Security

This is the question asked by coding competition, Underhanded C, which pits hackers against each other to create the most nefarious bit of code they can come up with; but the trick is doing so while making it stealthy enough to avoid casual investigation. The setup in this latest competition …

There may be hundreds of thousands of unsuspecting British computer users involved in cyber attack, because their router has been compromised. Spamhaus, which runs a filtering service used to stop spam emails has been under attack from 18th march after they added a Dutch hosting organisation called CyberBunker to their …

If you've been getting lookalike news emails from CNN or the BBC in the past few days, you could have been hit by a malware attack and it may well be worth doing a few safe mode scans with popular anti-malware software, if an AVG report on the Blackhole exploit …

Yesterday South Korean computers were hit by a big systems crash across banks and major media, prompting many to point the finger at North Korea. A few sources have suggested that a certain piece of malware was used in the suspected attack that wiped the Master Boot Record – but …

Well I say hacked, in reality I mean social engineered. It turns out that some high profile Microsoft employees have had their accounts taken over by a nefarious few, who used the employees' social security numbers and other services' customer support to gain access. Microsoft has been keen to point …

With the most popular game in the world right now, it's not surprising that Riot is forced to deal with some irritatingly “toxic” players from time to time. However today's crack down is on an entire team for ELO boosting and one for seeming to DDOS an opposing player mid-game. The near …

A new NATO document on state-sponsored hacking has suggested some targets that are off-limits, in the same way that the UN doesn't allow for the stockpiling or usage of chemical weapons. This manual has suggested that the no-go areas of digital warfare are: hospitals, nuclear power stations, dams and dykes. …

In something that seems more like a scene from 21 or an Ocean's # movie, hackers in Australia have managed to nab over £20 million worth of down under dollars from a casino, after hacking its CCTV security system and using it to spy on the opposition's cards. Like any …

Similar to the way that Kim Dotcom's Mega has been doling out rewards to those that manage to find flaws in its security, a pair of hackers from Serbia have been given prizes for hacking into a local billboard and playing space invaders on it. We reported on the duo …

The latest version of SimCity has only been out for a couple of days, but it's already drawn a lot of flak from gamers. Initially it was because the servers were intermittent at best and now it's because EA took them down in order to improve stability. Of course none …

Hackers hit some of the major news websites in the Czech Republic this morning, bringing many of them to their knees and making most hard, if not impossible to access. These include the country's biggest news sites: ihned.cz, dnes.cz and novinky.cz. The attacks were nothing out of the ordinary, just …

Evernote, the popular online personal organiser have had to issue a password reset for all their users after hackers penetrated the company's protection systems and accessed login credentials. The company sent out an email to customers. The Evernote team found out about the attack and subsequently blocked ‘suspicious activity on …

While we might often hear stories of how the US is being targeted by Chinese hackers, the communist country has now pointed its finger at the US, suggesting most of the attacks against its nation come from the Western one. According to China's defence ministry, last year nearly 150,000 attacks …

Everytime I turn on my computer I seem to get another update request for Adobe Flash, as the company seem to be working hard to plug security holes for their ever popular code. February has been a busy month for the update team. The Adobe Product Security Incident Response Team …

Stuxnet is a celebrity among viral code, hitting the headlines some time ago for reportedly hitting an Iranian nuclear facility. A new cyber security report claims it is much older than initially thought. Symantec researchers, one of the firms involved in the initial analysis of the code when it was …

If you have an EU account with PlanetSide 2, it might be a good idea to change your login information. While the devs are claiming everything is under control, it appears a nefarious few may have managed to steal email addresses and passwords of some European accounts for the MMO …

McAfee have gathered 113 million core samples of malware signatures in the last year and they are going to use that information into a new software suite using behavioral heuristics in their code to spot unknown samples. The final result could mean that botnets would be defeated, worldwide. Pat Calhoun, …

The BBC, an organisation that in the past has championed open standards – according to their own blog – has pledged its support for the W3C proposal put forward by big media giants last week, in an effort to have the standards group push for DRM restrictions on HTML. The …

A collection of artists and billionaire FilmOn founder Alki David, have accused CBS and CNET's run Download.com, as being responsible for most of the world's piracy, simply because it currently and has for a long time, offered torrent software for download. Of course that's like suggesting kitchen utensil sales companies like John …

In a report that shows the capabilities of a piece of social networking snooping technology, developed by Raytheon, a US defence contractor, it has emerged that the tool, while not sold to any foreign parties, was shared with the US government in 2010. This means that the technology, dubbed ironically …

A botnet that hijacked the clicks and search results of millions of net users has been shut down by Microsoft and Symantec. Apparently the group responsible was netting over a million dollars a year through advertising revenue, generated by the misappropriated traffic. In order to achieve the shut down, the Microsoft Symantec …

Anti-malware firm PandaLabs, has released new information from its 2012 security report, which suggests that just under a third of the world's computers are infected with some sort of malware. It's also been reported that there are 27 million new strains of infective software out there that weren't present before …

New Android malware called Droidcleaner has been causing problems for many people, infecting smartphones and using a PC to spy on the end user. Researchers at Kaspersky Labs have uncovered the new malware which poses as a ‘cleaner' style application, and one that can ‘free used' memory on devices. It …

Twitter have admitted that 250,000 users have had their passwords and email addresses stolen by hackers. This breach is one of the biggest ever recorded by Twitter, they may have over 200 million users, but a quarter of a million people have had their accounts compromised. Twitter have said they …

Russian researchers have discovered a piece of malware that is believed to have been consistently leaking confidential documents from embassies, government facilities, nuclear research centres and oil and gas companies for almost half a decade. The malware exploited a bug in government systems that allowed it to recover deleted files …

With all the hate its received and the lack of acceptance of Sergey Titov's apology over the whole War Z “saga,” we should have seen this one coming. Hackers managed to take down zombie survival MMO The War Z for a short period and at the time of writing, Steam …

Hot off the back of its Instagram gaff, Facebook has suffered another blow to its reputation, as its Midnight Message Delivery app, that was designed to allow people to leave messages for loved ones that would be sent automatically as the New Year rolled around, had a gaping hole in …

The Nintendo 3DS has been under attack by hackers for the last couple of years but Nintendo has been steadfast in its defence of the handheld's security. A couple of weeks ago though, we saw the beginnings to what could be a hack that opens the system up and now …

When we see the headline ‘McAfee on drugs', it's natural to assume that it relates to the security company's founder – who seems to have picked up a talent for production in the meth lab now that his creation is well and truly in the clutches of Intel. But we're …

S2 Games has announced that its MOBA title, Heroes of Newerth, has been hacked and the passwords of user's accounts have been breached. To counter it the developer has reset everyone's passwords and is recommending that any players change any login information elsewhere that shares details with HoN. Showing a …