The US Department of Homeland Security has issued a warning over a new type of malware out of North Korea. The DHS worked with the FBI to unearth and reveal the existence of a malware variant it says is known as "TYPEFRAME." Analysts with the two government agencies analyzed a total of 11 samples of the trojan, including infected Windows files.
It seems that our eagerness or carelessness in surrendering our data so easily to companies and services is finally coming back to haunt us. From massive customer database hacking to the recent Facebook scandal, the data we've sowed on company servers are now being reaped by others, often by criminals. This latest incident is both unfortunate and probably also inevitable. TeenSafe, an app that's supposed to keep kids safe by letting their parents monitor them, has now practically achieved the opposite by leaking parents' and children's data to almost anyone who has been able to grab hold of its database.
Remember WannaCry? If you don’t or never even heard about it, this latest public statement coming from the US will probably make sure you won’t. The ransomware that plagued Windows computers in the first half of the year has been blamed for not a few outages of computer systems all over the country, including some life-critical ones in hospitals. And now, the mastermind behind WannaCry has been finally unmasked. At least according to the US. And, unsurprisingly, it is pointing the finger at North Korea.
The Department of Homeland Security has announced a pilot project called "Securing Mobile Applications for First Responders" that looked into cybersecurity threats affecting public-safety apps. "The pilot sought to determine the degree to which the selected public-safety apps are vulnerable to cyberattack," the Department explained. During this pilot, the team found that 32 out of 33 popular first responder apps contained security and privacy issues.
Just when you thought the controversy has died down, the US manages to kick up the dust again. Nearly two months after it first enacted the contentious laptop ban aboard flights from the Middle East, the US Department of Homeland Security or DHS is now expected to expand the restriction to other countries. This time, however, the ban is European countries and could even affect flights coming from the UK, a staunch ally of the US.
Employees with the Department of Homeland Security are having trouble logging into some of the agency’s computer networks, according to sources that have surfaced, an issue that doesn’t have a readily apparent cause. The problem is said to have started around 5AM this morning, and can reportedly be bypassed in some cases by using a VPN. Sources state that login troubles have resulted due to an inability to validate personal identity verification cards for employees.
The White House has ordered an investigation into hacking done to disrupt the 2016 Presidential Elections here in the United States. This order from President Obama came not long after Trump's most recent Time Magazine interview in which he said he does not believe the U.S. intelligence community in their assessment that Russia attempted to affect the outcome of this year's Presidential Election. Word of an investigation directed by President Obama came through Lisa Monaco, the Obama's top counterterrorism adviser, earlier today.