Sensors and security holes are common companions on a range of connected toys and consumer devices available to consumers this holiday season.
Hacks & Hackers
Harvard Publishes Guide for Securing Political Campaigns
A new guide from Harvard University’s Kennedy School of Government is offering guidance to political campaigns that wish to keep hackers at bay.
Equifax says breach cost it $87m
Data broker Equifax said that the data breach that spilled information on some 140 million individuals has cost the company $87 million so far, with more costs likely in the future. The disclosure, made as part of the company’s quarterly filing with the US Securities and Exchange Commission, is the first public disclosure of the direct costs of the incident, which saw the company’s stock price plunge by more than 30% and wiped out billions of dollars in value to shareholders. Equifax said that it recorded $87.5 million in expense related to the cybersecurity incident in the third quarter of 2017. But its worth digging into that number to sort out real from anticipated costs. Around $55.5m of the $87.5m in breach related costs stems from Product costs. Professional fees added up to another $17.1m for Equifax and consumer support costs totaled $14.9m, the company said. Equifax also said it […]
Dark Markets do it better, surveying the Phishing underground and dissecting a Fancy Bear attack
In episode 69 of The Security Ledger podcast, we speak with Luca Allodi of The University of Eindhoven in The Netherlands about research on the functioning of dark markets. Also: DUO Security researched the trade in phishing toolkits – you’ll be surprised at what they learned. And we deconstruct a campaign against the citizen journalism website Bellingcat.com to understand how the Russian Group known as Fancy Bear works.
AP: Russia hackers had targets worldwide, beyond US election
The Associated Press is reporting on a trove of data accidentally leaked by the Russian-backed advanced persistent threat (APT) group known as Fancy Bear that suggests the group conducted a years-long campaign against targets in the US, Ukraine, Russia, Georgia and Syria.
