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If you are a traveler and loves to travel then you must be annoyed of those calls you sometimes get from your bank when buying things far from home, and the most annoyed part is when the company won't approve the transaction as it fears your card was stolen. VISA MOBILE LOCATION CONFIRMATION APP The payment processing and credit card giant Visa has came forward to put an end to this problem by letting cardholders the chance to buy things wherever they are. The company plans to release a new location-based feature that will help cardholders to update their location via smartphone. Starting in April, the banks will include the software application, dubbed Visa Mobile Location Confirmation , in their smartphone apps. The app will use cardholders smartphone's ability to locate itself and verify that they're near where the card is being used. IN WAKE OF INCREASING CREDIT CARD FRAUD The idea behind this new move is to reduce the rising incidents of credit card fraud and fraud

Barrett Brown , a journalist formerly served as an unofficial spokesman for the hacktivist collective Anonymous , was sentenced Thursday to over five years in prison, after pleading guilty to federal charges of  " transmitting a threat in interstate commerce ,"   " for interfering with the execution of a search warrant ," and to being " accessory after the fact in the unauthorized access to a protected computer ." After already having served over 2 years ( 31 months ) in detention, Texas court in Dallas has sentenced Barrett Brown to 63 months in federal prison and also ordered him to pay a little more than $890,000 in restitution and fines related to the 2011 hack of Stratfor Global Intelligence . Over a year ago, another federal judge sentenced Anonymous member Jeremy Hammond to 10 years in prison for making millions of emails from the servers of security firm Stratfor public. It's Hammond who said that Brown simply linked to the hacked

Super Low RPO with Continuous Data Protection: Dial Back to Just Seconds Before an Attack Zerto , a Hewlett Packard Enterprise company, can help you detect and recover from ransomware in near real-time. This solution leverages continuous data protection (CDP) to ensure all workloads have the lowest recovery point objective (RPO) possible. The most valuable thing about CDP is that it does not use snapshots, agents, or any other periodic data protection methodology. Zerto has no impact on production workloads and can achieve RPOs in the region of 5-15 seconds across thousands of virtual machines simultaneously. For example, the environment in the image below has nearly 1,000 VMs being protected with an average RPO of just six seconds! Application-Centric Protection: Group Your VMs to Gain Application-Level Control   You can protect your VMs with the Zerto application-centric approach using Virtual Protection Groups (VPGs). This logical grouping of VMs ensures that your whole applica

Hackers claiming affiliation with the hacktivist group "Anonymous" have allegedly leaked more than 13,000 username and password combinations for some of the worlds most popular websites, including Amazon, Xbox Live and Playstation Network . The stolen personal information was released in a massive text document posted to the Internet file-sharing website Ghostbin  (now deleted) , on Friday. The document contains a huge number of usernames and passwords, along with credit card numbers and expiration dates. The news came just a day after the hacker group Lizard Squad compromised Sony's Playstation and Microsoft's Xbox Live gaming networks on Christmas day, which is estimated to have affected Xbox's 48 million subscribers and PlayStation's 110 million users, making it a total of more than 150 million users worldwide. However, data breach of 13,000 users is not the biggest data breach we've ever seen. When millions of passwords are used for sites ar

Credit card frauds are very common these days – today a data breach occurs in retailer's shop, online shopping site or banking site and at the next moment millions of cards appears in the underground black market – how simple is that for cyber criminals nowadays. But imagine if there is no possible way to hack credit cards and ID cards. Seems like next to impossible, but quantum cryptography ensures that stealing people's personal data will soon be very difficult for hackers and cyber thieves due to an extra layer of verification. SECURE FRAUD-PROOF CREDIT CARDS The research at the University of Twente in Enschede, Netherlands has suggested that " fraud-proof " credit cards are possible to develop using Quantum Physics that will protect users' financial and personal information from hackers. Security researchers describe this extra layer of verification as Quantum-Secure Authentication (QSA) of a " classical multiple-scattering key ." With the

