Tag Archives: security

Passport, no liquids over a certain size, no luggage over a certain weight – those are the main considerations when heading on to a plane in a contemporary airport. Although some may point out the many flaws in current pre-flight safety checks of passengers and their right to fly, none …

EU citizens' data cannot be so easily sent to the U.S. any more thanks to a ruling on Tuesday which saw a European court shoot down the “Safe Harbour” system, which allows companies to self-certify whether they have enough data protection measures in place when sending customer information overseas. Moving …

We seem to have a vigilante white hat hacker on our hands, as newly discovered ‘malware' aimed at Internet of Things devices and certain routers appears to be making these devices more secure. The Linux.Wifatch virus is doing the exact opposite of what most viruses would, rather than stealing user …

Today, Patreon revealed that it recently suffered a security breach, during which someone gained unauthorized access to one of the site's databases containing user information. The security hole has already been patched up but names, email addresses and some shipping addresses were accessed. Patreon has let its users know via …

Earlier this year, it was discovered that Windows 10 doesn't support SafeDisc or SecuROM DRM software, which also means that games or software using those forms of DRM won't run without some tinkering. Microsoft did this for security purposes as these forms of DRM aren't entirely secure. Now, a similar …

This week, Imgur discovered a vulnerability in its system that made it possible for people to inject malicious code in to an image link from the site. These links were then used to leverage genuine user's browsers in order to send a DDOS attack out to the sites 4Chan and …

Apple is cleaning up the iOS App Store, following its first major malware attack. The attack embedded a program called XcodeGhost in to legitimate apps on the store, once several cyber security firms caught on, Apple let it be known that the company is working on clearing it all up …

The topic of China and its continued tug of war with the United States on the digital battleground is a hot one at the moment. With Chinese president Xi Jinping set to meet with President Obama to discuss hacking and digital defences, the Director of National Intelligence, James Clapper has …

While most people use their smartphone for the WhatsApp encrypted messaging service, some use WhatsApp Web to do the same thing. Available to Android, BlackBerry, Windows Phone and iOS users on their PCs, it lets people look at messages they've received and sent, including images and videos. However, those that …

There is some new ransomware on the block for Android users. It turns out that there is currently a dodgy app called ‘Adult Player' floating around. It's an app that lures users in by offering porn but once opened, it takes a picture using the phone's front facing camera, locks …

When you fill in a form on a website, you expect that information to go straight to the company who owns the site (and the NSA), not its entire mailing list of customers. But that's exactly what happened recently with WHSmith's site, which had a misconfigured “contact us” form on …

As much as having a camera set up can be great for security, in that it can record anyone breaking into your property, in an age of wireless updates and web clients, there's also the possibility that it will be hacked and its footage or feeds viewed by governments or …

Although the fact that Google tracks an awful lot of data about individuals is perhaps a bit ironic considering this particular data set, it's hard to argue that it's not interesting to see emerging trends among different sections of society. In this case, Google searches related to personal privacy, hacking …

It looks like Microsoft is hoping to keep Windows 10 secure with its bug bounty payouts. Microsoft has gone ahead and increased the amount it is willing to pay out to those who find problems within its new operating system, along with offering a solution. The “Bounty for Defence” now …

Android is great for many things but unfortunately, security isn't really on that list. However, Google and Samsung are looking to improve things by providing monthly over the air updates to device owners, patching up security holes and tackling the problem head on. Google announced its monthly OTA update scheme …

Despite having his file locker website seized along with most of his personal assets back in early 2012, Kim Dotcom has been an active entrepreneur ever since, launching several services and a political party. One of those entities was encrypted cloud storage platform Mega, which he was a big proponent …

When we reviewed the Piper iControl security camera hub a few weeks ago, we noted that one of its best features was the fact that it allowed for free cloud storage of recorded footage, something that other companies charge an ongoing subscription fee for. At the time you could only …

It is hard for companies to keep secrets these days, something that Warner Bros learned the hard way during Comic Con last week when the trailer for Suicide Squad was posted to the internet and spread around like wild fire in all of its blurry, pixelated glory. This has caused …

Google's Android app, Google Photos, seems to have a fairly alarming issue right now as it has been discovered that the service will continue to collect your photos even after deleting the app from your smartphone. This is because the app doesn't use its own settings menu to set up …

It looks like Samsung has been messing around with the Windows Update feature on its own laptops, which is causing quite a stir this week. According to Microsoft's Patrick Barker, Samsung has a program titled ‘Disable_Windowsupdate.exe' as part of its own Samsung branded computer update tool called SW Update. It …

In the name of thwarting terrorism, British and US intelligence agencies have taken part in many questionable practices over the past few years. Often those actions are considered legally dubious by various international authorities, but that hasn't stopped them pushing full speed ahead. In a new round of document reveals …

LastPass, a password management service designed to keep your many different passwords secure in one place, has been hacked, so the company is now advising users to go ahead and change all of their passwords. The hack apparently took place some time last week, though it wasn't revealed to users …

One of the most popular VPN extensions for Google Chrome, Hola, has been caught  out selling its users' “idle resources”, like your bandwidth, via a separate company for botnet use. This means that users of Hola likely had their bandwidth sold for DDOS attacks. Hola was often used as a …

Google has been doing some research in to just how effective security questions are. The results were published this week, showing that apparently, account security questions aren't that secure and in some cases could be guessed by attackers in ten guesses or less. Additionally, if you use a fake answer …

These days, stealing somebody's iPhone and selling it off isn't an easy task, which is largely thanks to the Find My iPhone feature installed on the device. However, the Apple Watch is a different story as the highly sought after smart watch is surprisingly easy for thieves to sell off. …

Some hackers have gone ahead and cooked up Breaking Bad themed ransomware, which is currently affected a few people over in Australia. The new malware, which encrypts a PC's images, videos and documents, was recently discovered by Symantec. The ransomware is named Trojan.Cryptolocker.S. Once a user is affected, their files …

PayPal has recently discussed a number of biometric security solutions that could well be used in order to slowly kill off the traditional password. While we are used to the idea of fingerprint sensors and the possibility of iris scanners in the future, PayPal has a couple of strange ideas. …

Tweets have been getting people in trouble for a while now, whether they were intended as jokes, or legitimate statements, but often it's because of perceived ‘offence.' Not in this instance however, where digital security expert and founder of One World Labs, Chris Roberts, was barred from a United Airlines …

Mojang has finally patched out a two-year old security bug that would allow people with the know-how to crash Minecraft servers by forcing them out of memory or causing them to freeze. The patch came in response to a blog post written by coder, Ammar Asker. The coder outlined a …

You probably know by now that the biggest tech companies in the US are currently battling it out with the NSA over data encryption and what the US government should be allowed to access. Since back door access to customer data is clearly out of the question following the Snowden …