Cottage Health System, a company that operates five hospitals in the Santa Barbara area of California, is the latest firm to have been hit with a hefty fine for losing control of PHI and PII for patients that it serves. In this case, more than 55,000 patients were impacted between 2013 and 2015. Cottage Health discovered the breach late in 2013. The company received a voicemail message informing company officers that there was a large file containing PHI of an unspecified number of its … Read more
Uber Paid To Hide Massive Data Breach From Public
It has recently come to light that the company was hacked in 2016 in a massive breach that exposed the personal information of more than 57 million Uber users and drivers. A wide range of data was stolen. Where users were concerned, names, email addresses, and phone numbers were compromised. As bad as that is, the problem was even worse for more than 600,000 of the company's drivers who had their driver's license numbers hacked, too. Standard protocol is that when a breach like this … Read more
Ransomware Is Spreading Through Macros In Word
Security researcher Jaromir Jorejsi of Trend Micro has discovered a disturbing new strain of ransomware named qkG that spreads by way of macros inside MS Word. The ransomware strain targets only Office documents, encrypting them and infecting the Word default document in order to propagate to newly created documents opened via the Office suite on the infected computer. This new threat is unusual in the world of ransomware because it abides by a completely different and much more tightly … Read more
Known WordPress Malware Is Back For Second Round
This past summer, an Italian security researcher named Manuel D'Orso discovered a nasty malware attack aimed at WordPress sites. Dubbed "Wp-Ved," after the name of the .php file bearing the malicious payload, the attack was relatively small in its scope and scale, with a few scattered attacks starting in the summer and continuing in sporadic fashion to this very day. Apparently, the hackers who own the code learned what they needed to, and recently an updated variant of the malware has … Read more
Issue With Android Could Let Someone Record Screen And Audio
Do you have an Android phone? Is it running either Lolipop, Marshmallow or Nougat? Those three account for slightly more than 75 percent of the Android phones in service today, so odds are excellent that you do. If so, you should be aware of a nasty vulnerability that could allow a hacker to perform at-will screen captures and audio recording without your knowledge. The issue resides within Android's MediaProjection service, which has been a part of the OS since its earliest days. The reason … Read more
Google Can Still Track You With Location Services Disabled
Google recently found itself in a bit of hot water after an investigation by Quartz revealed that the company was intrusively collecting location data on literally every Android device in use today. That's billions of devices all over the globe. There are many instances when there's an expectation that location data can and will be tracked. In fact, one of the most commonly used features of smartphones in general (GPS and directions) demands it. After all, Google Maps can't tell you how to … Read more
More Bad News For OnePlus Phone Users
OnePlus phones have been getting plenty of bad press lately, thanks to malicious apps found to be factory-installed on a percentage of the devices, along with some intrusive data collection features the manufacturer has installed. As it turns out, though, the story gets worse. Recently, a security researcher going by the alias "Elliot Alderson" discovered a factory-installed application called "Engineering Mode" that can perform a series of intrusive hardware diagnostic routines and can even … Read more
Malware Infections Grow 4X In Just One Quarter
The world's hackers have been busy according to the latest report by Comodo security, which tracks the total number of threats around the globe, quarter by quarter. The latest statistics are alarming, showing a massive jump in the total number of malware infections reported in the third quarter of 2017. Reports show nearly 400 million infections. What's worse is that the infections have spread to literally every corner of the globe. No nation is completely safe. Digging more deeply into … Read more
Latest Store With Payment Breach Is Forever 21
Unfortunately, another high-profile data breach has surfaced. The latest company to fall victim is US-based fashion retailer Forever 21, operating more than 800 stores in 57 countries. The company became aware of the breach when they were notified of "unauthorized access to data from payment cards that were used at certain Forever 21 store locations." The investigation into the incident is ongoing, and we don't have full details yet, but here's what we know so far: • Although the … Read more
Be Careful Of Downloads – Google Play Store Sees Malware Increase
Google's Play Store is under siege. In recent month, there has been a sharp spike in malware campaigns launched against the store, with a shocking number of poisoned apps slipping past Google's robust system of checks designed to prevent, or at least minimize such occurrences. The spike in poisoned apps has been reported by three different security companies: Dr. Web, McAfee and Malwarebytes. According to the latest McAfee report, 144 Play Store apps have been identified as containing … Read more