Security researchers from Newcastle University in the UK have found a way to steal larger amounts of money from people's pockets using just a mobile phone, due to a security glitch Visa's contactless payment cards. Contactless payment cards use a cryptoprocessor and RFID technology to perform secure transactions without a need to insert the card in a reader, even an NFC-equipped mobile device may also be used as a payment card. But there is a specified limits country-wise. Contactless payment cards are meant to have a limit of £20 per purchase in UK, using which shoppers can buy things by simply tapping their card on a scanner, without having to type in a PIN. But exploiting a flaw in its protocol could allow cyber criminals to manipulate the cards to transfer up to $999,999.99 in foreign currency into a scammer's account. Researchers on Wednesday at the 21st ACM Conference on Computer and Communications Security, detailed the attack which rely on a "rogue POS te

TripAdvisor's  Online travel booking and review website  Viator  has reportedly been hit by a massive data breach at its  that may have exposed payment card details and account credentials of its customers, affecting an estimated 1.4 million of its customers. The San Francisco-based Viator, acquired by TripAdvisor – the world's largest travel site – for £122 million ( US$ 200 million ) back in July, admitted late on Friday that the intruders have hacked into some of its customers' payment card accounts and made unauthorized charges. The data breach was discovered in the bookings made through Viator's websites and mobile offerings that could potentially affect payment card data. Viator said that the company has hired forensic experts to figure out the extent of the breach. Meanwhile, the company has begun notifying its affected customers about the security breach as said by the travel outfit in a press release . " On September 2, we were informed by

Home Depot , the nation's largest home improvement retailer, announced on Thursday that a total of 56 million unique payment cards were likely compromised in a data breach at its stores, suggesting that the data breach on Home improvement chain was larger than the Target data breach that occurred last year during Christmas holidays. The data theft occurred between April and September at Home Depot stores in both the United States and Canada, but the confirmation comes less than a week after the retailer first disclosed the possibility of a breach. " We apologize to our customers for the inconvenience and anxiety this has caused, and want to reassure them that they will not be liable for fraudulent charges, " Home Depot CEO Frank Blake said in a statement. " From the time this investigation began, our guiding principle has been to put our customers first, and we will continue to do so. " It is believe that the cybercriminals successfully compromised the

At the beginning of this month, just like other social networks, Twitter also started paying individuals for any flaws they uncover on its service with a fee of $140 or more offered per flaw under its new Bug Bounty program, and here comes the claimant. An Egyptian Security Researcher, Ahmed Mohamed Hassan Aboul-Ela , who have been rewarded by many reputed and popular technology giants including Google, Microsoft and Apple, have discovered a critical vulnerability in Twitter's advertising service that allowed him deleting credit cards from any Twitter account. FIRST VULNERABILITY Initially, Aboul-Ela found two different vulnerabilities in ads.twitter.com, but both the flaws was having the " same effect and impact. " First flaw exists in the Delete function of credit cards in payments method page, https://ads.twitter.com/accounts/[account id]/payment_methods By choosing the Delete this card function, an ajax POST request is sent to the server. The post parameters se

Due to the better track inventory and accuracy of records, Point-of-sale (POS) systems are being used in most of the industries including restaurants, lodging, entertainment, and museums around the world. It can be easily set-up depending on the nature of the business. Despite that, Point-of-sale (POS) systems are critical components in any retail environment and users are not aware of the emerging threats it poses in near future. So, it is one of the apparent target for cybercriminals and the recent security breach at Information Systems & Suppliers (ISS) proves this. Information Systems & Suppliers (ISS) Inc., the vendor of point-of-sale (POS) electronic cash registers and security systems used by restaurants has warned its customers that it may have experienced a payment card breach. HACKERS COMPROMISED VENDOR'S LogMeIn SERVICE The company on June 12 notified restaurant customers of its remote-access service, the popular LogMeIn, had been compromised

