Top 10 Stories

The cyber insurance market will triple in size to $7.5 billion in annual premiums by 2020 and the insurance industry could face competition from disruptors such as Google (GOOGL.O) if it does not act fast to develop products, a report said. Insurers and reinsurers are charging high prices for cyber cover and putting a ceiling on potential losses, deterring companies from buying cyber polices, consultancy PwC said in the report. Some insurers have kept out...

One of the world's major suppliers of industrial networking kit, Japanese company Yokogawa, has alerted the world to a vulnerability in 21 of its products. The ICS-CERT advisory, here, identifies the company's CENTUM, ProSafe-RS, STARDOM, FAST/TOOLS and other systems as being at risk. The vulns are “stack-based buffer overflow vulnerabilities”, the advisory states. The overflows are in systems both with a Windows interface, and with embedded versions (such as the ProSafe's human-machine interface). There are...

Senior U.S. and Chinese officials concluded four days of meetings on Saturday on cyber security and other issues, ahead of Chinese President Xi Jinping's visit to Washington later this month, the White House said. Cyber security has been a divisive issue between Washington and Beijing, with the United States accusing Chinese hackers of attacks on U.S. computers, a charge China denies. U.S. national security adviser Susan Rice had a "frank and open exchange about cyber...

The integrity of more than 300 million travel locks has been compromised after 3D printing files for a range of master keys were posted online. In other words, if you have a luggage lock with a keyhole for the authorities to use (saving them from smashing open your padlock), people can now print their own keys to open your bags. A number of amateur 3D printers have printed the skeleton keys using the blueprints, and...

Stagefright was the scariest Android vulnerability to come along in some time.The publicity got the Android device ecosystem—Google, OEMs, and carriers—to at least start paying attention to delivering security updates to users in a timely manner. Google, Samsung, and LG scrambled to get fixes out to their flagship devices and promised monthly security updates for their devices. That was 36 days ago. Today, Google has posted the first of those monthly security updates for Nexus device owners. The Nexus...

The United States must beef up cyber security against Chinese hackers targeting a broad range of U.S. interests to raise the cost to China of engaging in such activities, America's top intelligence official said on Thursday. The testimony by Director of National Intelligence James Clapper before a congressional committee added to pressure on Beijing over its conduct in cyberspace just weeks before Chinese President Xi Jinping makes a state visit to Washington. Presenting a dire...

Health insurance company Excellus said hackers broke into its servers and may have made off with the personal details of 10.5 million people. The insurance firm said the information belongs to customers who lived in or sought treatment in the upstate New York area. The breach exposed the personal information of 7 million Excellus Blue Cross Blue Shield (BCBS) customers and 3.5 million Lifetime Health Care customers. The data was from patients who were treated...

It's no surprise that the US Department of Energy (DOE) is a major target for cyberattacks, but new data shows just how often the agency gets hit: between 2010 and 2014, attackers breached DOE's security 150 times, according to a report today by USA Today. USA Today via the Freedom of Information Act acquired records of the security incidents from DOE's Joint Cybersecurity Coordination Center. Attackers attempted to hit systems with data on the power grid,...

Most IT security professionals are failing to take action about the risks associated with untrustworthy digital certificates and cryptographic keys, a survey has revealed. This is despite the fact these risks are acknowledged and understood by most, according to a survey of 300 IT security professionals at the BlackHat USA 2015 security conference in Las Vegas. The survey by security firm Venafi also reveals some information security pros do not understand what security services certificate...

Microsoft has warned a US appeals court that forcing it to hand over emails stored on a server in Ireland would demolish internet user privacy worldwide in a “global free-for-all”. At the heart of the matter is a row over whether the Redmond giant should cough up messages held in an Irish data center – messages belonging to someone living in Dublin. US prosecutors chasing a drugs investigation sought a search warrant in the US...