An older flaw in the Adobe Flash plugin that should have been fixed two years ago is still exploitable by cyber-criminals, leading to users getting spied on in real time via the built-in camera and microphone. The flaw relies on the notorious click-jacking technique that allows a malicious user to disguise a transparent flash object (in this case the Privacy settings of the plugin) under a Play button, thus...

Patients using medical gear such as pacemakers, heart defibrillators and insulin dispensers  could become moving targets for cyber-criminals, according to a federal note issued by  the US Department of Homeland Security. Modern medical devices are miniatures of their predecessors and allow wireless programming and control to minimize maintenance, which would otherwise require cables sticking out of the pati...

Yahoo! will distribute inactive e-mail accounts to other users looking for shorter and more memorable IDs. E-mails that haven’t been used for at least 12 months will be available to other subscribers, the company said in a blog post. “If you’re like me, you want a Yahoo! ID that’s short, sweet, and memorable like albert@yahoo.com instead of albert9330399@yahoo.com,” Jay Rossiter, the company’s senior vice p...

Tens of thousands of Iranians are vulnerable to phishing attacks as elections approach, according to Google. In the last three weeks, the company blocked several email-based phishing campaigns aimed at compromising the accounts of Iranian users. The attacks, which originate from within the country, represent a significant jump in the overall volume of phishing activity in the region. “The timing and targeti...

An old vulnerability in Microsoft Word has triggered a series of infections with password-stealing malware in Vietnam, according to researchers at Metasploit-maker Rapid7. The attack starts with specially crafted Microsoft Word documents that trigger CVE-2012-0158 and CVE-2012-1856, two vulnerabilities mitigated by the vendor last year. Until now, two known attacks use a Vietnamese document about "reviewing...

A wave of car theft that started in February might completely change the contactless car lock industry as we know it.  A number of incidents caught on security cameras in Long Beach, California, reveal individuals equipped with something that looks like a high-tech wireless lockpick who approach passenger doors and open them in a matter of seconds without triggering the alarm. According to a report on Today...

Our colleagues at Bitdefender France have started an interesting series of articles to reveal what apparently innocent e-mails may hide behind the lines, links or attachments. We decided to share their tips and tricks on how to avoid the online threats spreading in our inboxes. We’ve said it over and over: nobody should open attachments or click links from unknown senders. Curiosity may lead you to the wron...

A campaign that takes advantage of vulnerabilities on the CNN website is flooding Twitter users with diet spam, according to eHackingNews. Cyber-criminals exploit the open redirect flaw to post spam messages that look like they're coming from the reputable news organization. “The diet porgram you told us about yesterday is soo good!”, spammers tweeted, then redirected users to a malicious website. “I love m...

Vietnamese and UK police arrested 11 people and disabled a cybercrime forum that facilitated more than $200 million worth of credit card fraud, according to a press release by the Serious Organized Crime Agency. The forum Mattfeuter.ru had about 16,000 members and sold more than a million credit card numbers that were leaked after hacking and fraud. Three of the people arrested in the UK were “significant” ...

The US House Intelligence Committee will propose a bill against foreign hackers, especially those from Russia and China, according to CNET. The new law aims to protect both government and private institutions from cyber-attacks. The legislation will also reinforce “real consequences and punishments,” according to US lawmakers. “Cyber hackers from nation-states like China and Russia have been aggressively ta...