Security

Facebook, Google, Yahoo, all of these companies make their money by tracking their users, figuring out information on them based on algorithms and search choices and displaying adverts to them from partner companies. That's all well and good for most governments and courts, but Belgium isn't happy that Facebook is …

With four people now in custody for their connection to the TalkTalk hack, we are starting to learn more and more about what actually happened. After a couple of weeks of speculation as to how much data was stolen, we now know that 157,000 customers of the ISP had their …

Finnish digital security firm, F-Secure, finds itself embroiled in an odd scandal right now. Following the dumping of some 400 names, addresses, places of work and other details of individuals by a Twitter user called MetalGodTokyo, some investigations turned up what appeared to be the identity of the person: Naomi …

The police have been really cracking down on the people behind the TalkTalk hack a couple of weeks back, with four people now arrested in total. Yesterday, police made their way to Norwich to arrest and search the home of a 16 year old connected to the crime, which saw …

Google has been running Project Zero for some time now, with the mission of seeking out bugs in software, notifying the software makers and then notifying the public should nothing be fixed in an effort to force something to be done. Previously, Google has taken on Windows and OS X …

One of the big issues privacy campaigners and some ministers had with the ‘Snooper's Charter' or as it was officially termed, the Draft Communications Data Bill, was that it would have made it mandatory for ISPs to record their customer's online actions for up to 12 months. While that was shot …

Apple's iOS devices are generally pretty secure and difficult to hack in to, so bug bounty company, Zerodium put its money where its mouth is and offered hackers a $1 million reward if they could find a remote way to jailbreak iOS 9.1 untethered via the web browser. As luck …

Straight on the back of the high-profile TalkTalk hack, it seems that Vodafone customers have also suffered an unwarranted intrusion, with around 2000 customer accounts illegally accessed. The attack took place over the weekend, though it was not a database breach, so this isn't a widespread issue that all customers …

The UK police have managed to track down and arrest a second suspect in the TalkTalk hacking case, which saw the personal information of the ISP's customers stolen. The second suspect was arrested in London on suspicion of Computer Misuse Act offences after detectives searched his home. The first arrest …

Police in the UK are lobbying the government to give them the powers to look at what they describe as the “where, when and what,” of online activities, essentially letting them view the browsing history of every single internet user in the UK, without being issued a warrant. The reasoning they …

Despite the United States continued stance that Edward Snowden needs to come home from Russia and face the music of his document stealing actions, the European Parliament has further solidified his position as a whistleblower by voting – by a slim margin – for EU nations to pardon him for …

Encryption might be something the Germans are big fans of, but the British government and its intelligence agencies continue to paint it as a tool of evil, used to hide criminal activity from the authorities. However as opposition to this view point grows, it's attempted to mollify concerns that it …

British Gas has locked down the accounts of some 2,200 of its customers after details including usernames and passwords for them were posted online. The energy firm ensures the public that a breach has not happened at its end and that no payment details or information from unaffected accounts has …

The UK police have managed to track down and arrest a suspect in the TalkTalk hacking case, which saw the financial information of customers stolen. The suspect is just 15 years old and was arrested in Northern Ireland, the police's own report also says that the boy's premises will be searched …

Last week it emerged that TalkTalk was hacked, causing a significant amount of personal and financial user data to be stolen. Now though, the ISP is looking to calm its four million customers by claiming that the cyber attack was ‘not as bad' as previously thought. In an update on …

Following the hack of its website and theft of its customer data last week that may have affected as many as four million people, Talk Talk has hired on defence contractor BAE Systems to investigate how exactly those responsible were able to infiltrate TalkTalk's systems. It will also be making …

Telecoms operator TalkTalk has been hit by what has been described by police as a “significant”, attack on its website, resulting in the potential leaking of banking and personal data for some or all of the company's four million customers around the UK. While police and online-crime divisions are investigating the …

Wikileaks has released a number of professional emails of current CIA director John Brennan, after they were hacked out of his AOL account by a hacker who in some cases is cited as being just 13 years old. Supposedly he gained access to the account through social engineering weaker accounts with …

Origin has come a long way from what it was back at launch, though there are still plenty of people on the PC side who aren't sure about EA. Last week, it was discovered that around 600 Origin accounts were leaked on to the web in a Pastebin data dump, …

As much as countries, governments and their intelligence agencies put huge counter measures and monetary backing into protecting their digital assets, it often only takes one individual slipping up to a phishing or social engineering scam to make an entire system vulnerable. That is especially easy today where there are …

Although the visit was a little tense at times, President Obama's meeting with the Chinese president Xi Jingping in September did achieve one thing: an agreement that neither the United States or China would use their digital assets to hack one another to steal corporate secrets and prop up domestic …

Adobe has issued another update for the Flash Player this week as another day zero exploit has been discovered. The new update addresses “critical” security vulnerabilities, which if exploited would have allowed malicious native-code to run without the user even being aware. The new patch was released on Tuesday and …

A while back, Yahoo began its move away from traditional passwords by offering users single-use SMS codes to log in to their accounts. Now, things have progressed further, with Yahoo introducing what is called the ‘Account Key', which allows mail users to log in using push notifications on their smartphone, …

A French government-funded security firm has found a bug within Siri and Google Now that would enable a hacker to take control of the virtual assistants remotely. The hack uses radio waves to trigger what should have been a human instruction, it would take some old-fashioned spy work to implement …

Uber has gone ahead and exposed the personal data of hundreds of its own drivers, putting out social security numbers, pictures of drivers licenses, vehicle registration numbers, along with other pertinent information. The leak was accidental and was first noticed on Tuesday by drivers registered with the company. Reports quickly …

Although clearly not the case, it sometimes feels like hackers hate Adobe Flash. Despite the fact that it represents a simple path to exploit user's systems, every time it gets found to be insecure, it dies a little more. That slip into obscurity looks likely to continue, as yet another …

Passport, no liquids over a certain size, no luggage over a certain weight – those are the main considerations when heading on to a plane in a contemporary airport. Although some may point out the many flaws in current pre-flight safety checks of passengers and their right to fly, none …

One of the more obvious disagreements between politicians and security services, and technology leaders and journalists in recent years, has been the topic of encryption. Law makers and law enforcement have painted it as a dangerous weapon of terrorists and paedophiles, whilst many others consider it an important tool to avoid …

EU citizens' data cannot be so easily sent to the U.S. any more thanks to a ruling on Tuesday which saw a European court shoot down the “Safe Harbour” system, which allows companies to self-certify whether they have enough data protection measures in place when sending customer information overseas. Moving …

Samsung recently launched its own mobile payments service, Samsung Pay, which does the same thing as Apple Pay and Android Pay, allowing users to use their smartphones to pay for items rather than pulling out their credit card. However, it now looks like some Chinese hackers may have stolen the …