The Register

Of course, it helps if you don't live in a potential disaster zone

US insurance companies are reportedly relying on aerial photos from drones to deny claims.…

SaaS slip up leads to scumbags seeking sinecure

Home Depot has confirmed that a third-party company accidentally exposed some of its employees' personal details after a criminal copy-pasted the data online.…

IT systems pulled offline for chance to paws and reflect

First, they came for hospitals, then it was charities and cancer centers. Now, cyber scumbags are coming for the puppies and kittens.…

Theories abound over who's truly responsible

Change Healthcare is allegedly being extorted by a second ransomware gang, mere weeks after recovering from an ALPHV attack.…

PLUS: Another local government hobbled by ransomware; Huge rise in infostealing malware; and critical vulns

In Brief  Protecting your privacy online is hard. So hard, in fact, that even a top Israeli spy who managed to stay incognito for 20 years has found himself exposed after one basic error.…

What happened, how it was found, and what your vultures have made of it all

Kettle  It's been about a week since the shock discovery of a hidden and truly sophisticated backdoor in the xz software library that ordinarily is used by countless systems.…

In what other sphere does a bad supplier not feel pain for its foulups?

Analysis  You might think that when a government supplier fails in one of its key duties it would find itself shunned or at least feel financial pain.…

Attacks could be completed in seconds, compromising customer safety

A self-service check-in terminal used in a German Ibis budget hotel was found leaking hotel room keycodes, and the researcher behind the discovery claims the issue could potentially affect hotels around Europe.…

Just disabling Siri requires visits to five submenus

A study has concluded that Apple's privacy practices aren't particularly effective, because default apps on the iPhone and Mac have limited privacy settings and confusing configuration options.…

Japan's Hoya also makes components for chips, displays, and hard disks, and has spent four days groping for a fix

If ever there was an incident that brings the need for good infosec into sharp focus, this is the one: Japan's Hoya – a maker of eyeglass and contact lenses, plus kit used to make semiconductor manufacturing, flat panel displays, and hard disk drives – has halted some production and sales activity after experiencing an attack on its IT systems.…

State Dept keeps schtum 'for security reasons'

Uncle Sam is investigating claims that some miscreant stole and leaked classified information from the Pentagon and other national security agencies.…

CEO addresses whirlwind start to 2024 and how it plans to prevent a repeat

Ivanti has committed to adopting a secure-by-design approach to security as it gears up for an organizational overhaul in response to the multiple vulnerabilities in Connect Secure exploited earlier this year.…

INC Ransom emerges as a growing threat as some ex-LockBit/ALPHV affiliates get new gigs

Leicester City Council is finally admitting its "cyber incident" was carried out by a ransomware gang and that data was stolen, hours after the criminals forced its hand.…

Watch this webinar for a hair raising journey into the darkest depths of GenAI enabled cyber crime

Sponsored Post  Artificial intelligence (AI) offers enormous commercial potential but also substantial risks to data security if it is harnessed by cyber criminals intent on stealing or corrupting sensitive information for their own gain.…

Is there no cure for this cyber-plague?

Nearly one million individuals' personal details, financial account information, and medical records may have been stolen from City of Hope systems in the United States.…

As WhatsApp, Facebook Messenger, and other Meta bits fall offline today

Luxury resort chain Omni Hotels & Resorts has had its computer systems knocked offline since Friday in what it has described as a "disruption," though sounds a lot like the MGM Resorts ransomware infection over the summer.…

A man with a list of accolades long enough for several lifetimes, friends remember his brilliance

Obituary  Venerable computer scientist and information security expert Ross Anderson has died at the age of 67.…

Device Bound Session Credentials said to render cookie theft useless

Google reckons that cookie theft is a problem for users, and is seeking to address it with a mechanism to tie authentication data to a specific device, rendering any stolen cookies useless.…

Web devs advised to do their part to limit UI redress attacks

Web browsers still struggle to prevent clickjacking, an attack technique first noted in 2008 that repurposes web page interface elements to deceive visitors.…

CISA calls for 'fundamental, security-focused reforms' to happen ASAP, delaying work on other software

A review of the June 2023 attack on Microsoft's Exchange Online hosted email service – which saw accounts used by senior US officials compromised by a China-linked group called "Storm-0558" – has found that the incident would have been preventable save for Microsoft's lax infosec culture and sub-par cloud security precautions.…