Top 10 Stories

Four FireEye researchers have found a way to steal fingerprints from Android phones packing biometric sensors such as the Samsung Galaxy S5 and the HTC One Max. The team found a forehead-slapping flaw in HTC One Max in which fingerprints are stored as an image file (dbgraw.bmp) in a open "world readable" folder. "Any unprivileged processes or apps can steal user’s fingerprints by reading this file," the team says, adding that the images can be...

Ubiquiti Networks Inc., an American company that manufactures wireless products, has reported a cyberheist of $46.7 million / €42.6 million in its latest financial report. According to its 2015 Q2 report, the fraud took place on June 5 this year, and it "involved employee impersonation and fraudulent requests from an outside entity targeting the Company’s finance department." No details are given on the nature of the "impersonation," but this sounds like the CEO scam scheme,...

Cyber security from I-Team investigation revealed that hackers could have the ability to shut down an airport’s security network just using a laptop. It is embarrassing read that system designed to improve security of the airports could represent the entry point for attackers. “Walking by these devices and knowing how poorly secure they are, it doesn’t sit well with me,” explained the popular cyber security expert Billy Rios. “It’s pretty bad — probably no thought has been...

On Wednesday (5 August 2015), the lead engineer of Android security at Google, Adrian Ludwig, addressed the Black Hat conference in Las Vegas telling the assembled groups of hackers, researchers and journalists that in the next few days, his employer – along with hundreds of manufacturers and high-profile partners including Samsung, HTC, LG and Sony – would be pushing out a security patch that Ludwig described as "the single largest software update the world has...

Payday lender The Money Shop has been fined £180,000 after losing computer servers with thousands of customers' financial details. One server was stolen from a branch in Lurgan, County Armagh, in April 2014 and another was lost a month later by a courier firm in Swindon, Wiltshire. Encryption systems were not good enough to ensure data could not be accessed, the Information Commissioner said. The company apologised and said it had since reviewed its IT...

Black Hat 2015 Security researchers have exposed new flaws in ZigBee, one of the most popular wireless communication standards used by Internet of Things (IoT) devices. Implementations of ZigBee in home networks requires that an insecure initial key transport has to be supported, making it possible to compromise ZigBee networks and take control of all connected devices on the network, security firm Cognosec warns. The ZigBee standard was created to enable secure wireless communication for...

A group of Israeli researchers have improved on a way to steal data from air-gapped computers, thought to be safer from attack due to their isolation from the Internet. They’ve figured out how to turn the computer into a cellular transmitter, leaking bits of data that can be picked up by a nearby low-end mobile phone. While other research has shown it possible to steal data this way, some of those methods required some hardware...

Russia is being accused of launching a “sophisticated” attack against the Pentagon’s Joint Chiefs of Staff email system, according to a report published overnight be NBC News. The attack is said to have taken place around July 25th, and according to a CBS News report – the Joint Staff’s unclassified email system remains offline over a week later as severe restrictions have been put in place, disrupting the work of some 4000 personnel. The classified...

Popcorn Time, a popular application used for downloading and streaming pirate movies, could be vulnerable to a hack that could allow criminals to execute code remotely on a target machine. A blog post by Greek security researcher Antonios Chariton demonstrated how a hacker “can get complete control of a computer assuming they have a Man In The Middle position in the network." The hack is based on the way Popcorn Time circumvents blocks placed by...

For those of you worried about the Stagefright flaw in Android, be reassured, a patch will be coming down the line in the next few days. "My guess is that this is the single largest software update the world has ever seen," said Adrian Ludwig, lead engineer for Android security at Google. "Hundreds of millions of devices are going to be updated in the next few days. It's incredible." All Nexus devices are going to...