Security news

Security

Police are probing apparent cyber vandalism on Wi-Fi networks at UK train stations

U.K. transport officials and police said Thursday they are investigating a "cyber-security incident" after users of public Wi-Fi networks at the country's biggest railway stations reported being shown anti-Muslim messages.

Security

AI is fueling a deepfake porn crisis in South Korea. What's behind it—and how can it be fixed?

It's difficult to talk about artificial intelligence without talking about deepfake porn—a harmful AI byproduct that has been used to target everyone from Taylor Swift to Australian school girls.

Security

How did they get my data? I uncovered the hidden web of networks behind telemarketers

Last year, I started getting a lot of unsolicited phone calls, mainly from people trying to sell me things. This came as a surprise because, as a data scientist, I am very careful about what personal information I let out ...

Business

Ukraine bans Telegram messenger app on state-issued devices because of Russian security threat

Ukraine has banned government officials, military personnel and other defense and critical infrastructure workers from installing the popular Telegram messaging app on state-issued devices, describing the move as necessary ...

Security

Encrypted 'Ghost' app: What we know

Police revealed Tuesday they had infiltrated and taken down an encrypted chat app called Ghost used by criminals across the world.

Security

'Good complexity' can make hospital networks more cybersecure

In May, a major cyberattack disabled clinical operations for nearly a month at Ascension, a health care provider that includes 140 hospitals across the U.S. Investigators tracked the problem to malicious ransomware that had ...

Security

New tools use AI 'fingerprints' to detect altered photos, videos

As artificial intelligence networks become more skilled and easier to access, digitally manipulated "deepfake" photos and videos are increasingly difficult to detect. New research led by Binghamton University, State University ...

Software

Usable data hacked from air-gapped computer

A team of software and information systems engineers at Ben-Gurion University of the Negev, in Israel, has demonstrated an ability to extract useful data from an air-gapped computer. The group has posted a paper to the arXiv ...

Security

Five notorious cyberattacks that targeted governments

Warfare is no longer confined to physical battlefields. In the digital age, a new front has emerged—cyberspace. Here, countries clash not with bullets and bombs, but with lines of code and sophisticated malware.

Business

Q&A: Botnets and information warfare

In 2017, City, University of London research by Dr. Marco Bastos was featured in exclusive story by BuzzFeed. The article, by City Journalism alumnus James Ball, lifted the lid on a network of malicious bots that sought to ...

Business

Is TikTok stealing more than just your time?

More than 86 million Americans use the social media app TikTok to create, share, and view short videos, featuring everything from cute animals and influencer advice to comedy and dance performances. Though users consider ...

Security

Seoul: North Korean hackers stole $1.2B in virtual assets

North Korean hackers have stolen an estimated 1.5 trillion won ($1.2 billion) in cryptocurrency and other virtual assets in the past five years, more than half of it this year alone, South Korea's spy agency said Thursday.

Business

New rules needed to govern consumer privacy, says expert

Consumers give large amounts of personal information to companies, including their purchase and web histories, travel plans and even names of friends, often without realizing they are doing it. A big reason is that consumers ...

Security

Not fare: Feds charge 2 in Russian hackers' airport cab scam

A plot to move some cabs to the front of the line for passengers at New York's Kennedy Airport was aided by Russian hackers who infiltrated an electronic taxi dispatch system, authorities said Tuesday as they announced the ...

Security

NIST retires SHA-1 cryptographic algorithm due to vulnerabilities

The SHA-1 algorithm, one of the first widely used methods of protecting electronic information, has reached the end of its useful life, according to security experts at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST). ...

Security

Hacker claims breach of FBI's critical-infrastructure portal

A hacker who reportedly posed as the CEO of a financial institution claims to have obtained access to the more than 80,000-member database of InfraGard, an FBI-run outreach program that shares sensitive information on national ...

Software

Identifying software vulnerabilities quickly and efficiently

Almost every new program code has bugs that, in the worst case, can potentially compromise security. In order to detect them quickly and efficiently, researchers from the Horst Görtz Institute for IT Security at Ruhr University ...

Security

Charges dropped against French company over Egypt spyware

A Paris court ordered charges to be dropped Wednesday against a French company and its managers who were accused of complicity in torture after selling sophisticated spyware to the Egyptian government.

Consumer & Gadgets

Elon Musk threatens to sue Twitter leakers, reporter says

Elon Musk took aim at Twitter staffers leaking internal information to the media, vowing that those who continue to do so will face legal action moving forward, a journalist reported Saturday.

Hi Tech & Innovation

New facial recognition technology scans your ear

In the post-COVID world of face coverings and heightened hygiene awareness, the need for new authentication methods that don't require a person's full face to be visible has arisen.

Internet

A faster way to preserve privacy online

Searching the internet can reveal information a user would rather keep private. For instance, when someone looks up medical symptoms online, they could reveal their health conditions to Google, an online medical database ...