The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and the FBI issued a warning to public-safety call centers about numerous attacks against public emergency communications networks in US in a new extortion scam.  The attack, called telephony denial of service (TDoS), overwhelms emergency phone lines with automatically generated calls aimed at crushing the networks and blocking legitimate incoming and outgoing calls...

Most viruses, worms and Trojans circulating nowadays have learned to be discreet to avoid detection. Unlike predecessors that displayed warnings on users’ monitors, modern malware operates silently because crooks understood that users will install an antivirus to clean their computer at the first sign of infection. But, no matter how stealthy these pieces of malware are, there are still signs that give them...

As the travel industry heavily started promoting summer deals earlier; scammers, too, have plunged into the trend with spammed malware campaigns using holiday hooks. Flight confirmation emails are the top lure this season, followed by hotel deals, extravagant cruise packages and vacation loans. In season, holiday spam can reach up for up to 6% of all spam. And if a regular “business spam day” means some 1.8...

A step-by-step tutorial showing how to change Apple ID passwords posted on the underweb has caused a massive headache to the Cupertino-based technology vendor. The tutorial has forced Apple to put the password recovery process in maintenance mode over the weekend to protect customers’ accounts. The step-by-step account hijacking guide [the tutorial is not working anymore] reveals a gaping security hole in t...

In its first transparency report, Microsoft revealed how it helped police worldwide with information on the company’s users. In 2012, the company assisted some 75.378 police requests for client information linked to ongoing criminal investigations. Some 2.1 percent of these requests sought information on content created by people, including documents, images and e-mails stored on servers or sent via Microso...

A 17-year-old resident of Georgia in the US was arrested for hacking private phones and stealing explicit photos of children. He then posted the photos on illegal adult websites. According to 9News, Michael William Cook, of Acworth, Georgia, targeted people under 18. He sent his victims a text message that appeared to originate from a photography company (Maxi Focus Photography) and invited users to install...

A newly discovered flaw in the Origin distribution platform could allow cyber-criminals to install malware on machines regardless of the operating system. The technique was documented in a paper by security researchers Luigi Auriemma and Donato Ferranta presented at the BlackHat conference in Amsterdam. This is the same team of researchers who found a similar vulnerability in the Steam browser protocol last...

High-end DSLR cameras come with a multitude of features for sharing pictures, but do they really reveal the contents only to their owners? According to security researchers Daniel Mende and Pascal Turbing, digital cameras such as the Canon EOS 1DX can be manipulated to take pictures and upload them without the user’s explicit consent. This particular camera model comes with a built-in server called WFT (Wir...

The dust has barely set on the Bank of America security breach, and crooks unleashed a series of aggressive spam campaigns that include the Bank of America in the title as bait. In the context of a security breach, the name of the bank was used to catch customers’ attention, infect them with malware, have them type in sensitive data or entice them into sending money in advance for a service they will never ...

Hackers got their hands on US celebrities’ finance details and posted them on a dedicated website suspected to be tied to Russia. Jay-Z, Beyoncé, Mel Gibson, Ashton Kutcher, Kim Kardashian and Britney Spears were among the stars that had private data displayed for all to see. Hackers also targeted top government officials including US Vice-President Joe Biden, former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, form...