Equifax Breach Exposes Multiple Failures
In the latest of what can only be described as a pandemic of data breaches, Equifax has admitted, belatedly, that they failed to properly protect the personal financial data of 143 million Americans, 400,000 Britons, and 100,000 Canadians.
When will these companies begin to take the security of our data seriously?
Breach at Yahoo
In the largest data breach yet reported, 500 million accounts have been compromised at Yahoo. If you have a Yahoo account, you’re probably affected. If you use your Yahoo password on any other sites, change them now. We highly recommend the use of a password manager and a different password for every site you visit.
If You Use Internet Explorer, You ARE At Risk
Microsoft has admitted the existence of yet another security flaw in Internet Explorer which hackers are actively exploiting. It is called a “zero day” exploit because there was zero time between the discovery of the flaw and the first known exploits by hackers.
Sophos’ James Lyne on Everyday Cybercrime
James Lyne recently gave a TED talk on cybercrime. It’s well worth the eighteen minutes.
Cryptolocker Malware
Over the past few weeks a particularly nasty piece of malware has begun attacking Windows PCs around the globe. Employing a public/private key pair, this malware encrypts data files (some reports say system files as well) on a user’s PC before presenting a demand of $300US ransom for the decryption key.
Several victims have reported successfully recovering their files after paying the ransom but, as of this writing, the command and control centre has been taken offline and this option is no longer available. The nature of malware suggests that this stunt will soon be replicated.
Canada: National Do Not Call List a complete and utter failure
If you are one of those Canadians who hopefully registered their home or cellular telephone numbers with the National Do Not Call list, you have no doubt realized that it has had very little effect on the number of unsolicited calls you receive.