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As The Register reports, Yahoo is being sued after disclosing that hackers stole at least 500 million user records two years ago: Two Yahoo! users in San Diego, California, filed on Friday a class-action claim against the troubled web biz: Yahoo! is accused of failing to take due care of sensitive information under the Unfair Competition Act and the state's Consumer Legal Remedies Act, plus negligence for its poor security, and breaking the Federal Stored Communications Act. The stolen Yahoo! database includes people's names, email addresses, telephone numbers, dates of birth, hashed passwords and encrypted or unencrypted security questions and answers about their p…

Normally upgrading the operating system on your iPhone doesn't just bring you a few new funky features, you also get to benefit from some security enhancements and fixes too. However, with iOS 10 it seems things might have taken something of a backward step - in at least the case of the security of any local iTunes backups you might be making. That's according to Russian firm ElcomSoft which makes software to help users gain access to password-protected data: When working on an iOS 10 update for Elcomsoft Phone Breaker, we discovered an alternative password verification mechanism added to iOS 10 backups. We looked into it, and found out that the new mechanism ski…

Microsoft is revealing today that 400 million active machines are now running Windows 10. The latest update on usage comes just three months after the software maker revealed 350 million devices were running Windows 10 back in June. While Microsoft claims the adoption rate of Windows 10 is 115 percent faster than Windows 7, the company originally claimed it would have 1 billion devices running Windows 10 by 2018. Microsoft revised its timeline in July noting that "it will take longer than FY18 for us to reach our goal of 1 billion monthly active devices." Windows 10 usage growth slows as free upgrade expires Microsoft's latest stats show why it will take longer to h…

Yesterday, Yahoo confirmed a data breach affecting 500 million accounts, including logins, names, logins, birthdays, and security questions. The good news is that the passwords were encrypted with a strong hash algorithm, so they’re relatively protected for now. The bad news is, the breach happened in late 2014, so all that data has been kicking around for nearly two years. It’s too early to say exactly which users are in the dump, but the number is so large that if you are a Yahoo user — or even just a human being on Earth — the odds are pretty good that you’re in there somewhere. In case you are, here are a few quick things you can do to make sure nothing from the br…

Cybercriminals are spreading malware via torrent distribution networks, using an automated tool to disguise the downloads as trending audio, video and other digital content in an attempt to infect more unsuspecting victims. Researchers at InfoArmor say they have uncovered a malicious torrent distribution network that relies on a tool called RAUM to infect computers with malware. The network begins with a torrent parser, which collects information about some of the most popular torrent files circulating around the web. Computer criminals then apply their RAUM tool to create a series of malicious files. Some are fake copies of those popular torrent files that in re…

Can you imagine just how much online criminals would pay to be able to hijack, and even delete, any page on Facebook? Facebook pages are used by organizations, businesses and high profile figures like FC Barcelona (94 million fans), Vin Diesel (100 million fans), and Shakira (104 million fans) to promote their brands and are an essential part of their marketing. Hey, even Bitdefender has a thriving Facebook page, where we keep over one million fans (and counting!) up-to-date on the latest security threats and share advice on how to keep your computer safe online. For a celebrity or well-known brand to lose control of its Facebook page could be catastrophic, erodi…

Remember how, earlier this summer, a hacker claimed be selling, credentials for at least 200 million Yahoo accounts? Well, unfortunately for hundreds of millions of Yahoo users, and the company itself, the hack appears to be legitimate — and bad. Tech site Recode reports this morning that Yahoo is expected to confirm the massive data breach this week. Sources “close to the situation” did not confirm to Recode the exact extent of the breach, other than to say it is indeed hundreds of millions of user accounts. Those sources noted to Recode that the breach is indeed widespread and serious, and likely to result in government investigations and legal actions. Abou…

Unexpectedly received a USB stick in the post? Whatever you do … DON’T PLUG IT IN!! Police in the Australian state of Victoria are warning the public about cybercriminals’ latest tactic: randomly dropping unmarked USB sticks containing malware through letterboxes. The criminals are of course hoping that the unsuspecting recipients will plug the freebie USB drives into their computers. The state police’s online news warns: Upon inserting the USB drives into their computers victims have experienced fraudulent media streaming service offers, as well as other serious issues. Police are urging anyone with information about the people behind the scam to contact …

Since shortly after the expiration of the year long free upgrade offer from Windows 7/8.1 to Windows 10 users on those operating systems stopped getting the prompts to take advantage of the upgrade. Microsoft stated at that time an update would be released to remove all of the Get Windows 10 updates from the systems of Windows 7 and 8.1 users who stayed put and opted not to upgrade to Windows 10. Well today is that day when all that now unnecessary software will be removed from those users systems through an update released today by Microsoft under Knowledge Base Article KB3184143. That update, which is entitled Remove software related to the Windows 10 free upgr…

About two months ago, a Twitterer going by 0x2Taylor announced a sizeable data dump. More than 300,000 credit card records were uploaded to the file sharing service Mega; the data has since been removed from Mega, but not before it was widely downloaded by many interested parties. By some standards, 300,000 stolen records doesn’t sound very many these days. That’s a sad state of affairs, of course, caused by the daunting size of some high-profile attacks that have hit the news recently. This year alone, we’ve reported on breaches covering about three orders of magnitude, where each breach is in the exponential vicinity of ten times bigger than the one before i…

Safe Mode is a great feature for Windows computers in that it allows a user to resolve issues they might not ordinarily be able to address in Normal Mode. That's because Safe Mode runs only software that is critical to the proper functioning of the Windows operating system. But safety isn't equivalent to security. Windows Safe Mode prevents a lot of third-party software that isn't necessary to boot up the PC from running, including anti-virus solutions. Attackers can therefore abuse Safe Mode to launch their exploits, whereas they might be prevented from doing so in Normal Mode. To illustrate that point, researchers at CyberArk Labs have described a method by whi…

Imagine the damage that could be caused if a criminal was able to infect an Android smartphone remotely just by sending it a message, knowing nothing more than the device’s phone number or email address. It’s easy to imagine how governments, intelligence agencies and organised criminal gangs would be prepared to pay a large amount of money for exclusive details of just such a critical flaw, using it to steal and spy on unsuspecting targets. With that in mind, Google has announced a hacking contest offering a $200,000 first prize to vulnerability hunters around the world if they can find a way to remotely hack an Android device knowing nothing more than its phone num…