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As vast volumes of digital data are created, consumed and shared by companies, customers, employees, patients, financial institutions, governments and so many other bodies, information protection becomes a growing risk for everyone. Who wants to see personal customer purchasing data flying into the hands of strangers? What company can tolerate the pilfering of its intellectual property by competitors? What government can stand idly by while its military secrets are made public? To protect their valuable and private information, organizations purchase numerous cyber security systems – like intrusion detection systems, firewalls, and anti-virus software – and deploy them across their networks and on all their computers. In fact, a typical bank, manufacturer or government department might have dozens of such products operating at all times. Cyber security systems work non-stop to thwart network infiltration and data-theft. Whenever they notice an activity that seems outside the sc...

A new disk wiping malware has been uncovered targeting a petroleum company in Europe, which is quite similar to the mysterious disk wiper malware Shamoon that wiped data from 35,000 computers at Saudi Arabia's national oil company in 2012. Disk wiping malware has the ability to cripple any organization by permanently wiping out data from all hard drive and external storage on a targeted machine, causing great financial and reputational damage. Security researchers from Moscow-based antivirus provider Kaspersky Lab discovered the new wiper StoneDrill while researching last November's re-emergence of Shamoon malware (Shamoon 2.0) attacks – two attacks occurred in November and one in late January. Shamoon 2.0 is the more advanced version of Shamoon malware that reportedly hit 15 government agencies and organizations across the world, wipes data and takes control of the computer's boot record, preventing the computers from being turned back on. Meanwhile, Kaspersky resea...

A database of 1.4 billion email addresses combined with real names, IP addresses, and often physical address has been exposed in what appears to be one the largest data breach of this year. What's worrisome? There are high chances that you, or at least someone you know, is affected by this latest data breach. Security researcher Chris Vickery of MacKeeper and Steve Ragan of CSOOnline discovered an unsecured and publicly exposed repository of network-available backup files linked to a notorious spamming organization called River City Media (RCM), led by notorious spammers Matt Ferrisi and Alvin Slocombe. Spammer's Entire Operation Exposed The database contains sensitive information about the company's operations, including nearly 1.4 Billion user records, which was left completely exposed to anyone – even without any username or password. According to MacKeeper security researcher Vickery, RCM, which claims to be a legitimate marketing firm, is responsible for s...

Hardly a day goes without headlines about any significant data breach. In past year, billions of accounts from popular sites and services, including LinkedIn , Tumblr , MySpace , Last.FM , Yahoo! , VK.com were exposed on the Internet. Now, according to the recent news, login credentials and other personal data linked to more than one Million Yahoo and Gmail accounts are reportedly being offered for sale on the dark web marketplace. The online accounts listed for sale on the Dark Web allegedly contain usernames, emails, and plaintext passwords. The accounts are not from a single data breach; instead, several major cyber-attacks believed to have been behind it. The hacker going by the online handle 'SunTzu583' has listed a number of cracked email packages on a series of dark websites, HackRead reported. Here's the Full List of Accounts and their Prices: 100,000 Yahoo accounts acquired from 2012 Last.FM data breach , for 0.0084 Bitcoins ($10.76). Another 1...

It is no secret that cybercriminals are becoming dramatically more adept, innovative, and stealthy with each passing day. While new forms of cybercrime are on the rise, traditional activities seem to be shifting towards more clandestine techniques that involve the exploitation of standard system tools and protocols, which are not always monitored. The latest example of such attack is DNSMessenger – a new Remote Access Trojan (RAT) that uses DNS queries to conduct malicious PowerShell commands on compromised computers – a technique that makes the RAT difficult to detect onto targeted systems. The Trojan came to the attention of Cisco's Talos threat research group by a security researcher named Simpo, who highlighted a tweet that encoded text in a PowerShell script that said 'SourceFireSux.' SourceFire is one of Cisco's corporate security products. DNSMessenger Attack Is Completely Fileless Further analysis of the malware ultimately led Talos researchers to...