Top 10 Stories

Hackers, months ago, revived macros as an attack vector to primarily hide banking malware spread by spam campaigns. Not be left out, some targeted attacks kicked off by convincing phishing emails, have been moving a few remote access Trojans and other malware via Word docs. One particular targeted campaign, researchers at Cisco said, was using AutoIt to drop malware on compromised machines. AutoIt is freeware that allows Windows administrators to write scripts that automate tasks....

Based on anonymized data collected from users of an app designed to check for a newly revealed vulnerability in many Android devices, Check Point discovered that one application in the Google Play store is exploiting the vulnerability to gain a high level of access to the Android OS, bypassing user permissions—and bypassing Google’s security scans of Play applications to do so. Update: A Google spokesperson told Ars that the offending app has been suspended in...

GitHub is under a distributed-denial-of-service attack being perpetrated by unknown actors. The service's status page reported “a brief capacity overload” early on Tuesday. The site's assessment of the incident was later upgraded to a a DDOS and at the time of writing the site is at code yellow. The graphic at the stop of this story (here for mobile device readers) shows that something gave the site a big kick in the web server and...

The Ashley Madison leak may have driven another two people to suicide, police in Toronto, Canada, fear. And scammers are harassing anyone named in the databases, which were swiped from the website by hackers and published online. Word of the two Ashley Madison-linked deaths in Canada came after a government worker in San Antonio, Texas, reportedly killed himself last week. His name had appeared among 33 million others in the leaked databases. Ashley Madison, whose...

In yet another example of a manufacturer of a connected product failing to secure said product, Samsung’s connected fridge allows malicious people to steal a consumer’s Gmail login credentials provided they can get on the user’s Wi-Fi network. The exploit, known as a man-in-the-middle attack, is made possible because the Samsung smart fridge lets people link their Gmail calendars to a screen in the fridge’s door so they can see their day’s events. It’s a...

United States Secretary of Energy Ernest Moniz worries more about cars being hacked than the electric grid being attacked, he said this morning in Las Vegas. At the National Clean Energy Summit, former Clinton Chief of Staff John Podesta—now Hillary Clinton’s campaign chairman—asked Moniz if the prospect of cyber attacks on the electric grid keeps him awake at night. “Yes,” Moniz replied, but he suggested the electric grid was not the most vulnerable system. “The grid is usually the...

Corporate network security is more important and challenging than ever, but it is also easier than most businesses think if they focus on five key areas, according to Kaspersky Lab. The security firm has published a guide for businesses on improving security through best practices in employee IT security hygiene, application patching, mobility, device protection and online behaviour. According to the guide, the best cyber security protection for any business requires a mixture of enforcement...

The security researcher who hacked into a moving Jeep earlier this year has resigned as an engineer at Twitter Inc (TWTR.N) after three years on the job, a person familiar with the matter said. Charlie Miller, a former National Security Agency hacker who is the one of the world's best-known security experts, declined to comment on his departure or say what he would do next. A Twitter spokesman could not immediately be reached for comment....

Following pressure from Chinese police on Saturday, one of China’s great anti-censorship tools had to shut down. The Great Firewall of China aims to block out websites that can pose any potential threat to the government (and its leaders). The Great Firewall scans the URL, the IP address and the page content every time a user in mainland China tries to access the web. To beat the Great Firewall of China, the Chinese hackers created a...

They're among the most popular tourist spots on the planet - but a new infographic has revealed their hidden dangers. Times Square in New York, Notre Dame Cathedral in Paris and Disneyland Park in France have been named as the three attractions where mobile phones are most likely to be attacked. Golden Gate Park in San Francisco, Ocean Park in Hong Kong and Las Vegas's strip are the next three mostly likely places for phones...