Tag Archive for: swipe

FirstEnergy hack is cyber-thieves’ latest effort to swipe personal info

/in


CLEVELAND, Ohio – Recycling paper, bottles and cans is good. Recycling computer passwords is not.



a car parked in front of a building: First Energy, Ohio Edison, West Market St., in Akron, Ohio (Chuck Crow/The Plain Dealer). ORG XMIT: CLE1804031708204034

© Chuck Crow/The Plain Dealer
First Energy, Ohio Edison, West Market St., in Akron, Ohio (Chuck Crow/The Plain Dealer). ORG XMIT: CLE1804031708204034

The fact that so many people use identical usernames and passwords for multiple websites has led to an explosion of hacking incidents over the past decade, in which criminals take username and password combinations collected from one website and test them other websites to see if they unlock anything the hackers can use for financial gain.

Akron-based FirstEnergy is the latest company to report suspicious activity involving “numerous attempts to log into customer accounts” using credentials obtained from a source outside of the company. The company announced Sunday that it disabled six million customers’ online accounts and told them to reset their passwords. Other big companies that have reported mass hackings in recent years include Capital One bank, Target, LinkedIn, and Myspace.



a car parked in front of a building: First Energy, Ohio Edison, West Market St., in Akron, Ohio on April 3, 2018. (Chuck Crow/The Plain Dealer). ORG XMIT: CLE1804031708204034

© Chuck Crow/The Plain Dealer
First Energy, Ohio Edison, West Market St., in Akron, Ohio on April 3, 2018. (Chuck Crow/The Plain Dealer). ORG XMIT: CLE1804031708204034

Brian E. Ray, who heads the Center for Cybersecurity and Privacy Protection at Cleveland Marshall College of Law says large hacks of customer data from the internet have escalated in the past four or five years, with ransomware as the latest wrinkle in the evolving cat-and-mouse game of fighting cybercrime.

Loading...

Load Error

“The good guys are constantly trying to keep up with the methods and the bad guys are constantly innovating and shifting their techniques,” says Ray. “The more connected we are, the more we put online, the bigger the surface area becomes and the harder it is to protect it all.”

FirstEnergy says the vast majority of the attempts to log into customer accounts were unsuccessful. Company spokesperson Jennifer Young says that easily abused customer information like complete bank account or credit card numbers aren’t available through the company’s online account access.

“There was and is no threat or impact to electric service…

Source…

Amazon takes a swipe at PayPal’s $4 billion acquisition

/in
Exterior of large building during daytime.

Enlarge / The Amazon logo at the entrance of a logistics center in France, July 2019. (credit: Denis Charlet | AFP | Getty )

Days before Christmas, at the height of the last-minute holiday shopping rush, an ominous message appeared on Amazon.com. It warned shoppers who used a popular browser extension called Honey that the service, which promises to track prices and discount codes, was “a security risk.”

“Honey tracks your private shopping behavior, collects data like your order history and items saved, and can read or change any of your data on any website you visit,” the message read. “To keep your data private and secure, uninstall this extension immediately.” It was followed by a hyperlink where users could learn how to do so. Screenshots of the warning were posted to forums and social media by Honey users, like Ryan Hutchins, an editor at Politico.

[/tweet id]

Read 12 remaining paragraphs | Comments

Biz & IT – Ars Technica

Let’s Encrypt accuses Comodo of trying to swipe its brand

/in

Let’s Encrypt, a free certificate authority launched by the Internet Security Research Group in November 2014 and backed by some of the biggest names in the industry, today revealed that rival CA Comodo is attempting to “improperly” trademark the Let’s Encrypt brand.

And it’s difficult to see how that isn’t the case.

From a blog post by ISRG executive director Josh Aas:

Some months ago, it came to our attention that Comodo Group, Inc., is attempting to register at least three trademarks for the term “Let’s Encrypt,” for a variety of CA-related services. These trademark applications were filed long after the Internet Security Research Group (ISRG) started using the name Let’s Encrypt publicly in November of 2014, and despite the fact Comodo’s “intent to use” trademark filings acknowledge that it has never used “Let’s Encrypt” as a brand.

To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Network World Paul McNamara

Cyber extortionists swipe cosmetic surgery records, try to blackmail Harley Medical Group

/in

Cyber crooks may have broken into Harley Medical Group, a cosmetic surgery firm with 21 clinics in the UK, to filch the intimate details of about 480,000 potential patients and then try to extort money from the company.
Naked Security – Sophos