Yearly Archives: 2014

FBI: North Korea to Blame for Sony Hack

December 19, 2014

The FBI today said it has determined that the North Korean government is responsible for the devastating recent hack attack against Sony Pictures Entertainment. Here’s a brief look the FBI’s statement, what experts are learning about North Korea’s cyberattack capabilities, and what this incident means for other corporations going forward.

Banks: Park-n-Fly Online Card Breach

December 16, 2014

Multiple financial institutions say they are seeing a pattern of fraud that indicates an online credit card breach has hit Park-n-Fly, an Atlanta-based offsite airport parking service that allows customers to reserve spots in advance of travel via an Internet-based reservation system. The security incident, if confirmed, would be the latest in a string of card breaches involving compromised payment systems at parking services nationwide.

In Damage Control, Sony Targets Reporters

December 15, 2014

Over the weekend I received a nice holiday letter from lawyers representing Sony Pictures Entertainment, demanding that I cease publishing detailed stories about the company’s recent hacking and delete any company data collected in the process of reporting on the breach. While I have not been the most prolific writer about this incident to date, rest assured such threats will not deter this reporter from covering important news and facts related to the breach.

SpamHaus, CloudFlare Attacker Pleads Guilty

December 13, 2014

A 17-year-old male from London, England pleaded guilty this week to carrying out a massive denial-of-service attack last year against anti-spam outfit SpamHaus and content delivery network CloudFlare, KrebsOnSecurity has learned.

‘Security by Antiquity’ Bricks Payment Terminals

December 12, 2014

Last week, several thousand credit card payment terminals at various retailers across the country suddenly stopped working, their LCD displays showing a blank screens instead of numbers and letters. Puzzled merchants began to worry that this was perhaps part of some sophisticated hacker attack on their cash registers. It turns out that the incident was indeed security-related, but for once it had nothing to do with cyber thieves.

‘Poodle’ Bug Returns, Bites Big Bank Sites

December 11, 2014

Many of the nation’s top banks, investment firms and credit providers are vulnerable to a newly-discovered twist on a known security flaw that exposes their Web site traffic to eavesdropping. The discovery has prompted renewed warnings from the U.S. Department of Homeland Security advising vulnerable Web site owners to address the flaw as quickly as possible.

Microsoft, Adobe Push Critical Security Fixes

December 9, 2014

If you use Microsoft or Adobe software products, chances are that software is now dangerously out of date. Microsoft today released seven update bundles to fix two dozen security vulnerabilities in Windows and supported software. Adobe pushed patches to correct critical flaws in Acrobat, Reader, and Flash Player, including a bug in Flash that already is being exploited.