Mindblown: a blog about philosophy.
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Yet more data leaks in UK public services
Confidential health service info exposed after theft. Despite a wealth of recent incidents of data loss from various areas of the UK’s public services, including data sent insecurely through the post, another rash of information leaks have shown that public servants still have not caught on to the fact that the personal and confidential data…
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41 months plus hefty fine for botherder
Cross-border operation brings adware crook to book. A Florida man has been sentenced to 41 months in prison and fined $65,000 (approx. £32,000) after implanting bot software on systems belonging to a global corporation and using them to install adware. When brought before US courts in March, the man, Robert Matthew Bentley of Panama City,…
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Microsoft releases latest Patch Tuesday fixes
7 vulnerabilities, 3 critical, addressed in June security update. Microsoft has issued its monthly ‘Patch Tuesday’ set of security fixes, with seven separate areas covered of which three are flagged as ‘critical’ and could expose vulnerable systems to remote code execution. The most serious areas affected are the DirectX multimedia system, the Windows Bluetooth stack,…
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Spyware gang sneaks millions from SA government
32 arrested but South Africa theft scam thought to be ongoing. An orchestrated series of spyware infiltrations has netted scammers over £12.8 million ($24.7 million) from the South African government, and thefts continue to take place despite the arrests of 32 suspects on 86 separate charges, according to local reports. Government officials told local news…
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File encryption blackmail scam returns
Kaspersky warns of new and nasty data-ransom trojan. Malware analysts at Kaspersky Lab have warned of the return of the ‘Gpcoder’ trojan, a nasty piece of ‘ransomware’ which encrypts victims’ files and demands money for the decryption key. Previous outbreaks of the scam, seen sporadically since the first appearance of such nasties in 2004, have…
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Microsoft increases pressure on Apple to fix Safari blended threat
‘Carpet bombing’ vulnerability more serious than Apple claims, MS warns. Microsoft , whose Internet Explorer has come under frequent criticism for security vulnerabilities, has issued a security advisory alerting users of arch-rival Apple ‘s Safari browser to a potential security threat. The issue is a blended threat which combines quirks in both the Apple browser…
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Spammers turn to DoubleClick for open redirect
Loophole in Google’s AdSense solved, but new flaw quickly uncovered. The good name of web giant Google continues to be a popular source of legitimacy among spammers, despite their efforts to shut down loopholes open to abuse. Last month, Google fixed an open redirect in its AdSense ad serving program. The open redirect had become…
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Spam and ID theft attacked from all sides
EU body issues warning, ICANN, Japan and Yahoo! take on spammers and phishers. Last week a series of major institutions took action highlighting the threat of spam and phishing, with a serious warning released by European Union web security body ENISA and more concrete actions taken by web management body ICANN, the Japanese government and…
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Flash exploit used to steal gaming passwords
Despite initial panic, threat no longer believed to a zero-day exploit. In the past few days, thousands of websites have indirectly been serving malicious Adobe Flash (.SWF) files. It is believed that legitimate sites have been hacked via SQL injection to include a script that causes browsers to redirect to sites hosting malicious .SWF files.…
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