Fake News Virus Warnings

Businesses are encouraging staff to be extra-vigilant after an increase in malicious content distributed through social media.

Social media websites are documenting a rise in falsified articles that use notable fake news stories to encourage people to click. Once they land on the website however, they can be susceptible to a whole range of malicious content like malware and viruses.

Two recent examples of these hoax-type stories include an article purporting the death of popular Mr. Bean actor Rowan Atkinson and an article reporting US President Trump had suffered a stroke. The news articles are spread through social media and encourage visitors to click through to their websites. Once there, visitors can inadvertently download malware, ransomware and other dangerous viruses.

Ransomware here to stay says Google

Businesses are being warned to protect themselves after tech giant Google released research claiming that cyber thieves have extorted a total of £19m from ransomware since 2015.

At a talk at the Black Hat security conference in Las Vegas, Elie Bursztein from Google revealed the results of research conducted with Chainalysis, the University of California and New York University which looked at bitcoin transactions over the period. It concluded that ransomware has become a “very profitable market and is here to stay”.

Interestingly, Google highlighted the fact that less than 40% of computer users currently back up their data – a move which could protect you in the event of a ransomware attack. It also predicted that more varied strains of ransomware are being developed to compete with the already popular Locky and Cerber strains, which according to the report generated £5.9m and £5.2m from victims respectively.

1bn Yahoo users’ information stolen in biggest breach ever

Internet giant Yahoo announced this week that it had discovered over 1bn of its users’ accounts had been compromised following a historical hack three years ago.

Yahoo has announced that they have discovered a historical hack from August 2013 which surpasses their own previously set record of 500 million accounts, set only months earlier in September. This is an act that they claimed had been conducted by an ‘unnamed’ government.

Weebly users’ data leaked: how can you protect your own passwords?

Weebly, a popular ‘drag and drop’ build your own website company, has become the latest target for hackers as the company announced a huge data leak of customer data.

Weebly, which is based in San Francisco, has begun notifying customers of a serious data breach which occurred earlier this year. According to LeakedSource, over 43,000,000 customers had their details stolen with usernames, email addresses, passwords and IP addresses all obtained.

Will your employees be tricked by email scams and viruses?

Despite an ever increasing number of online attacks being reported in the media and harrowing new cyber threats like Ransomware being created, many companies are still failing to take effective action to improve their online security. As well as failing to keep their anti-virus software and firewalls up to date, they also fail to educate their workforce on the latest threats - a key part of securing their operations.

Phishing scams are one of the most common forms of fraud committed online today. They involve tricking an email recipient into handing over sensitive data and trusted information. A hacker may send an email which looks as if it has been sent by a supplier, a company that you work with on a regular basis, a service provider or even another employee in your own business. So they aren’t always obvious. They hacker may then try and encourage the recipient to download a piece of software, visit an unsafe website or supply them directly with sensitive information that they can exploit.

Dell computers admit to security flaw

Computer giant Dell has acknowledged a “profound security flaw” in computers sold to customers that could leave them open to attacks from hackers, allowing them to harvest important personal data such as bank details.

Dell has released a statement which explains that a security certificate ‘eDellRoot’ pre-installed on some Dell laptops has “unintentionally introduced a security vulnerability”.

Beware of Facebook dislike button scam

Facebook users are being targeted by scammers’ just weeks after Facebook announced they are close to developing a long awaited ‘dislike’ button.

On the 15th September, Mark Zuckerberg, CEO of Facebook, announced that the social networking giant was “very close” to developing a ‘dislike’ button which will allow users to show empathy toward fellow users at times when a ‘like’ would not be suitable, such as when a loved one passes away.

Rombertik: Malware that destroys your computer when detected

It has been announced in the last few days that a new computer virus has been discovered which has been named Rombertik. The malware is designed to capture any plain text entered into a browser. Nicknamed by Cisco Systems, Rombertik’s primary purpose is a big worry but this new type of malware has an additional destructive threat.

Once setup on a Windows computer, Rombertik will check to see if it has been detected. The malware performs several regular internal checks to establish when it is under analysis. If undetected the malware will continuously steal data entered into any website browser.