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Atlanta-based consumer credit reporting agency Equifax has been issued a £500,000 fine by the UK's privacy watchdog for its last year's massive data breach that exposed personal and financial data of hundreds of millions of its customers. Yes, £500,000—that's the maximum fine allowed by the UK's Data Protection Act 1998, though the penalty is apparently a small figure for a $16 billion company. In July this year, the UK's data protection watchdog issued the maximum allowed fine of £500,000 on Facebook over the Cambridge Analytica scandal , saying the social media giant Facebook failed to prevent its citizens' data from falling into the wrong hands. Flashback: The Equifax Data Breach 2017 Equifax suffered a massive data breach last year between mid-May and the end of July, exposing highly sensitive data of as many as 145 million people globally. The stolen information included victims' names, dates of birth, phone numbers, driver's licens...

The notorious hacking group behind the Ticketmaster and British Airways data breaches has now victimized popular computer hardware and consumer electronics retailer Newegg. Magecart hacking group managed to infiltrate the Newegg website and steal the credit card details of all customers who entered their payment card information between August 14 and September 18, 2018, according to a joint analysis from Volexity and RiskIQ . Magecart hackers used what researchers called a digital credit card skimmer wherein they inserted a few lines of malicious Javascript code into the checkout page of Newegg website that captured payment information of customers making purchasing on the site and then send it to a remote server. Active since at least 2015, the Magecart hacking group registered a domain called neweggstats(dot)com on August 13, similar to Newegg's legitimate domain newegg.com, and acquired an SSL certificate issued for the domain by Comodo for their website. A day l...

Windows and Linux users need to beware, as an all-in-one, destructive malware strain has been discovered in the wild that features multiple malware capabilities including ransomware, cryptocurrency miner, botnet, and self-propagating worm targeting Linux and Windows systems. Dubbed XBash, the new malware, believed to be tied to the Iron Group, a.k.a. Rocke—the Chinese speaking APT threat actors group known for previous cyber attacks involving ransomware and cryptocurrency miners . According to the researchers from security vendor Palo Alto Networks, who uncovered the malware, XBash is an all-in-one malware that features ransomware and cryptocurrency mining capabilities, as well as worm-like ability similar to WannaCry or Petya/ NotPetya . In addition to self-propagating capabilities, XBash also contains a functionality, which is not yet implemented, that could allow the malware to spread quickly within an organization's network. Developed in Python, XBash hunts for vul...

I had the honor of hosting the first episode of the Xposure Podcast live from Xposure Summit 2025. And I couldn't have asked for a better kickoff panel: three cybersecurity leaders who don't just talk security, they live it. Let me introduce them. Alex Delay , CISO at IDB Bank, knows what it means to defend a highly regulated environment. Ben Mead , Director of Cybersecurity at Avidity Biosciences, brings a forward-thinking security perspective that reflects the innovation behind Avidity's targeted RNA therapeutics. Last but not least, Michael Francess , Director of Cybersecurity Advanced Threat at Wyndham Hotels and Resorts, leads the charge in protecting the franchise. Each brought a unique vantage point to a common challenge: applying Continuous Threat Exposure Management (CTEM) to complex production environments. Gartner made waves in 2023 with a bold prediction: organizations that prioritize CTEM will be three times less likely to be breached by 2026. But here's the kicker -...

Three young hackers who were sentenced late last year for creating and spreading the notorious Mirai botnet are now helping the FBI to investigate other "complex" cybercrime cases in return to avoid their lengthy prison terms. Paras Jha, 21 from New Jersey, Josiah White, 20 from Washington, and Dalton Norman, 21 from Louisiana, plead guilty in December 2017 to multiple charges for their role in creating and hijacking hundreds of thousands IoT devices to make them part of a notorious botnet network dubbed Mirai . Mirai malware scanned for insecure routers, cameras, DVRs, and other Internet of Things (IoT) devices which were using their default passwords and then made them part of a botnet network . The trio developed the Mirai botnet to attack rival Minecraft video gaming hosts, but after realizing that their invention was powerful enough to launch record-breaking DDoS attacks against targets like OVH hosting website, they released the source code of Mirai . The ...

Security researchers have discovered an authentication bypass vulnerability in Western Digital's My Cloud NAS devices that potentially allows an unauthenticated attacker to gain admin-level control to the affected devices. Western Digital's My Cloud (WD My Cloud) is one of the most popular network-attached storage (NAS) devices which is being used by businesses and individuals to host their files, as well as backup and sync them with various cloud and web-based services. The WD My Cloud devices let users not only share files in a home network but its private cloud feature also allows them to access their data from anywhere around the world at any time. However, security researchers at Securify have discovered an authentication bypass vulnerability on the WD My Cloud NAS boxes that could allow unauthenticated attackers with network access to the device to escalate their privileges to admin-level without needing to provide a password. This would eventually allow attack...

