Robert Lemos

The latest version of the CryptoWall ransomware program has raked in more than $325 million for the group behind the criminal operation, researchers from Cyber Threat Alliance stated in a report released on Oct. 29. The Cyber Threat Alliance (CTA), a group of security companies that have pledged to share threat data with each other, […]

While nearly two-thirds of security practitioners consider the analysis of device data for security to be very important to protect their networks, only 36 percent of companies currently use data analytics for defense, according to survey data released by the Ponemon Institute on Oct. 28. The survey, based on interviews with more than 600 IT […]

It’s perhaps the weirdest war of words ever. Driven by a shift in liability for fraudulent transactions, banks and retail firms have taken to lobbing critical press releases at each other, charging that the other side has not done enough to protect consumer data. At its heart, the debate boils down to whether retailers’ forced […]

Controversial legislation aimed at allowing companies to share cyber-attack information with government agencies continues to attract opposition, pitting privacy advocates and security experts against non-technical businesses and government agencies. On Oct. 22, the Cybersecurity Information Sharing Act of 2015 (Senate Bill 754) advanced through the legislative process, with votes expected next week on the bill’s […]

The infrequent release of security updates for Android devices has left 88 percent of smartphones and tablets vulnerable to at least one of 11 critical security flaws over the last four years, according to research published earlier this month by computer scientists at the University of Cambridge. Using data from 20,400 devices and 40 different […]

In June 2013, Austrian resident Max Schrems asked Ireland’s data-protection commissioner to prevent Facebook from transferring his data to the United States. Because all European Facebook users must agree to have their data transferred overseas for processing, they lose the protection of Europe’s Data Protection Directive, and Schrems worried that his personal data could not […]

Online thieves infiltrated the network of investment firm Scottrade nearly two years ago, stealing the names and addresses of 4.6 million customers, the company said on Oct. 2. The company did not detect the breach, but found out about the intrusion after federal law enforcement officials “recently informed” the retail investment firm of the incident. […]

When President Xi Jinping arrived in Washington, D.C., last week, the U.S. government had already started threatening to levy sanctions against China for continuing to aid, and in many cases sponsor, domestic hackers in efforts to steal sensitive information from the U.S. government and companies. Yet an 11th-hour agreement between China and the United States […]

Cyber-criminals who misconfigure their management nodes for commodity remote-access Trojans (RATs)—software used to monitor and control other computers—can be detected by simple Internet scans, possibly revealing the operator’s location, according to research published on Sept. 29 by data-analysis firm Recorded Future. The company used automated scanning service Shodan to search the Internet for default communication […]

The message started appearing in Chinese developer forums about six months ago: A high-speed download site for Apple’s latest Xcode development environment was now available. Because the hefty 3.6GB free software package often slowed downloads in China, many developers took advantage of the link, which sent them to a page that listed all recent versions […]