Following the massive data breaches at eBay , Neiman Marcus Group and Michaels Stores , yet another private equity company Centerbridge Partners-backed restaurant chain P.F. Chang's China Bistro suffered a potential Credit and Debit card data breach. The Asian-themed casual dining restaurant chain confirmed on Thursday their customers' Credit and Debit card information were stolen in the cyber attack on its restaurants, saying it is temporarily switching to a manual Credit and Debit card imprinting system for all of its P.F. Chang's China Bistro branded restaurants located in the United States, in order to process cards safety. " At P.F. Chang's, the safety and security of our guests' payment information is a top priority, " said Rick Federico, CEO of P.F. Chang's. " Therefore, we have moved to a manual credit card imprinting system for all P.F. Chang's China Bistro branded restaurants located in the continental United States. This ensures our guests can

While shopping online we need to first surf through number of pages and then finally have to fill credit and debit cards details manually into the browser, which is the annoying for most of the user. But now the new Safari feature in iOS 8 solves this problem by integrating camera-based Credit and Debit card reader. Apple will soon introduce this feature to Safari in its latest Operating System iOS 8 that will allow its iPhone/iPad users to scan their physical credit and debit cards with their device camera and optical character recognition, according to 9to5Mac . So when a user has to shop online using their iPhone or iPad and reach the payment screen for payment, safari browser will automatically display this " Scan Credit Card " option. This option will help your camera to capture the image of your credit card, which the device will analyze by using the optical character recognition to input the card number into the appropriate text field in the online payment form

Criminals will not let any way to cheat an ATM machine out of its cash, as it's one of the easiest way for them to get the hands on cash. ATM skimmers have now discovered a new and high-tech approach to target cash machines directly by inserting a physical notorious device into it instead. According to the Chinese press , two Ukrainian men arrested in Macau for reportedly planting the malicious software program in the seven Macau bank ATMs. This could came out as the quickest method to hack the cash machines. HACKING ATM MACHINES The two accused were arrested this week by the authorities in Macau, a Chinese territory approximately west of Hong Kong, but the two are from Ukraine and had successfully stolen almost $100,000 by corrupting more than seven ATMs with a computer virus. According to the authorities, the men allegedly used a green object device ( as shown in the image ) to carry out the money fraud. They first connected the device to a laptop and then inserted

In past few months, the malware developers are more focusing on proliferating and upgrading malicious malwares to target Point-of-Sale (POS) machines. Due to the lack of concern and security measures, point-of-sale (POS) systems have become an attractive target for cybercriminals and malware writers. BlackPOS malware caused massive data breaches in various US retailers targeting POS machines and the largest one is TARGET data breach occurred during the last Christmas holidays. The third-largest U.S. Retailer in which over 40 million Credit & Debit cards were stolen, used to pay for purchases at its 1500 stores nationwide in the U.S. Neiman Marcus, Michaels Store were also targeted involving the heist of possibly 110 million Credit-Debit cards, and personal information. BlackPOS malware was embedded in point-of-sale (POS) equipment at the checkout counters to collect secure data as the credit cards were swiped during transactions. Now the latest one is the ' Nemanj

A Russian Hacker who was arrested in year 2012 by the authorities of the Netherlands and accused for allegedly hacking into the computer networks of more than a dozen major American corporations and stole over 160 million Credit and Debit Card Numbers. Earlier we reported , 33-year-old Russian hacker Vladimir Drinkman is wanted in U.S and Russia for various cyber crime charges, and the Netherlands Court ruled simultaneous requests from the U.S. & Russia for the extradition were admissible. But now it's up to the Dutch Minister of Justice to decide, whether to which country he would be extradited. However, Hacker Vladimir Drinkman does not want to face charges in US and appealed to the Supreme Court of the Netherlands, Country's highest court, to avoid his extradition to the US, Bloomberg reported. In the U.S. District Court for the District of New Jersey , the U.S. prosecutor plead that he was involved in the theft of more than 160 million credit and debit-

