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A ransomware attack against any business could be potentially devastating, but there are some sectors which are more at risk from file-encrypting attacks than others, as cybercriminals prey on industries which can’t afford to not have access to their networks. Ransomware has boomed over the last 18 months, growing from an annoyance which targeted home PC users with moderate ransom demands, to a billion-dollar industry, with cybercriminals […]

BEIJING China’s military has conducted live-fire drills and weapons tests in the northeastern Bohai Sea close to the Korean peninsula, the country’s defence ministry said on Tuesday. In a brief statement late on Tuesday, the ministry said the tests of new missiles and weapons were carried out by the People’s Liberation Army’s Rocket Force “in recent days” and were designed to raise operational capability so as to […]

On Monday, we brought you the story of TokenCard, the Ethereum-based venture set to revolutionise the world of payments by bringing crypto folk the, errr, power of the Visa network. Yes, you’re wondering, what’s so special about that? Doesn’t every above-board payment facilitator offer Visa access? You’re right. They do. And a card processed by Visa is hardly a breakthrough innovation worth shouting about here in the […]

By Benjamin Weir | SYDNEY SYDNEY Qantas Airways Ltd Chief Executive Alan Joyce proved he was no cream puff on Tuesday, keeping his cool after a man smeared a cream pie in his face during a business breakfast in Australia’s west. Joyce, the head of Australia’s flag carrier, was speaking at the event in Perth, capital of Western Australia state, when a man in a business suit […]

By Christine Kim and Jane Chung | SEOUL SEOUL South Koreans flocked to polling stations to elect a new leader on Tuesday, with a high turnout suggesting voters are eager to move on from a corruption scandal that brought down the former president and shook the political and business elite. Unless there is a major upset, liberal Moon Jae-in – who calls for a moderate approach on […]

Google’s OSS-Fuzz bug-hunting robot has been hard at work, and in recent months, over 1,000 bugs have been exposed. According to Chrome Security engineers Oliver Chang and Abhishek Arya, software engineer Kostya Serebryany and Google Security program manager Josh Armour, the OSS-Fuzz bot has been scouring the web over the past five months in the pursuit of security vulnerabilities which can be exploited. The OSS-Fuzz bot uses […]

HARARE Zimbabwe’s President Robert Mugabe has left the country for medical checks in Singapore, the government said in a statement, about two months after his previous such trip to the south Asian nation. Aged 93, Mugabe is the only leader the southern African country has known since independence in 1980, and his health is a hot topic ahead of a presidential election scheduled for next year that […]

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Sign up to receive FirstFT by email here Days after Donald Trump was elected, President Barack Obama warned his successor against hiring former general Michael Flynn as his security adviser. Mr Trump ignored the advice and Mr Flynn resigned after 17 days on the job amid the growing investigation of the Trump team’s ties to Russia. This is just one of the revelations to emerge following a Senate […]

Today’s State of Work: At the Breaking Point ServiceNow is rolling out a machine learning engine that’s designed to predict outages, automate routing and workflow, predict outcomes, and benchmark performance. The engine, called the Intelligent Automation Engine, was built with technology from ServiceNow’s DxContinuum acquisition in January. ServiceNow said that it will use the Intelligent Automation Engine across the platform and in cloud services for customer service, […]

BOSTON When the Masjid Al-Kareem mosque in Providence, Rhode Island, received a threatening letter in November calling Muslims a “vile and filthy people,” its members were frightened enough they asked for and got extra police protection. The 42-year-old mosque was far from alone. The letter it received was one of 2,213 anti-Muslim bias incidents in the United States last year, according to a report released Tuesday by […]

08 May 2017 Jeddah, Kingdom of Saudi Arabia  The Government of Sierra Leone has asked for the the support of Islamic Development Bank (IsDB) in agricultural development, road construction and Post-Ebola recovery plan. The President of Sierra Leone, Dr. Earmest Bai Koroma disclosed this when he received the President of IsDB, Dr. Bandar Hajjar at the Royal Guest House in Jeddah, Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. President Koroma […]

PARIS Police gradually began reopening Paris’ Gare du Nord train station early on Tuesday morning after earlier evacuating the platforms and cordoning off the area because of a security alert, local police authorities said. A Reuters witness at the scene said there were between 20 to 30 police vans outside the station in central Paris with security forces wearing balaclavas and carrying assault weapons. “End of security […]

