Top 10 Stories

Sales staff within UK companies are the most exposed to online attacks, with research suggesting that companies are underestimating the risk of failing to provide security training to non-technical staff. The findings from Intel Security's latest report indicate that it is of vital importance not to overlook IT security training for non-technical staff. Sales staff, due to their frequent online contact with non-staff members, are most at risk, followed closely by call centre and customer...

The NSA has released a network security tool that it claims is designed to help organisations “fortify their networks against cyber attacks”. But, after being revealed to be spying on just about anyone it wants to, from US citizens to leaders of allied governments, while undermining major tech firms in the process, IT administrators will likely be very skeptical of adopting it. Seemingly to put security concerns to rest, the security tool is made available...

China makes internet shut-downs official with new security law • The Register  China is able to shut off internet access during major 'social security incidents' and has granted its Cyberspace Administration agency wider decision making powers under a draft law published this month. The draft also appears to require critical infrastructure organisations including foreign entities to store "important" data on Chinese soil without specific permission to host offshore. The Cyberspace Administration, headed by director Lu...

The NSA today revealed it has uploaded source code to GitHub to help IT admins lock down their networks of Linux machines. The open-source software is called the System Integrity Management Platform (SIMP). It is designed to make sure networks comply with US Department of Defense security standards, but the spy agency says it can be adapted by admins to meet individual security needs as well. "The open-source software method of transferring technology from the...

Airlines are facing "close to an asymmetric warfare" from cyber attackers given the difficulty of defending systems when the threat continually evolves, says International Air Transport Association chief executive Tony Tyler. "No business is immune, but aviation is a specific target for those intent on doing cyber mischief and theft - or worse," he said in a speech at the Civil Aviation Cyber Security Conference in Singapore on Thursday. "Airlines are the highest value target...

With 500,000 – 1,000,000 installs, Cowboy Adventure was a relatively popular game on the Google Play store. That popularity in itself is unremarkable: however, the developers of the app also used it as a tool to harvest Facebook credentials, and that did raise a few eyebrows. It was one of two games spotted by ESET malware researchers that contained this malicious functionality, the other one being Jump Chess. Unlike some other Android malware, these apps...

There's a critical vulnerability in some versions of the widely used OpenSSL code library that in some cases allows attackers to impersonate cryptographically protected websites, e-mail servers, and virtual private networks, according to an advisory issued early Thursday morning. The bug allows attackers to force vulnerable end-user applications into treating an invalid certificate as a legitimate transport layer security (TLS) or secure sockets layer (SSL) credential. As a result, adversaries with the ability to monitor...

The US Office of Personnel Management has come clean on the full extent of the massive data breach that it first disclosed in June, and it's far worse than what was initially thought. On Thursday, OPM announced that records including data from background checks of some 21.5 million people – including present, former, and prospective government employees and contractors – have been "exfiltrated" – read, stolen – from its databases. And by the way, that's...

Imagine this: Sophisticated hackers plant malware to shut down parts of the U.S. power grid in the northeastern United States, plunging 93 million people into darkness. Seem farfetched? This scenario, while unlikely, is technologically possible. Understanding the impact of severe events is one of the key requirements for insurers to develop Cyber risk coverage. As such, what are the impacts as outlined by the above hypothetical model? According to Business Blackout, a joint report by Lloyd's and...

A teenager involved in series of high profile cyber attacks has been convicted for his crimes in Finland. Julius Kivimaki was found guilty of 50,700 "instances of aggravated computer break-ins". Court documents state that his attacks affected Harvard University and MIT among others, and involved hijacking emails, blocking traffic to websites and the theft of credit card details. Despite the severity of the crimes, the 17-year-old has not been jailed. Instead, the District Court of Espoo...