The massive data breaches in U.S largest retailers ' Target ', marked the largest card heists in the U.S. history in which financial credentials of more than 110 million customers were compromised, have forced the retailer to take step towards more secure transactions. The retailer company on Tuesday said it is implementing chip-and-PIN payment card systems for its stores and will be soon working with the MasterCard to replace all of its REDcard customer cards to chip-and-PIN secured cards. The transition to chip-and-Pin-enabled REDcards is set to begin in early 2015. " The new payment terminals will be in all 1,797 U.S. stores by this September, six months ahead of schedule. In addition, by early next year, Target will enable all REDcards with chip-and-PIN technology and begin accepting payments from all chip-enabled cards in its stores, " the company said. The chip-and-PIN system, also known as the EMV standard. Instead of using a magnetic stripe to store fina

In the mid of last year a Group of Russian Hackers were accused for allegedly infiltrating the computer networks of more than a dozen major American and international corporations and stole 160 million credit card and debit card numbers over the course of seven years, which were then resold to third parties buyers. WANTED IN U.S AND RUSSIA A Rotterdam court in Netherlands ruled that simultaneous requests from the U.S. and Russia for the extradition of the Russian hacker  Vladimir Drinkman  were admissible,  who is accused of being involved to lead the largest data theft case ever prosecuted in the U.S history, Bloomberg report . But it's not yet clear why Russia demands Drinkman 's extradition, "It's now up to the minister of justice to decide on the extradition, and to decide which country." court ruled. The investigators identified that the defendants have been infiltrating computer networks across the globe since at least 2007, including firms in New Jer

A new dangerous variant of ZeuS Banking Trojan has been identified by Comodo AV labs which is signed by stolen Digital Certificate which belongs to Microsoft Developer to avoid detection from Web browsers and anti-virus systems. Every Windows PC in the world is set to accept software " signed " with Microsoft's digital certificates of authenticity, an extremely sensitive cryptography seal. Cyber Criminals somehow managed to hack valid Microsoft digital certificate, used it to trick users and admins into trusting the file. Since the executable is digitally signed by the Microsoft developer no antivirus tool could find it as malicious. Digitally signed malware received a lot of media attention last year. Reportedly, more than 200,000 unique malware binaries were discovered in past two years signed with valid digital signatures. A Comodo User submitted a sample of the malicious software that attempts to trick user by masquerading itself as file of Intern

800 Million US based Credit and Debit cards compromised! Really it's a big number and till now it has not been sized by the cyber security officials but a hacker group claims that they had stolen data on hundreds of millions of U.S. card accounts. Last week, the hacker group called itself Anonymous Ukraine ( Op_Ukraine) , said it has seized information pertained to 800 million U.S. credit and debit card accounts, including the cards' data belong to U.S. President Obama and other political figures. The group says the intention behind this data theft is to harm the U.S. economy. The messages posted on March 24 shows clearly that they were by anti-American. The first message read, " After the USA showed its true face when she unilaterally decides which of the peoples to live independently and who under the yoke of the Federal Reserve, we decided to show the world who is behind the future collapse of the American banking system. We own all the financial information of the

The massive data breaches in U.S retailers ' Target ' and ' Neiman Marcus ', in which financial credentials of more than 110 million and 1.1 million customers were compromised respectively, have put a spotlight on the need for more secure transactions. To tackle this issue, the two major payment card brands, MasterCard and Visa have announced the formation of a new cross-industry group that will focus on the security of the enhancing payment system to keep pace with the expectations of consumers, retailers and financial institutions in the United States. " The recent high-profile breaches have served as a catalyst for much needed collaboration between the retail and financial services industry on the issue of payment security," says Ryan McInerney, president of Visa Inc. "As we have long said, no one industry or technology can solve the issue of payment system fraud on its own. " The joint effort aims to advance the migration to EMV chip cards, also kno