Students from various US military academies will tackle the US National Security Agency in a friendly competition hosted by Lockheed Martin to simulate real-life hacking scenarios that affect government or private networks. The Cyber Defense Exercise (CDX) enables students to train under simulated attack conditions to build experience and prepare for actual scenarios. Saying that practice is vital for train...

A security researcher managed to “hijack” a flight deck system and change a plane’s course in a hacking skill demonstration, according to the BBC. Hugo Teso, an authorized pilot, gave the aviation computer systems new navigation instructions. He then gained total control of the simulated jet he had built using spare parts bought from eBay. “I expected them to have security issues but I did not expect them t...

Fraudsters hacked the database of Bitcoin service Instawallet, according to IDG News Service. The storing service acknowledged the security breach, but didn’t say how many bitcoins were stolen. The company also suspended the service indefinitely and plans to develop a new architecture. “Our database was fraudulently accessed, [and] due to the very nature of Instawallet it is impossible to reopen the service...

The DDoS attack that hit SpamHaus this week was huge, but not as global as first thought, according to Venture Beat. The Internet Traffic Report shows the response time has been “pretty steady for the past 30 days, with no discernible dip in the past week, and packet loss globally has remained steady at almost zero.” Venture Beat also looked at the InternetPulse, which revealed that the internet in the US w...

Several broadcasters and banks in South Korea were hacked in one of the country’s largest cyber-attacks, and fingers are once again pointed at neighbors to the north, according to The Guardian. The computer networks of KBS, MBC and YTN, and those of the Shinhan and Nonghyup banks were targeted in a simultaneous cyber-attack, which is still under investigation. While television networks were not seriously af...

Companies pay $6,500 an hour to recover from a DDoS attack and up to $3,000 a day to mitigate and recover from malware infections, according to a report by Solutionary. The security service provider said that sophisticated malware, DDoS attacks, the BYOD trend and Web application security are the top four threats that concern organizations. The costs of cyber-attack recovery, based on real-world cases, incl...

Sports retailer Genesco is suing Visa for $13.3 million following a security breach, alleging the Payment Card Industry's fines are too arbitrary, according to eWEEK. The specialty sports-apparel company filed a lawsuit against Visa on March 7 to recover losses from fraudulent transactions. The Payment Card Industry's Data Security Standards force companies to respect several security standards or else face...

Twitter users who changed passwords after last week’s cyber-attack still connect with the old, vulnerable passwords, according to The Register. Apps using the Twitter API, including the company's own, allow access to the service without asking users to enter the new passwords. “A password change performed on the web did not, however, cause Twitter's own apps for iPad (under iOS 5.1.1 on an iPad 1) or iOS (u...

The recent “Vodafone” malware campaign targeting Brits went international as several waves of spam loaded with Trojan Gamarue landed in the Dutch region. The Bitdefender Labs expect the MMS campaign to spread to even more countries and languages. Dutch users are at cyber-gunpoint these days as a dangerous dropper infects them with malware capable of mining sensitive details and sending them to a machine con...

Recent denial of service attacks on US banks are believed to have been triggered by state-sponsored actions lead by Iran. The US government firmly believes the attacks are Iran’s way of retaliating against cyber-attacks led by the United States against Iranian power plants and nuclear facilities, according to private security experts. The strained relationship between the two countries may have caused Iran ...