Top 10 Stories

Hackers have targeted almost 200,000 computers using a dangerous 'file-less' version of the Poweliks malware over the past six months, according to researchers at Symantec. Liam O'Murchu and Fred Gutierrez reported the infections in a white paper entitled The evolution of the fileless click-fraud malware Poweliks (PDF). "Over the past six months, we have seen Poweliks attempt to infect over 198,500 computers. More than 99.5 percent of these infections have been in the US," read the paper. View...

A new phishing scam has surfaced on the web via Facebook in the form of a message titled “Attempts to Export Opengraph File.” This alleged security warning purports to be sent by Facebook. The message informs you that you have tried several times to export your opengraph file through an illegal application. The message also reads that the attempts were made from somewhere in China. View full story

Japan's Petroleum Association was hit by a targeted cyber-attack earlier this month, which saw numerous PCs become infected with an unknown virus. Local sources reported that the voluntary organisation's PCs had become infected by a virus, but appeared to suggest that no data had yet been seen in the wild. It is not known how many machines were infected, or what the initial point of compromise was. View full story

Missing Link Networks Inc., a credit card processor and point-of-sale vendor that serves a number of wineries in Northern California and elsewhere, disclosed today that a breach of its networks exposed card data for transactions it processed in the month of April 2015. View full story

Developers behind the banking Trojan Vawtrak have begun obscuring some of their servers with Tor2Web, a move that’s added another degree of difficulty when it comes to uncovering their activity. To this point the malware’s techniques –  its evolution beyond banking websites, ability to break encryption, and steal login credentials – have been well documented, but now researchers with the security firm Fortinet claim the Trojan is hiding its servers in Tor2Web to help it better evade...

The US government is publicly backing HTTPS across its websites and promising to make communications more secure and solid. The White House said the move will have encryption benefits and make it safer for anyone who deals with the government via the internet. View full story

Researchers at IBM Security Trusteer say that new and nasty variants of the Tinba Trojan, said to be the world's smallest malware, are emerging, and they're targeting European banks.Writing on the company's Security Intelligence blog earlier today, product and risk management expert Ori Bach gave an overview of how the ‘tiny banker' malware, which was first discovered in 2012 when it was the smallest Trojan in circulation with a file size of just 20kB, has been spreading...

Most organisations appear to be getting no better at detecting and containing data breaches, with the average company still taking over 100 days to completely wipe all traces of its attackers from systems, according to Trustwave. The firm’s Global Security Report 2015 revealed the findings from 574 data “compromises” it investigated across 15 countries worldwide. It found that 81% of victim organizations didn’t detect the breach themselves. The median length of time taken to detect a breach...

A cyber attack on the French television network TV5 Monde may have been carried out by Russian-based hackers, police believe. Jihadist propaganda was posted on the station's website in April by individuals claiming to represent Islamic State. A police investigation is now focussing on a group of Russian hackers called APT28, according to French media. View full story

The latest WhatsApp episode isn't quite such a nail-biter, though, as it's not a hole, per se. It's more of a warning about the dangers of not keeping an eye on your gadget. To wit: as The Hacker News reports, the WhatsApp account of every one of those 800 million(!) active users can be hijacked, without unlocking or knowing the device password. Technical knowledge required: about zero. View full story