‘Silver weapons bear magical powers to conquer foes’. The proverb ascribed to the ancient Greek’s Delphic Oracle has survived centuries to become a favourite selling pitch for information security tools. Silver weapons, now like then, are a myth. Yet we information security professionals regularly encounter pitches selling intrusion prevention systems, threat intelligence, and other defensive technologies as a cure-all to complex problems. Organisations, despite the marketing pitch, […]

The former head of the US Department of Justice told Congress that she had warned the White House in January that Michael Flynn, the first national security adviser appointed by Donald Trump, could be blackmailed by Russia. Sally Yates, who served as acting attorney-general early in the Trump administration, told Congress that she had warned the White House that Mr Flynn had left himself open to being […]

Image: Shutterstock / Dan74 By Karissa Bell2017-05-09 00:14:26 UTC Last week, Intel revealed that a serious security flaw in some of its chips left potentially thousands of devices vulnerable to attackers. Then, security researchers revealed the problem was way worse than anyone initially thought as the vulnerability could allow attackers to remotely “hijack” affected machines. It’s still not clear just how many devices are impacted as Intel […]

WASHINGTON The U.S. Senate easily confirmed Heather Wilson, a former Republican member of the House of Representatives, on Monday to be President Donald Trump’s secretary of the Air Force. The vote was 76-22 in favor of Wilson becoming the top civilian overseeing the Air Force. The 22 “no” votes all came from Democrats. At her confirmation hearing in March, Wilson praised the stealth capability of Lockheed Martin […]

Power grid vulnerabilities are one of the most prevalent national security threats. The technical community calls for building up grid resiliency using distributed energy and microgrids for stabilization as multiple sources increases the difficulty of triggering cascading blackouts, and following an attack or natural disaster, microgrids can provide localized energy security. An interdisciplinary team calculated what it takes to make military bases more secure. (via WSJ)

Former U.S. President Barack Obama reportedly warned current President Donald Trump against hiring Mike Flynn as his national security adviser, former White House officials revealed. Obama warned Trump about Flynn in the days following the 2016 Presidential Elections, but the warning went under the radar so far. News now came to light just as former acting Attorney General Sally Yates is about to testify that Flynn made misleading […]

The biannual OpenStack Summit opened with Jonathan Bryce, executive director of the OpenStack Foundation, saying “We’re a inflection point … We are moving into the second generation of the cloud.” And OpenStack is leading the way. What are these generations? The first generation was built on immature technologies that required expert architects, engineers, and developers. Only large technology companies, such as eBay and Yahoo, could implement them. […]

By Arshad Mohammed | NEW YORK NEW YORK Former U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said on Monday she would prefer that President Donald Trump not criticise judges and the media but that U.S. democratic institutions can withstand such comments. Speaking in an interview, Rice also described Trump as having a somewhat “transactional” view of foreign relations but she broadly endorsed his approach of seeking to enlist […]

Moments from now, at 2:30PM EST, former Acting Attorney General  Sally Yates and Former Director of National Intelligence James Clapper will take the stand before the Senate Judiciary Committee to answer more questions about the alleged “Russian Interference in the 2016 United States Election.”  As we noted earlier, President Trump submitted his question list for the Senate panel earlier this morning via Twitter: “Ask Sally Yates, under […]

ALGIERS Libya’s neighbours and the United Nations on Monday voiced their support for a meeting held last week between the North African country’s main rival figures, the head of the U.N.-backed government, Fayez Seraj, and eastern commander Khalifa Haftar. The two men had held talks in Abu Dhabi, their first in more than a year and a half, over a U.N.-mediated deal that Western powers hope will […]

“We should all agree that in our constitutional democracy, the executive’s ability to attack another country is constrained by the law,” Justin Florence, the group’s legal director and a former Obama White House lawyer, wrote in an essay announcing the lawsuit. He added: “Some countries may tolerate a head of state launching a new conflict without offering a clear legal justification, but we should not.” Continue reading […]

BENGHAZI, Libya East Libyan forces pushed on Monday into two districts of Benghazi where they still face resistance, losing at least 12 men in clashes and mine blasts, according to a medical official. From early morning, roads into the Sabri and Souq al-Hout districts were closed and the sound of heavy weapons and flights overhead by military aircraft could be heard in the area. The self-styled Libyan […]

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