The Hacker News | #1 Trusted Source for Cybersecurity News — Index Page

Offering cash rewards for vulnerability reports has become something of a norm when it comes to big tech companies these days.  Yahoo has changed its bug bounty policies following a deluge of negative feedback in the wake of the news that ethical hackers were rewarded with $12.50 in gift vouchers for security flaw discoveries. The company unveiled a new program to reward reporters who shed light on bugs and vulnerabilities classified as new, unique and/or high risk issues. Starting October 31, 2013, individuals and firms who report bugs will be rewarded with anything between $150-$15,000. " The amount will be determined by a clear system based on a set of defined elements that capture the severity of the issue ," Director of security, Ramses Martinez, announced . Yahoo denied that its new program was a response to the criticism, saying it was already working on a new bug bounty system before the furore. Martinez begins by labelling himself as the ...

Nation-state driven cyber attacks are routinely conducted on a global scale to defend national sovereignty and project national power. We are living in the cyber era, human conflict is involving also the fifth domain of warfare , the cyberspace . As never before disputes take place with blows of bits, militias of every government are developing cyber capabilities dedicating great effort for the establishment of cyber units . Network security company, FireEye, has released a report titled " World War C: Understanding Nation-State Motives Behind Today's Advanced Cyber Attacks " which describes the effort spent by governments in cyber warfare context, the document analyzes in detail the different approaches adopted by various countries in conducting nation-state driven cyber attacks . Security experts highlight the intensification of state-sponsored attacks for both cyber espionage and sabotage purpose, campaigns such as Moonlight Maze and Titan Rain or the destruc...

During the summer, The Secure email provider 'Lavabit' and preferred service for PRISM leaker  Edward Snowden  decided to shut down after 10 years to avoid being complicit in crimes against the American people. The U.S. Government obtained a secret court order demanding private SSL key from Lavabit, which would have allowed the FBI to wiretap the service's users, according to Wired . Ladar Levison, 32, has spent ten years building encrypted email service Lavabit , attracting over 410,000 users. When NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden was revealed to be one of those users in July, Ladar received the court orders to comply, intended to trace the Internet IP address of a particular Lavabit user, but he refused to do so. The offenses under investigation are listed as violations of the Espionage Act and Founder was ordered to record and provide the connection information on one of its users every time that user logged in to check his e-mail. The Governm...

The FBI had seized a website called ' Silk Road ', that was considered one of the most popular Underground places on the Internet for buying drugs and other illicit goods and services. They arrested the site's alleged founder,  Ross William Ulbricht, known as " Dread Pirate Roberts ," in San Francisco, who reportedly had  26,000 Bitcoins worth $3.6 million. The FBI used information from Comcast in the investigation and collaborated with US Customs and Border Patrol, the Internal Revenue Service, the Drug Enforcement Administration, and the Department of Homeland Security. Ross Ulbricht Ross William Ulbricht, a 29-year-old graduate of the University of Pennsylvania School of Materials Science and Engineering  charged with one count each of narcotics trafficking conspiracy, computer hacking conspiracy and money laundering conspiracy, according to the filing. ' Silk Road '  website, which had operated since early 2011, also offered tut...

IT Security is the name of the game and no matter how big or small the size of your organization, you will always invest enough on securing certain aspects of your IT network. In many organizations, it starts with monitoring your network for vulnerabilities that may enter the network to access potentially sensitive information in the form of security attacks . For example, you may have firewalls as your first line of defense, followed by vulnerability management, intrusion detection and prevention systems, managing your network configurations and so on.  These are crucial because: Your routers can be easily breached without proper configuration and restrictions.  If a firewall isn't configured correctly, a hacker can easily spot a port that is accidentally left open and can gain access to the network.  Rogue access points, botnet malware and social engineering can make your wireless a porthole into your LAN. Why Logs? The very purpose of IT secu...