Uber is once again potentially in hot water with US regulators following the disclosure of a program used to track and avoid government officials. The US Department of Justice (DoJ) has launched a criminal investigation into Uber concerning the Greyball program, software which helped drivers avoid local authorities while remaining on the road. Greyball, disclosed in March by the New York Times, was a secretive system used […]
Microsoft has shown how Windows Defender ATP detected anomalous updater behavior. Image: Microsoft Microsoft is warning software vendors to protect their updater processes after discovering a “well-planned, finely orchestrated” attack that hijacked an unnamed editing tool’s software supply chain. As Microsoft’s threat response group explains, the attackers used the update mechanism of a popular but unnamed piece of editing software to gain a foothold in several high-profile […]
By Adrian Croft and Geert De Clercq | PARIS PARIS France sought to keep a computer hack of frontrunner Emmanuel Macron’s campaign emails from influencing the outcome of the country’s presidential election with a warning on Saturday it could be a criminal offence to republish the data. Macron’s team said a “massive” hack had dumped emails, documents and campaign financing information online just before campaigning ended on […]
Google is trying to make email on Android safer with a new warning that doesn’t prevent access to shady pages but cautions that you are proceeding at your own risk. Image: Google Google is rolling out a new anti-phishing feature in Gmail on Android that stops users immediately proceeding to a page if they click a suspicious link. The new feature is designed to make it easier […]
(Image: file photo) The National Security Agency is set to stop using a highly classified program that in part collected Americans’ emails and text messages without a warrant. Details of the program were largely overlooked when it was first disclosed in documents leaked by whistleblower Edward Snowden in 2013. The leaks provided a small but critical window into how the US government carries out surveillance on Americans, […]
The Abu Dhabi International Book Fair continues this weekend with over 50 sessions ranging from panel discussions, In Conversation sessions and book signings. Emirati authors Reem Kamali and novelist Lulwah Al Mansouri will lead the Friday session, The Emirati Narrative Scene: The Rise of the Feminine Voice, at the Al Multaqa Literary Salon at 7.30pm. The duo will shed light on the how the female protagonist has […]
File Photo The head of Uber’s self-driving car project is stepping away from the leadership role as a lawsuit embroiling Uber and his former employer Waymo relating to the theft of trade secrets continues. Anthony Levandowski is a talented engineer who is believed to have been a key player in former Google unit Waymo’s success in developing the technology. While working in Google’s Street View maps unit […]
The malware code contains references to Felis and Mus — Latin for ‘cat’ and ‘mouse’. Image: Getty Images/iStockphoto A sophisticated form of Trojan malware allows its highly-skilled creators to secretly take over an infected system — and it comes with self-updating capabilities that enable it to strengthen itself, fix bugs, or change what it looks like in order evade detection. Once it has infected a system, the […]
Ransomware incidents have surged 50 percent from a year ago, educational institutions are becoming a playground for cyber espionage and 68 percent of healthcare security threats are internal, according to Verizon’s 2017 Data Breach Incident Report (DBIR). The DBIR is based on data from 65 organizations, 42,068 incidents and 1,935 breaches in 84 countries. At a high level, Verizon’s DBIR isn’t that surprising. One of the recent […]
A federal court in Washington, D.C., has unsealed a batch of legal documents that shed light on an early test of a 2015 law the allows companies to challenge gag orders in national security investigations. The dispute began in February 2016, when a service provider asked for judicial review of a gag order preventing the company from disclosing that it had received two FBI national security letters, […]
COPENHAGEN Russia has hacked the Danish defence and gained access to employees’ emails in 2015 and 2016, NATO member Denmark’s defence minister told newspaper Berlingske on Sunday. The report comes at a time when several Western governments, including the United States, France and Britain, have accused Russia of resorting to hacking to influence elections — allegations Moscow has repeatedly dismissed as baseless. A report from the Danish […]
MOSCOW Russia has told the United States it regrets Washington’s opposition to letting its inspectors take part in an investigation into a chemical weapons attack in Syria earlier this month, the foreign ministry said on Friday. It said Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov spoke by phone to U.S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson and the two sides agreed to consider one more time an “objective investigation into the […]
