attacks

Security researchers say its highly likely hackers linked to North Korea were responsible for the recent widespread WannaCry ransomware attack . The same group, dubbed Lazarus, was previously blamed for two other high profile online attacks. ... According to security firm Symantec, the WannaCry attacks bore five distinct hallmarks of previous attacks thought to be the work of the Lazarus group. This includes shared code such as that used to spread the malware from machine to machine. Other common factors include the same IP address being used to issue commands to infected machines, and similar ... (view more)

Microsoft has detailed the intricate and carefully crafted attack techniques of a longstanding group of online spies. They include taking advantage of a now-retired Windows feature for easier updates. Thankfully for home users, the attacks from the ... group Microsoft dubs "Platinum" have been highly targeted at government, defense, communications and intelligence agencies and organizations. That's promoted speculation a government may be behind the attacks. The details come in a report by Microsoft's Windows Defender Advanced Threat Hunting. It notes that while some attacks are ... (view more)

Chinese spies have reportedly infected the Forbes website in order to steal data from staff at defense and finance organizations. The attack is unlike most attacks on large websites, as the motive was for intelligence, rather than profit. The Forbes ... website attack reportedly took place in November 2014, with the security gap plugged by approximately three days later. To propagate the attack, hackers replaced a legitimate file on the web server used for the "Thought of the Day" feature, which appeared on every page of the Forbes website. The malicious file was then automatically ... (view more)

A new report suggests that hackers took aim at twice as many businesses in 2014 when compared to the previous year. The report comes from Russian security company Kaspersky Lab; its Global Research and Analysis Team says it detected seven major ... advanced persistent threats (or APTs) over the past twelve months, resulting in approximately 4,400 attacks targeting private sector organizations in an estimated 55 countries. Kaspersky researchers say that's more than double the roughly 1,800 corporations targeted by cybercriminals in 2013 . Sophisticated Attacks May Be Supported by National ... (view more)

A company that helps protect websites against a popular form of cyber attacks says it's solved a major security concern. The change could mean high-profile websites can be much more resilient and secure. The company in question is CloudFlare, which ... offers services to defend against denial of service attacks (DoS) , including distributed denial of services attacks (DDoS) . That's where cyber attackers flood a website with bogus data requests, until the site (or server) is no longer able to deal with legitimate requests. Oftentimes such an attack will bring a web server to a grinding ... (view more)

Is your car less likely than your desktop computer to be infected with malware? The answer may surprise you. Security expert Mark O'Neill believes that automotive companies need to think very carefully about protecting the high-tech vehicles they're ... now offering consumers in greater numbers than ever before. O'Neill currently serves as vice president of innovation at UK-based software firm Axway. His scary prediction for 2014 is that we'll see far more hackers target vehicles than in previous years. More Malicious Attacks Coming, Expert Says "I think we are going to see ... (view more)