Latest News - Page 2719

The Midlothian Police Department paid $500 after being compromised with the Cryptoware ransomware, encrypting files on one computer. A spear-phishing email likely is the culprit behind the Cryptoware infection, with Midlothian Police Chief Harold Kaufman confirming a cybersecurity incident.

The police department spent a total of $606 to rid itself of the infection, following the addition of bank fees and subsequent surcharges.

Cybersecurity experts recommend business users routinely back up their data - and that is often left to IT administrators - with urgent need to train employees so they can spot social engineering attempts.

Hunter Moore, 28, the founder of revenge porn website IsAnyoneUp.com, has pleaded guilty and faces years in prison. Moore pleaded guilty to identity theft, unauthorized access to a computer, and aiding and abetting unauthorized access of a computer. Unlike other revenge porn website operators, Moore paid a hacker to access email accounts looking for photos to steal.

Each charge carries a maximum prison sentence of two to five years, and Moore should be sentenced in a few months. Moore was once called "the most hated man on the Internet" for creating IsAnyoneUp.com, which served as one of the most popular revenge porn websites.

The infamous revenge porn website generated up to $10,000 per month in advertising revenue - and featured nude images and videos of ex-boyfriends and ex-girlfriends. The person's full name, city of residence, social media profile and profession were prominently listed on the website.

Company executives have observed Target, JPMorgan Chase, Home Depot, Anthem, and other major companies suffer devastating data breaches - and understand they need stronger cybersecurity protocols - but actually deploying new methods has been rather slow.

Seventy eight percent of company tech executives have not been briefed regarding internal security strategies within the past 12 months, according to a Raytheon survey. In addition, 75 percent said cybersecurity is a necessary cost, but only 25 percent of survey respondents said security is a strategic priority.

"The Target hack was very interesting," said Jack Harrington, VP of cybersecurity and special missions of Raytheon, in a statement published by the Christian Science Monitor. "It raised awareness across the entire retail industry certainly," but demand for chief information security officer (CISO) positions wasn't' a priority. "That tells you they felt they didn't even need that position. They just didn't feel at risk."

Since its public launch in October, Apple Pay continues its march towards becoming the mobile payments leader - with consumers testing the service, and more businesses willing to give it a try. Apple Pay now has two-thirds control of the surging mobile payments market, according to the Robert Baird's analyst group.

Whole Foods embraced Apple Pay and mobile payments have increased 400 percent, the company said. Meanwhile, Apple Pay is responsible for 80 percent of mobile payments, with that number rising even higher.

"There are still a limited number of vendors that are supporting it, but our expectation is that's going to continue to grow just given the early success the early vendors are having with it," said Will Power, senior research analyst of Robert Baird, told CNBC. "Right now, the Apple iPhone - hard to believe - seven years later or so is as well positioned competitively really as it's ever been."

It took several high-profile data breaches before the United States publicly discussed the need for improved cybersecurity protocols. Democrats and Republicans agree that something must be done, but security experts hope politics don't get in the way of necessary change.

However, cybersecurity efforts could receive bipartisan support from the Obama Administration and the Republican-led Congress - and politics hopefully won't get in the way.

"In order to improve cybersecurity, it is critical to facilitate the sharing of cyberattack information," said Sen. Ron Johnson (R-Wisc), in the GOP weekly address. "By sharing threat signatures, vulnerabilities and other indicators of network compromise, within and between the private sector and government, many cyberattacks can be prevented."

It looks like Pebble is about to unveil its new smartwatch very soon, with the smartwatch pioneer teasing that it is set to replace its black and white e-paper display smartwatch with a new model that will feature a color display, in just 3 days time.

The new smartwatch from Pebble will reportedly feature a color e-paper-style display that will sport an improved backlight that is also slightly wider. We should see Pebble also include a microphone, which will allow for some voice-activated features. The new display itself will reportedly be embedded into an enclosure that is thinner than its predecessor, but it won't be touch-capable, unfortunately.

When it comes to software, there are rumors that Pebble has been working with webOS on revamping Pebble OS. This should mean we can expect a totally fresh UI with new animations and a timeline view that will give you a better look at your notifications. The new Pebble smartwatch should be the same price, if not lower than its predecessor, which still costs $199.

The VRAM controversy over NVIDIA's GeForce GTX 970 continues, where class action lawsuits have now been filed late last week. You might remember this only happened a few weeks ago, with NVIDIA quick to jump and admit it falsely advertised the GTX 970 and quickly refreshed the official specifications of the Maxwell-powered GPU.

