malware

The US government has painted the image of a Chinese government that will use every trick in the book to spy both on its own citizens as well as other countries. The latter can come in the form of smartphones with spyware, which is one of the accusations it hurled at Huawei. It is almost ironic, then, that smartphones that the US government itself has funded to sell at an affordable price do exactly that and, unfortunately, there is no way to get rid of these malware.

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Wawa, a chain of convenience stores and gas stations in the US, has disclosed the discovery of malware on its payment processing servers. The company said its security team found the intrusion on December 10 and had it fully 'contained' by December 12, though it spent months harvesting payment card data until then. The malware may have been able to nab debit and credit card numbers as well as the cardholder's name and its expiration dates.

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Visa has issued a new security alert warning that scammers are targeting gas stations throughout North America in order to steal payment card information. Though gas station pumps have historically been a popular target for scammers seeking credit card information, this latest attack is different and there's little customers can do to protect themselves: the attackers are installing malware on the point-of-sale systems used by these gas stations.

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Once upon a time, you couldn't go living a normal Internet-connected life without an anti-virus software of some kind. While the threat and effects of malware haven't really gone down, the quality of said security software sadly has. Some of the giants in that industry have been gobbled up by even bigger giants while others have been accused of using their reach for their government or for their own profit. The latest to fall prey to that tactic is Avast, which also owns the free AVG software, and its questionable activities are apparently also at work even on web browsers.

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It's no longer really surprising to hear about yet another malware on the rise on the Android platform. Sometimes, their threat can be genuinely frightening, especially when they manage to get past Google's automated security checks. The Xhelper malware being reported is, fortunately a bit different in that, this time, infected apps are being traced to unofficial sources outside Google Play Store. Unfortunately, the evolution of the malware over the past months may prove it to be just as dangerous and damaging if left unchecked.

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System security is something that's always evolving, and that's especially true as malicious attacks become more sophisticated. In recent years, we've seen malware begin to target vulnerabilities in firmware, which is bad news since that can make malicious code harder to detect and remove. Microsoft today presented a solution to that problem, announcing that it's partnered with manufacturers to develop Secured-core PCs.

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An iPhone exploit that impacted several generations of iOS up to iOS 12, and which could potentially see malware installed on a device simply by visiting a hacked site, was quietly patched by Apple earlier this year, Google's Project Zero has confirmed. Fourteen vulnerabilities were spotted by the search company's security researchers, which if used maliciously could have been used for so-called watering hole attacks.

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Ransomware, a type of malware that locks down a victim's computer until they pay a ransom, has crippled computer systems at dental offices throughout the United States. According to multiple reports, hundreds of dental offices have been impacted by the ransomware attack, locking them out of computers that contain patient information, among other things.

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It isn't news that an Android app gets past Google's security system and stays on the Play Store to spread malware to unsuspecting users. Most of the time, however, those apps are blatant copies or ripoffs of popular apps and games. Rare but not unheard of is the case of a legit app carrying malicious code to catch users unawares. Unfortunately, that is exactly the case with the popular CamScanner app that, even more unfortunately, has been download more than 100 million times.

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Your digital camera may not steal souls every time you take someone's photos, but it may present an unexpected opportunity for hackers to load ransomware. New research suggests that increasingly consumer-friendly features like wireless connectivity are opening up DSLRs to potential hacks, that could leave your photos locked behind a ransom paywall or worse.

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It's not rare to hear about malware that gets past Google Play Store's defenses or even some that masquerade as legitimate apps. But when malware gets embedded inside those legit apps in an official manner things are bound to get messy. Unfortunately for Chinese software house CooTek, it is on the receiving end of a sanction that bans it not just from Google Play Store but even from Google's ad platforms.

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It's not uncommon to hear of some form of Android malware wreaking havoc on users' lives. Some of these even manage to get into Google Play Store, much to the platform maker's shame. This new strain of virus at least doesn't come from Android's canonical app store but its effects are no less destructive. In fact, it can manage to replace apps you did install from Google Play Store with infected duplicates, which is why its discoverers have dubbed it "Agent Smith".

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