store because of… er… malware. Jobs’ Mob has admitted that it had removed “a few” applications from its App Store, expressing its concern that the security of some users’ personal data could be compromised in certain circumstances. The company said the apps threatened users’ security by installing certificates that can expose data to...

Two-thirds (65%) of UK workers feel more vulnerable to data hacks than they did a year ago. According to new research from Citrix, the majority (71%) of respondents cited data theft as “inevitable” at some point. And one in three (33%) 16 to 25-year-olds feel much more vulnerable to hacks, compared with just 15% of over-55s. “The sheer number of high-profile data breaches in the last 12 months has resulted in workers feeling more vulnerable...

A cybercrime ring that employed the Angler Exploit Kit to earn an estimated $34 million per year from ransomware infections alone has been disrupted by security researchers at Cisco's Talos security intelligence and research group. A related report from Cisco Talos says the attack campaign appeared to be one of two Angler-related attack campaigns that are currently in the wild, and comprised about half of all observed Angler-related activity. Prior to the disruption, about 50...

An American journalist has been found guilty of helping hacktivist group Anonymous deface the website of the Los Angeles Times. Prosecutors said Matthew Keys, 28, provided the hackers a password to access systems belonging to Tribune Co, the newspaper's parent company. Prosecutors said Keys used online chat channels to encourage the hacktivists. Sentencing will take place in January, but he is not expected to receive the maximum possible sentence of 25 years. A spokesman for...

Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales used his keynote presentation at IP Expo in London to blast the UK government’s ambition for mass internet monitoring. Wales warned that the basic human right to privacy should not be eroded. Speaking about prime minister David Cameron’s recent comments about the need for the country’s administration to read communication between people, Wales said: "It is not feasible and it is completely moronic and stupid!" Wales said security is built into the strategy for...

Months before its technology became the centerpiece of Samsung’s new mobile payment system, LoopPay, a small Massachusetts subsidiary of the South Korean electronics giant, was the target of a sophisticated attack by a group of government-affiliated Chinese hackers. As early as March, the hackers — alternatively known as the Codoso Group or Sunshock Group by those who track them — had breached the computer network of LoopPay, a start-up in Burlington, Mass., that was acquired...

Positive Technologies researchers Timur Yunusov and Kirill Nesterov have found since-patched remote execution and denial of service vulnerabilities in a popular Huawei 4G USB modem that can allow attackers to hijack connected computers. The Huawei E3272 USB modem sells from about US$120 on Amazon. Researchers say the vulnerabilities are exploitable through malicious packets sent to the device's gateway, and thanks to cross-site scripting (XSS) and stack overflow holes. "By exploiting detected flaws, an intruder can...

Cyber-criminals and hackers are increasingly attacking cloud infrastructure, which they see as a "fruit-bearing jackpot" as more organisations are making use of public cloud to store their data than ever before, a security company claims. While organisations are embracing the cloud - as confirmed by Computing research - a report by security-as-a-service provider Alert Logic suggests that IT decision-makers shouldn't assume that data they store off-premise is harder for hackers to acquire. The company warns that there...

The Court of Justice of the European Union ruled Oct. 6 that the EU-U.S. data sharing agreement, known as Safe Harbor, is invalid because the United States has failed to ensure that its "law and practices ... ensure an adequate level of protection" for Europeans' right to privacy. The Safe Harbor policy, established in 2000, regulates how U.S. companies can handle Europeans' personal information. But the agreement came under fire from privacy and civil rights...

Almost exactly two months ago, we reported on some fake apps found in the Windows Phone Store. Unfortunately, the news hasn’t stopped there – instead, it seems that this third-party app store is becoming an increasingly popular platform for the bad guys. Today, we‘ve uncovered quite a large set of fake apps which includes scams imitating legitimate popular apps such as Facebook Messenger, CNN, BBC, and WhatsApp. There are two perpetrators behind these fake apps:...