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Ransomware has turned on to a noxious game of Hackers to get paid effortlessly. Once again the heat was felt by the Los Angeles Valley College (LAVC) when hackers managed to infect its computer network with ransomware and demanded US$28,000 payment in Bitcoins to get back online. The cyber-attack occurred over winter break and caused widespread disruption to online, financial aid, email and voicemail systems, including locking out 1,800 students and staffs from their computers. As the situation was gone out of its hand, the Los Angeles Community College District (LACCD) agreed to pay the ransom demand of $28,000 in Bitcoin to criminals to resume their operations after gaining the decryption keys, the school newspaper, The Valley Star, reports . The cyber criminals gave the college a week to pay the ransom and threatened to delete all the data if they were not paid. Also Read: RansomFree Tool Detects Never-Seen-Before Ransomware Before It Encrypts Your Data Just like mos...

It's time to say goodbye to Yahoo! While Yahoo's core internet business was being sold to Verizon for $4.8 Billion , the remaining portions of the company left behind is renaming itself to Altaba Inc, which marks the sad ending of one of the most familiar brand names on the internet. In a public filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) on Monday, the company announced that after the planned sale of its core business to telecom giant Verizon, the leftover would change its brand name to Altaba. So, the company's branding you are familiar with will integrate with Verizon, and it is possible that the telecom titan may continue to use the Yahoo brand for some of the services that it will acquire in the deal. The remaining company under the new name Altaba Inc. is hanging on to its 15% ownership of Alibaba and 35.5% stake in Yahoo Japan, which is a joint venture with Softbank. Marissa Mayer to Leave Yahoo Board The newly formed company will operat...

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 ...

Image Source: Book - Protect Your Windows Network from Perimeter to Data The United States' trade watchdog has sued Taiwan-based D-link, alleging that the lax security left its products vulnerable to hackers. The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) filed a lawsuit ( pdf ) against D-Link on Thursday, arguing that the company failed to implement necessary security protection in its routers and Internet-connected security cameras that left "thousands of consumers at risk" to hacking attacks. The move comes as cyber criminals have been hijacking poorly secured internet-connected devices to launch massive DDoS attacks that can force major websites offline. Over two months back, a nasty IoT botnet, known as Mirai, been found infecting routers, webcams, and DVRs built with weak default passwords and then using them to DDoS major internet services. The popular Dyn DNS provider was one of the victims of Mirai-based attack that knocked down the whole internet for many users...

It might be the easiest bug bounty program ever. Netgear launched on Thursday a bug bounty program to offer up to $15,000 in rewards to hackers who will find security flaws in its products. Since criminals have taken aim at a rapidly growing threat surface created by millions of new Internet of things (IoT) devices, it has become crucial to protect routers that contain the keys to the kingdom that connects the outside world to the IP networks that run these connected devices. To combat this issue, Netgear, one of the biggest networking equipment providers in the world, has launched a bug bounty program focusing on its products, particularly routers, wireless security cameras and mesh Wi-Fi systems. Bug bounty programs are cash rewards given by companies or organizations to white hat hackers and researchers who hunt for serious security vulnerabilities in their website or products and then responsibly disclose for the patch release. Also Read:   How Hackers Hack Bank ...