Yahoo has the dubious honor of having been on the receiving end of the largest data breach in history. As a consequence, the company has recently agreed to pay $50 million in damages and provide free credit monitoring services to its impacted users. The company actually suffered a pair of breaches in 2013 and in 2014, although this information was not disclosed by the company until 2016. All of the company's 3 billion users were impacted, and more than 200 million of them saw losses arising … Read more
Hackers Now Targeting Girl Scouts, Raising Privacy Concerns
As far as hackers are concerned, no target is safe. Not even the Girl Scouts. Recently, one of the Girl Scouts' official email accounts was accessed by an "unauthorized third party" and as a result, as many as 2,800 girl scouts in Orange County, California may have had their personal information compromised. Gaining access to the account naturally gave the hacker access to every email sent from that account that had not already been deleted. When the breach was discovered, the Girl … Read more
IBM Invests Billions To Purchase Popular Red Hat Linux
IBM has recently announced what is to be the largest open source acquisition in history. They're buying Red Hat for a staggering $34 billion dollars. This, as the saying goes, changes everything. IBM has lagged behind its competitors for years in the area of cloud computing. When the ink dries on this deal, they'll move from a virtual non-entity in the market to the world's #1 hybrid cloud provider. If you're a Red Hat supporter, don't worry that the company is going away. The company … Read more
Some iOS Users Report Call Issues After Latest Update
This hasn't been a great month for two of the titans of tech. Both Apple and Microsoft have been plagued with bug-riddled updates to their operating systems. In Apple's case, their new iOS 12 had to be patched just three weeks after its release because of all the bugs the company's burgeoning user base discovered almost immediately after updating. Unfortunately, the 12.0.1 patch seems to have created almost as many issues as it solved for some users. In particular, some users are reporting … Read more
Spectre Security Built Into New Intel Chip Hardware
By now, almost everyone has heard of the Spectre and Meltdown security flaws that have been making headlines for more than a year. They're serious flaws with dire implications for tens of millions of users around the world who have an intel-based PC. The saga surrounding the fixes for these issues has been a long one and filled with twists and turns. Intel originally attempted to push a software fix to protect its chips, but the patch they issued was so flawed that the company requested … Read more
Name Of Utility Company That Leaked Information Just Released
In 2016, an unnamed US energy company left some 30,000 records (containing information about its security assets) exposed for more than two months (a total of 70 days), in violation of energy sector cyber security regulations. When the incident was initially reported, the name of the company was withheld. That company has now agreed to a $2.7 million-dollar settlement, and its name has now been made public, along with some additional details about the incident. Initially, the company … Read more
Air Canada Customers May Have Had Their Data Exposed
If you fly Air Canada and use their mobile app, it may be time to change your password. The company recently announced that between August 22nd and August 24th of this year, they detected "unusual log-in behavior," and that a small fraction (some 20,000) of their 1.7 mobile app users may have had their data compromised as a result. The company stressed that no credit card information was compromised, but that doesn't make the breach much less damaging. The exposed data … Read more
Some Apple iPhone 8’s May Have A Manufacturer Defect
Do you own an iPhone 8? If so, you may have problems. Apple has recently reported that a small percentage of iPhone 8s "contain logic boards with a manufacturing defect. Affected devices may experience unexpected restarts, a frozen screen, or won't turn on." The company has isolated the defect to phones manufactured between September 2017 to March 2018, in Hong Kong, India, Japan, China, New Zealand, Macau, and the United States. To find out if you've got one of the impacted iPhone 8s, … Read more
Lifelock Customers At Risk Of Email Information Exposure
A dark day for Lifelock, the Identity Theft Protection company. It has recently come to light that the company may have accidentally exposed their customers to additional attacks. They recently fixed a vulnerability on their website that allowed anyone with a browser to index email addresses associated with their entire customer database. The vulnerability can even unsubscribe users from company communications designed to keep them safe and keep them apprised of changes they need to be aware … Read more
Twitter Is Getting Tough On Apps
Twitter has long had a reputation for being at the mercy of bots that have been used to sway public discourse and opinion. Often, these bots are controlled via Twitter API apps that allow the authors to automate most of their actions, such as tweets, follows, and likes. In the face of Facebook's recent grilling before congress, Twitter has decided to take a more proactive stance, and has recently announced major changes to their policies. The first part of the company's statement to … Read more