There are two lawsuits at the moment, one for NVIDIA and the other targeting GIGABYTE. The plaintiff is suing NVIDIA and GIGABYTE on behalf of all GeForce GTX 970 owners, making this a class action lawsuit. This means that any GeForce GTX 970 owner can jump into this class action lawsuit. There are four major complaints for which the plaintiff is asking for damages over, including:

It seems GIGABYTE is being sucked into this lawsuit by Andrew Ostrowski, the plaintiff, as he purchased two of GIGABYTE's GeForce GTX 970 video cards. We will eventually see most of NVIDIA's other add-in-board (AIB) partners enter the class action lawsuit, as more and more people jump on board.

AMD has been spending considerable time on the software side of its hardware game with technologies like HSA, Mantle, and the still fresh Omega drivers.

But now it looks like it's time the company really spreads its wings when it comes to its Catalyst driver suite, with AMD hiring a CPU performance engineer to help them optimize their graphics drivers in CPU heavy gaming workloads. AMD has a few specific requirements for this engineer to join the team, where it has listed on his job description: "The responsibilities include analyzing CPU bound benchmarks and games to identify a variety of CPU bottlenecks in drivers, optimizing the drivers, and providing optimization actions to ISVs".

The job description continues: "The candidate will analyze new CPU architecture impact on driver performance and translate into actionable tasks. This position requires the candidate to collaborate with graphics and CPU architects at multi-sites across multiple graphics driver components".

Lenovo is withstanding a public relations nightmare after being caught installing the Superfish software on systems - much to the entertainment of rivals. It's just a great time to poke fun at the No. 1 PC and laptop manufacturer in the world, as the company has seen tremendous growth in the consumer and business markets in recent years.

Hewlett-Packard offered the following tweet:

HP also linked to a blog post in which it said it "does not pre-install software to enhance customer experience, but there is a key difference between most preinstalled software and Superfish."

Lenovo has released a new Superfish adware removal tool for customers, which will allow them to verify the software application and certificate are removed. The company recommends running the automatic removal tool executable so Superfish is completely removed - but also provided manual instructions to the public.

The tool is available here.

Just a few days ago, Lenovo confirmed it disabled the adware program after public complaints. "We apologize for causing these concerns among our users - we are learning from this experience and will use it to improve what we do and how we do it in the future," the company said in a public statement.

There were 1,500 global data breaches in 2014, with the number rising almost 50 percent year-over-year, according to the Gemalto Breach Level Index (BLI) report. Of the 1 billion total compromised records, almost 800 million of them belong to US companies - a frightening figure that cybersecurity experts believe will rise.

Companies remain unsure how to address these sometimes sophisticated cyberattacks, while consumers are frustrated that their personal information is seemingly up for grabs. Banks and credit card companies are becoming more proactive in identifying - and informing customers - of fraud, but it can still be a chaotic process.

"Not only are data breach numbers rising, but the breaches are becoming more severe," said Jason Hart, VP of cloud services, identity and data protection at Gemalto. "Identity theft could lead to the opening of new fraudulent credit accounts, creating false identities for criminal enterprises, or a host of other serious crimes. As data breaches become more personal, we're starting to see that the universe of risk exposure for the average person is expanding."

Millions of Anthem customers are at risk from the Anthem data breach, including tens of millions of children impacted from the data breach. Personal information ranging from names, date of brith, Social Security numbers and health care ID numbers were stolen, and some children could be at risk for decades, according to cybersecurity experts.

Information on children is tied to their parents, so attacks against adult account holders are expected to accelerate in the future as well. However, personal information of children is especially lucrative to criminals, as the data hasn't been tied to a credit file - so the government and credit reporting agencies aren't expecting fraud-related activities.

"Every terrible outcome that can occur as the result of an identity theft will happen to the children who were on that database," said Adam Levin, chairman and founder of IDentityTheft911, in a statement published by NBC News. "Criminals will use those stolen Social Security numbers to open accounts, get medical treatment, commit tax fraud, you name it."

Set to be stuffed full of high-tech components including GTX 970's in SLI and an Intel 3770K slotted into an ASUS Maximus V Gene - this work in progress build by Simplemodz sets out to be a little different from the rest.

This Fractal Design R2 Mini has been custom-painted and cut up, displaying the molecules proudly through a green and white color scheme.

There's also a few display windows cut on the reverse side in order to display the HDD and Corsair SSD alongside Bitspower liquid cooling products currently being installed to help keep the system at low temperatures.

