data

Hackers who stole data from a website promoting extra-marital affairs say they did so to promote misleading claims. The Ashley Madison site has responded by dropping a controversial fee to delete user accounts. The site openly promotes itself as ... appealing to people who want to arrange dates online where at least one party is already in a relationship. Not surprisingly, that setup brings added interest in keeping client details confidential. Earlier this week attackers claimed to have breached security and got access to the records of a supposed 33 million members around the world. They've ... (view more)

A business which makes spying software for governments and police has been hit by a major hacking attack. The company has recommended customers temporarily stop using its products in case the attack compromises security. The business is named ... "Hacking Team," and is based in Italy. It specializes in software that can monitor the online activities of computer users and even retrieve data from their computers. Critics claim the software often uses the same tactics as malware created by cyber criminals. The firm says its situation is different as it only sells its products to public ... (view more)

All US government websites accessible by the public must use secure connections by then end of next year. The new rules should protect the public, particularly "whistleblowers." New rules laid down this week mandate the change for all public sites ... that are wholly or partly maintained by the federal government. This applies even if the site is operated by a contractor. The rules apply whether or not the site requires a user to log-in. (Source: cio.gov ) Under the rules, sites must use the most secure protection that is widely available. The initial implementation of the rule ... (view more)

President Obama has signed a law that will limit the government's power to collect data from the public's online and telephone activities. The USA Freedom Act should make it harder for officials to simply collect data in bulk. The Act replaces the ... measures in the 2001 Patriot Act , which extended the government's surveillance powers as a response to the September 11 attacks . That led to the National Security Agency launching a program by which it effectively collected as much data as possible and held on to it so that it could then look back for details on particular individuals ... (view more)

Some of the largest tech firms are urging President Obama to drop plans to make it easier for law enforcement and security agencies to access Internet communications. They say the President should resist any idea for such firms to implement ... mandatory "backdoors." The proposal means that firms are only allowed to use encryption if they also build in a way that makes it possible for law enforcement groups to access the data in an unencrypted form. The "key" to unlock the data would effectively be split into two parts: one held by the Internet firm, and the other by the ... (view more)

Tech giant Cisco has warned that a new strain of malware is designed to render a Windows computer virtually useless if it's discovered by security software - effectively executing a boobytrap payload that eventually destroys all user data on the ... hard drive. Cisco says that Rombertik has "multiple layers of obfuscation and anti-analysis functionality" meaning that it is hard to discover and hard to examine. It's able to hide itself from both static and dynamic analysis, which respectively scan a computer's files and its currently active applications. (Source: cisco.com ) ... (view more)

Google has revealed the full details of its cellphone network. It will use a combination of space leased from existing cellphone firms, as well as WiFi hotspots to create the network. The service will be dubbed Project Fi. Initially it will only be ... available to users of Google's Nexus 6 phone, but that will only be used short term as an experiment. If all goes well, it's likely to be expanded to other Android phones. Project Fi Consists of WiFi, Sprint and T-Mobile Google will act as a mobile virtual network operator, meaning it leases space on existing networks. In this case, the leased ... (view more)

Four police departments in Maine have paid $300 to cybercriminals after being hit by so-called " ransomware ". Officials say they weighed up their response and decided they had no real choice but to pay up. Ransomware is a form of malicious software ... which restricts access to certain parts of a computer it infects. Victims then see on-screen messages stating that a ransom must be paid to regain access . In most cases, cybersecurity experts warn against paying such ransoms for three reasons. Firstly, it may mean getting added to a "suckers list" that can be sold on to other ... (view more)

Infopackets Reader Eric H. writes: " Dear Dennis, I just read your article on ' Why You Should Install KB3000850? ', in which you mentioned doing daily operating system backups. I have a question about disk images. I have used Norton Ghost (disk ... image backups) on my old Windows XP system many years ago and I stored my backups on a 250GB external drive. Now I have a 250GB Samsung Solid State Hard Drive (SSD) and a 2TB hard drive for my other data. My question is, how much space do I need for my backups? As I understand it, incremental backups will only copy over any changes that it finds are ... (view more)

AT&T will pay a $25 million fine after regulators held it responsible for thieves taking personal details of 280,000 customers. The breaches were said to have occurred around November 2013 and April 2014, with the FCC beginning its investigation ... around May of 2014. It's the biggest ever such fine in the communications industry. The stolen information included the customers' names, part or all of their social security numbers, and some details about their account. On its own, the data wouldn't be enough for criminals to immediately steal money from customer's bank accounts, but could ... (view more)