Top 10 Stories

Despite the data breach headlines, it turns out that the energy and utilities sector is performing lower than the retail vertical. Over the past year, BitSight researchers noted a dip in the performance of energy and utility companies, which have an average rating of 652 in the third annual BitSight Insights Industry Benchmark report. The ratings range from 250 to 900, with higher ratings equating to higher security performance based on observed security events and...

A new survey has found that one in six businesses have experienced a cyber attack in the past year, with the financial costs of attacks spiralling to over £200bn a year. The research, conducted by Grant Thornton, also found that on average a successful cyber attack will cost a business 1.2% of its revenue. 15% of businesses say they have faced a cyber attack in the past year, with those in the EU and America...

The imminent arrival of the European Union General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) will require big improvements to organisations' computer security, according to researchers at Queen Mary University of London's School of Law, and lawyers at law firm Pinsent Masons. However, the new regulation - a form of EU law-making that is directly translated into member states' laws without national parliamentary votes - may end up making it more difficult for customers to access their accounts...

A recent spam campaign in Denmark that impersonates the Danish post office is infecting victims with Cryptolocker 2. According to Heimdal Security, the campaign is part of a long list of cyber-attacks that target one country at a time, at different time intervals, and use the same tactic: posing as seemingly legitimate emails from the local post office. The scam works like this: an email purporting to be from the post office arrives, saying that...

The Kardashians are often called “over-exposed,” but a flaw in recently launched websites for the celebrity family offered exposure of an entirely different kind: the names and email addresses of more than half a million users. A 19-year-old developer, Alaxic Smith, poked around in the code and found that he could access the information of users who signed up for Kylie Jenner’s website, and could pull similar user data from the other websites. He also said...

The Ghost Push malware comes with those Android apps that are available at non-Google app stores. The newly discovered Android malware dubbed as Ghost Push Malware has the capability of compromising a massive number of new devices (more than 600,000) on a daily basis. The malware has been detected by a famous Android developer Cheetah Mobile. The same company is responsible for producing some very popular apps such as Clean Master, CM Security, Battery Doctor, CM Launcher and CM Browser. View full story

The Indian government has exempted social media applications from a new encryption policy after public uproar over the proposed measures. The new law would have forced Indians to store plain-text versions of their encrypted data for 90 days and make it available to security agencies. The policy sparked outrage on social media, as most messaging services like WhatsApp use some form of encryption. Online banking and purchases will also be exempt from the law. Indians...

Apple has said it is taking steps to remove malicious code added to a number of apps commonly used on iPhones and iPads in China. It is thought to be the first large-scale attack on Apple's App Store. The hackers had created a counterfeit version of Apple's software for building iOS apps, which it persuaded developers to download. Apps compiled using the software could steal data about the users and send it to servers controlled...

The private health records and private contact information of as many as 1.5 million Americans have been posted to Amazon's cloud services. Names, addresses, and phone numbers along with biological health information including existing illnesses and current medications were posted in the clear to Amazon servers by insurers using Systema Software. It is unknown how the information was posted while the number of affected patients remains unconfirmed. Kansas’ State Self Insurance Fund, CSAC Excess Insurance...

US Defence bureaucrats are bashing numbers into a database in a bid to develop what the agency hopes will become an automated security scorecard, assessing vulnerability exposure across the country's networks and weapons systems. The scorecard is at present a manual effort which will identify vulnerabilities and propose the means to mitigate and patch. It will be handled by some of a pool of 6,200 Defence staffers being established in 133 information security response teams...