Just in case you weren't sure if eSports and professional gaming is reaching the general public just yet, I want to remind you all about that one time this world-class CS:GO team got themselves their own chocolate bar.

Ninjas in Pajamas (NiP) previously played host to the best CS:GO team in the world - by far, still managing to place highly in events, they once won 10 tournaments in a row without losing a single series to any team. Later on they developed into a larger organization, seeing a foray into League of Legends and Dota 2 expand them further into the market.

On April 2, 2014, the news was broken on their website that NiP would be collaborating with Candy People in order to produce their own chocolate bar product. Originally released as an April Fools joke, it was re-released as fact the day after.

Designed to mimic the human hand, this robot device with tendons can rotate two Baoding balls with ease - simulating the same process completed by your body.

We're told by Gizmodo that this task isn't exactly easy for just anyone to complete, further adding to the complexity displayed within this exercise. Most robots are clunky and stiff in their movements, however through the use of human-like tendons, this simulation is able to make light work of this difficult and nimble task.

Created through an extensive process, first the researchers created a dummy hand, then tracked and measuring six separate hand poses in which were used to rotate the ball, finally designing this tendon system to control the fake hand.

"Miss On the Go lets you tone your pelvic muscles at all times. Fantasies come alive with our app!" is what the Kickstarter headline reads, instantly jumping out at you.

So what exactly does this product intend to do? The answer is "combine utility & pleasure with technology to rev up your day!" The 'Ladies, Miss On the Go' claims to tone your pelvic muscles while delivering a vibrant experience -all controlled by a mobile application. If you're still not sure exactly what's going on, you can dig deeper.

Setting Canadian's back $95 CAD and the rest of the world $105 CAD for the first batch, it will be priced at $169 CAD once it's available for retail.

The current smart wearable band market is led by Samsung, while the basic wearable band leader is Fitbit, according to the Canalys research group. The smart wearable band is considered any device able to run third-party applications, and the basic wearable band is unable to run apps.

"Samsung has launched six devices in just 14 months, on different platforms and still leads the smart band market," said Chris Jones, VP and principal analyst Canalys, in a statement published by Mobihealthnews. "But it has struggled to keep consumers engaged and must work hard to attract developers while it focuses on [operating system] Tizen for its wearables."

Samsung, Fitbit, and other manufacturers will need to keep their sights set on Xiaomi, a surging smartphone manufacturer, which has also shipped more than 1 million non-smartwatch wearable Mi Bands.

The National Security Agency (NSA) believes North Korea is behind the Sony Pictures attack because of software used to breach the company. SPE was targeted in November by a group calling itself the "Guardians of Peace," with emails, employee personal information, movies, and other data stolen - and posted online.

"We ultimately ended up generating the signatures to recognize the activity used against Sony," said NSA Director Admiral Michael Rogers, in a statement during a security conference in Canada. "From the time the malware left North Korea to the time it got to Sony's headquarters in California, it crossed four different commanders' lines or areas in the US construct."

Cyberattacks are causing confusion for government agents, unexpectedly spending more time investigating breaches against private sector companies - as attacks mount against critical infrastructure and government agencies.

The US Department of Homeland Security (DHS) recommended Lenovo customers remove the Superfish adware from their computers and laptops. The Chinese electronics company installed the software on machines beginning in 2010 until January 2015, and Lenovo is no longer installing it on consumer products.

Despite Lenovo saying there were no cybersecurity issues, the National Cyber Awareness System said customers are vulnerable to SSL spoofing attacks. "Systems that came with the software already installed will continue to be vulnerable until corrective actions have been taken," the DHS said in a statement published by Reuters.

"We should have known about this sooner," said Brion Tingler, Lenovo spokesman, in a statement to Reuters. "And if we could go back, we never would have installed this software on our machines. But we can't, so we are dealing with this head on."

US State Department officials confirmed the agency temporarily shut down its unclassified email system because of hacker activity three months ago - and it looks like security experts still haven't been able to boot the unwelcome guests from its network.

It remains unknown where the attacks originated, but specialists suggest it could be from Russia. No classified data has been accessed, but there is growing concern the hackers will be able to write false emails, delete emails and find a way to access classified networks.

"We have robust security to protect our systems and our information, and we deal successfully with thousands of attacks every day," said Marie Harf, State Department spokeswoman, in a statement to Bloomberg. "We take any possible cyber intrusion very seriously."