Yahoo has the dubious honor of having been on the receiving end of the largest data breach in history. As a consequence, the company has recently agreed to pay $50 million in damages and provide free credit monitoring services to its impacted users. The company actually suffered a pair of breaches in 2013 and in 2014, although this information was not disclosed by the company until 2016. All of the company's 3 billion users were impacted, and more than 200 million of them saw losses arising … Read more
Some Tumblr Users May Have Had Their Data Breached
Do you use Tumblr? If so, be aware that your personal information may have been exposed. Tumblr recently added a feature called "Recommended Blogs" that presents you with a list of blogs you might enjoy based on your past viewing habits. It's a great idea in theory, but unfortunately, there were problems with the way the feature was implemented. Any blog on the recommended list was placed there in such a way that it left the blog owner's personal information exposed, including: IP … Read more
New Fake Antivirus Tech Support Scam Tricking Users
McAfee has long been a popular target of scammers, but recently, they've changed the nature of their game. In years past, they'd display a webpage informing you that any McAfee products on your computer are out of date and provide a link to the company's virtual storefront where you could renew. Unbeknownst to the people clicking on those links, they were being redirected by an affiliate link, so any purchases made would generate a commission for the site owners. It was an unscrupulous, … Read more
Data Breach Affects Federal Healthcare System
You probably haven't heard of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Systems. They're a low-profile division of the Department of Health and Human Services responsible for administering the Affordable Care Act. Recently, the company announced that they detected anomalous activity in the systems related to the healthcare.gov website that brokers and insurance agents use to assist people who apply for healthcare coverage. The abnormal activity was detected in the Federally Facilitated … Read more
New Encryption Will Help Secure Your Android Device
Google is taking additional steps to bolster user privacy and better secure the data of the company's legions of Android device owners. The company recently announced a change to the Android Backup Service that will encrypt all user backup data stored on its cloud servers, such that even Google itself can't read it. Google has long allowed Android users to back up their app data and phone settings to their Google account so when they upgrade their phones, the process of getting the new … Read more
Another Data Breach, This Time At The Pentagon
As many as 30,000 people made up of a mix of both civilian and military personnel have had their personal and financial information exposed. This exposure is what has been reported as a major security breach of the Pentagon. This is proof positive that no organization is safe from watchful hackers scattered all around the world. The Associated Press report on the incident includes: "The department is continuing to gather additional information about the incident, which involves the … Read more
Major Facebook Breach May Have Affected Your Account
Facebook got hit hard by a currently unknown group of hackers. If you recently found yourself inexplicably logged out of the social media site, Facebook did it in response to the breach. The breach resulted in the theft of data pertaining to more than fifty million of the site's users. Here's what we know so far about the attack: The hackers pulled off their heist by taking advantage of three different vulnerabilities. Facebook detected the breach after spotting an unusual spike in … Read more
Apple IOS12 Users’ Photos And Contacts May Be Vulnerable
Jose Rodriguez, a Spanish Apple enthusiast, has discovered a new security flaw to be aware of. He posted a Proof of Concept video showing the exploit in action. We'll say upfront that this is a highly convoluted attack involving more than two dozen discrete steps. A hacker would need to be in possession of the phone to pull it off, so it's not something that's likely to become a major threat. Even so, we'll provide the details below. Apple has built in security measures that are … Read more
Payment Pages Are Being Compromised To Steal Data
Symantec's most recent statistics have revealed a disturbing trend. Malware designed to compromise checkout pages is seeing a big spike in use, with the company reporting a staggering 248,000 attempts since August 13th of this year, with more than a third of them (36 percent) between September 13th through September 20th. As disturbing as those numbers are, that's just the tip of the iceberg. As Symantec notes on their website: "If we compare the week of September 13 to 20 to the same … Read more
How Long Before You Experience A Cyber Attack?
According to this year's Traveler's Risk Index, published by The Traveler's Indemnity Company, a majority of business owners have a somewhat fatalistic view of hacking and data breaches. The index includes 52 percent of survey respondents indicating that they believe a cyber-attack is inevitable. The other statistics in the report paint a grim picture. Here's a quick overview: 55 percent of business owners say that they have not completed a cyber risk assessment 63 percent say that … Read more
