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The ransomware attacks on poorly secured MongoDB installations have doubled in just a day. A hacker going by the handle Harak1r1 is accessing, copying and deleting unpatched or badly-configured MongoDB databases and then threatening administrators to ransom in exchange of the lost data. It all started on Monday when security researcher Victor Gevers identified nearly 200 instances of a MongoDB installation that have been erased and held for ransom , asking victims to pay hefty ransoms for the data to be restored. By Tuesday, this number reached approximately 2,000 databases as reported by Shodan Founder John Matherly, and by Friday, Gevers and fellow security researcher Niall Merrigan updated this count to 10,500. However, according to recent statistics compiled by Merrigan, the number of compromised systems have reached more than double to 27,000, over the course of about 12 hours. What's worse? Initial attacks saw ransoms of 0.2 Bitcoins (nearly US$184) to the

BREAKING: A misconfigured database has resulted in the exposure of around 191 Million voter records including voters' full names, their home addresses, unique voter IDs, date of births and phone numbers. The database was discovered on December 20th by Chris Vickery , a white hat hacker, who was able to access over 191 Million Americans' personal identifying information (PII) that are just sitting in the public to be found by anyone looking for it. Vickery is the same security researcher who uncovered personal details of 13 Million MacKeeper users two weeks ago, which included names, email addresses, usernames, password hashes, IP addresses, phone numbers, and system information. However, the recent discovery made him shocked when he saw his own information in the database, according to DataBreaches.net, whom the researcher contacted and provided all the details about his finding. 300GB Trove of Voters' Information Leaked Vickery has his hands on all

Imagine a world where the software that powers your favorite apps, secures your online transactions, and keeps your digital life could be outsmarted and taken over by a cleverly disguised piece of code. This isn't a plot from the latest cyber-thriller; it's actually been a reality for years now. How this will change – in a positive or negative direction – as artificial intelligence (AI) takes on a larger role in software development is one of the big uncertainties related to this brave new world. In an era where AI promises to revolutionize how we live and work, the conversation about its security implications cannot be sidelined. As we increasingly rely on AI for tasks ranging from mundane to mission-critical, the question is no longer just, "Can AI  boost cybersecurity ?" (sure!), but also "Can AI  be hacked? " (yes!), "Can one use AI  to hack? " (of course!), and "Will AI  produce secure software ?" (well…). This thought leadership article is about the latter. Cydrill  (a

It's a bad day for Sony yesterday!! Sony appears to be hacked once again by hackers, but this time not its PlayStation , instead its Sony Pictures Entertainment – the company's motion picture, television production and distribution unit. According to multiple reports, the corporate computers of Sony Picture employees in New York and around the world were infiltrated by a hacker, displaying a weird skeleton, a series of URL addresses, and a threatening message that reads: "Hacked By #GOP Warning: We've already warned you, and this is just a beginning. We continue till our request be met. We've obtained all your internal data, including your secrets and top secrets. If you don't obey us, we'll release data shown below to the world. Determine what will you do till November the 24th, 11:00 PM (GMT)." News broke after a user, who claimed to be a former Sony staff, posted allegations of the security breach with the defacement image on Reddit . Hack

Oracle's newly launched Data Redaction security feature in Oracle Database 12c can be easily disrupted by an attacker without any need to use exploit code, a security researcher long known as a thorn in Oracle's side said at Defcon. Data Redaction is one of the new Advanced Security features introduced in Oracle Database 12c. The service is designed to allow administrators to automatically protect sensitive data, such as credit card numbers or health information, during certain operations by either totally obscuring column data or partially masking it. But according to David Litchfield , a self-taught security researcher who found dozens and dozens of critical vulnerabilities in Oracle's products, a close look at this Data Redaction security feature help him found a slew of trivially exploitable vulnerabilities that an attacker don't even need to execute native exploit code to defeat the feature. David Litchfield is a security specialist at Datacomm TSS and th