Pegasus spyware is used to monitor activities of individual targets. Image: iStock A new version of one of the most sophisticated forms of mobile spyware has been discovered, and this time it’s being used to spy on Android users. Made public last summer, the Pegasus mobile spyware was used by a nation state to monitor iPhones belonging to activists in the Middle East. Dubbed Trident, three separate […]
ZDNet ST. MAARTEN: Researchers have discovered an ancient APT used to target the Pentagon decades ago is now being utilized by modern cyberattackers. On Monday, at the Kaspersky Security Analyst Summit in St. Maarten, researchers from Kaspersky and Kings College London said that Moonlight Maze, which sent fear shooting through the hearts of US agencies over two decades ago, is still finding relevance in modern-day attacks. The […]
Hackers have potentially made off with confidential information about athletes. Image: iStock Russian hackers have compromised the servers of the world governing body for athletics and have likely made off with athletes’ medical data. The attack against the International Association of Athletics Federations (IAAF) has been attributed to the APR 28 hacking group – also known as Fancy Bear – and took place in February this year. […]
President Trump has repeatedly threatened to change U.S. libel law to crack down on news organizations that publish information he finds objectionable. But could he actually make good on his threat? Several First Amendment experts reached by Poynter say President Trump couldn’t amend libel law simply because there is no federal statute governing libel. Further, any changes to existing libel laws would likely not favor President Trump, […]
Attackers are using fake airline booking confirmation messages to steal corporate credentials. Image: iStock Cyberattackers are carefully crafting individual phishing emails puporting to be from airlines and financial departments to deliver malware and are even mimicking internal corporate travel and expenses systems in order to steal personal details from specifically targeted victims. While cybercriminals using the lure of fake travel itineraries is to dupe those in sectors […]
When it comes to hedge fund paranoia, few can hold a light to the world’s undisputed leader: Ray Dalio’s Bridgewater – the former employer of current FBI director James Comey – which in addition to maintaining absolute secrecy about its operations, policies and culture, and vigorously pursuing anyone who disseminates Dalio’s famous morning notes, has relentlessly sued any former employees who breach the company’s notorious non-compete. And […]
Tim Byrnes is an unlikely symbol of China’s bid to become the world’s high-tech superpower. For a start he is Australian. Yet the 39-year-old quantum physicist’s decision to swap a research post in New York for Shanghai goes some way to explaining the lengths to which Beijing is going in its efforts to upend the world order. “Quantum physics is very strong in China,” says Mr Byrnes. […]
By Dustin Volz | WASHINGTON WASHINGTON The U.S. government on Wednesday unsealed charges against two Russian spies and two criminal hackers for allegedly pilfering 500 million Yahoo user accounts in 2014, The indictments, announced at a news conference in Washington, represent the first time the U.S. government has criminally charged Russian officials for cyber offenses. The content of at least 30 million accounts were accessed as part […]
A grand jury in California has charged four people — including two Russian intelligence officers — in a pair of computer hacks against Yahoo that victimised hundreds of millions of consumers, the US Justice Department said on Wednesday. The men penetrated Yahoo’s email accounts, often using “spear phishing” emails, and used information they obtained to access other accounts at Yahoo and Google. Among those targeted were Russian […]
The longlist for the Baileys Women’s Prize for Fiction was announced last week, and it is as diverse and intriguing as always. Of particular notes are Nigerian Ayobami Adebayo’s debut Stay With Me about the impact of infertility on a couple, Yewande Omotoso’s Cape Town chronicle The Woman Next Door, and Madeleine Thein’s (pictured) Chinese epic Do Not Say We Have Nothing. The usual big hitters – […]
Hackers can exploit the insecurity of IoT devices for the purposes of espionage or DDoS attacks Image: iStock Cyberattacks exploiting the insecurity of the Internet of Things and hackers increasingly attempting to compromise industrial connected devices represent some of the biggest threats to the UK, those responsible for ensuring national security have warned. Citing incidents including the internet crippling Mirai botnet cyberattack and vulnerabilities in a children’s […]
TAIPEI China does not understand Taiwan’s laws and its democracy, a senior Taiwanese justice ministry official said Monday, in the latest spat between the self-ruled island and Beijing, after island authorities detained a Chinese man in a suspected spy case. Deputy justice minister Chen Ming-tang said comments from a senior Chinese official that Taiwan was trying to use the case to stir up trouble with China was […]