One of the world's most dangerous Android and iPhone spyware program has been found deployed against targets across 45 countries around the world over the last two years, a new report from Citizen Lab revealed. The infamous spyware, dubbed Pegasus, is developed by NSO Group—an Israeli company which is mostly known for selling high-tech surveillance tools capable of remotely cracking into iPhones and Android devices to intelligence agencies around the world. Pegasus is NSO Group's most powerful creation that has been designed to hack iPhone, Android, and other mobile devices remotely, allowing an attacker to access an incredible amount of data on a target victim, including text messages, calendar entries, emails, WhatsApp messages, user's location, microphone, and camera—all without the victim's knowledge. Pegasus has previously been used to target human rights activists and journalists, from Mexico to the United Arab Emirates . Just last month, The Hacker New...

What just happened would definitely gonna surprise you. Linus Torvalds—father of the Linux open-source operating system—finally admitted his behavior towards other developers in the Linux community was hurting people and Linux. In a surprising move this weekend, Torvalds apologized for insulting and abusing other developers for almost three decades and took a break from the open-source software to work on his behavior. In an email to the Linux Kernel Mailing List (LKML) on Sunday, Torvalds said that he was confronted by people of the Linux community this week about his lifetime of not understanding emotions, and apologized for his personal behavior that has hurt people and possibly has driven some of them away from working in kernel development altogether. Torvalds wrote, "I need to change some of my behavior, and I want to apologize to the people that my personal behavior hurt and possibly drove away from kernel development entirely." "I am going to take ...

Bristol Airport has blamed a ransomware attack for causing a blackout of flight information screens for two days over the weekend. The airport said that the attack started Friday morning, taking out several computers over the airport network, including its in-house display screens which provide details about the arrival and departure information of flights. The attack forced the airport officials to take down its systems and use whiteboards and paper posters to announce check-in and arrival information for flights going through the airport and luggage pickup points for all Friday, Saturday, and the subsequent night. "We are currently experiencing technical problems with our flight information screens," a post on the Bristol Airport's official Twitter feed read on Friday. "Flights are unaffected and details of check-in desks, boarding gates, and arrival/departure times will be made over the public address system. Additional staff are on hand to assist passeng...

Greece just took another U-turn. Mr. Bitcoin a.k.a. Alexander Vinnik is not going to France nor to the United States; instead, he is now possibly going to his homeland Russia. The Supreme Civil and Criminal Court of Greece on Friday has overruled previous decisions and approved to extradite the alleged owner of the now-defunct Bitcoin cryptocurrency exchange BTC-e Vinnik to Russia. Several Greek courts have previously ruled in favor of all three countries, Russia, France, and the United States, where Vinnik is wanted to face different criminal and hacking charges. Vinnik, 38, has been accused of operating BTC-e cryptocurrency exchange, which was shut down right after his arrest by Greek police in July 2017 at the request of the U.S., where he is convicted for fraud and money laundering more than $4 billion worth amount of Bitcoin (BTC) for criminals involved in hacking attacks, tax fraud, and drug trafficking. Vinnik is also accused to the failure of the once-most famous...

It's 2018, and just a few lines of code can crash and restart any iPhone or iPad and can cause a Mac computer to freeze. Sabri Haddouche , a security researcher at encrypted instant messaging app Wire, revealed a proof-of-concept (PoC) web page containing an exploit that uses only a few lines of specially crafted CSS & HTML code. Beyond just a simple crash, the web page, if visited, causes a full device kernel panic and an entire system reboot. The Haddouche's PoC exploits a weakness in Apple's web rendering engine WebKit , which is used by all apps and web browsers running on the Apple's operating system. Since the Webkit issue failed to properly load multiple elements such as "div" tags inside a backdrop filter property in CSS, Haddouche created a web page that uses up all of the device's resources, causing shut down and restart of the device due to kernel panic. You can also watch the video demonstration published by the researcher, which s...

The Russian man who was accused of operating the infamous Kelihos botnet has finally pleaded guilty in a U.S. federal court. Peter Yuryevich Levashov , 38, of St. Petersburg, Russia, pleaded guilty on Wednesday in U.S. federal court in Connecticut to computer crime, wire fraud, conspiracy and identity theft charges. Levashov, also known by many online aliases including Peter Severa, Petr Levashov, Petr Severa and Sergey Astakhov, has admitted of operating several botnets, including the Storm, Waledac and Kelihos botnets, since the late 1990s until he was arrested in April 2017 . Kelihos botnet, dated back to 2010, was a global network of tens of thousands of infected computers that were used to steal login credentials, send bulk spam emails, and infect computers with ransomware and other malware. Russian Hacker Infects 50,000 Computers With Kelihos Botnet Storm and Waledac botnets also shared Kelihos code, but kelihos was the most notorious botnet of all that alone infect...

Did you ever wonder if your Twitter account has been hacked and who had managed to gain access and when it happened? Twitter now lets you know this. After Google and Facebook, Twitter now lets you see all the devices—laptop, phone, tablet, and otherwise—logged into your Twitter account. Twitter has recently rolled out a new security feature for its users, dubbed Apps and Sessions, allowing you to know which apps and devices are accessing your Twitter account, along with the location of those devices. In order to find out current and all past logged in devices and locations where your Twitter account was accessed for the last couple months, follow these steps: Check Twitter Login Sessions On Smartphone: Open the Twitter app, and head on to your profile Tap on 'Settings and privacy' section Inside the section, select 'Account' Once inside the option, tap on 'Apps and sessions' Check Twitter Login Sessions On Desktop Or Laptop: The p...