Microsoft is the latest major company to partner with bitcoin payment processor BitPay, allowing customers to purchase digital goods with the increasingly popular method of payment.In one of the largest sponsorships to date, the tech giant will now give customers the ability to purchase apps and games for Windows operating system, Windows phone and Xbox.The

David Cameron has announced the creation of a specialist unit that will target users who view child abuse images online.The National Crime Agency and GCHQ will head the task force, whose objective it is to expose those who use “dark web” Internet networks to exploit children.The dark web refers to thousands of websites that are oftentimes only accessible via

The Pirate Bay, a popular torrent website which shares copyrighted materials including movies and TV shows free of charge, temporarily went down Tuesday morning following a raid by Swedish police.The site remained offline for several hours after authorities seized hosting equipment in its server room based in Stockholm. The Pirate Bay has since appeared back

Researchers have discovered a stealthy form of malware that hackers may have used in a massive campaign of cyber-espionage discovered earlier this year.Kaspersky Lab recently published its findings on the ‘Penguin’ Turla, which is the first known Turla Trojan sample that targets the Linux operating system.The piece of malware is unique because of its stealth

The POODLE vulnerability (CVE-2014-3566 and CVE-2014-8730) that we saw in October affecting SSL v3, has been found to also be present in some implementations of TLS.Although vendors of tools that were vulnerable to the flaw quickly fixed their systems to rely on TLS vs SSL v3, a problem still exists due to TLS padding being a subset of SSLv3’s so that

A hacker group used distributed denial of service (DDoS) attacks against two giants in the gaming industry, causing widespread service outages among users.First, Lizard Squad, the self-professed “king of DDoS,” took down Xbox Live early last week. The ensuing outage lasted all of Monday night, with Microsoft support announcing that service had been restored

A group of security researchers have announced their findings after encountering more than 30 serious security issues in Google App Engine (GAE) for Java, including a bug that could allow for a complete “sandbox escape.”As part of Google’s Cloud Platform – a platform-as-a-service (PaaS) for developing and hosting web applications, GAE is widely used by a var

Germany’s highest court has blocked the extradition of a man accused of having stolen over $60 million in a number of massive global card heists to the United States.Ercan Findikoglu, 33, was first arrested at the Frankfurt Airport in December 2013. Over the course of the past year, a lower court decided to permit Findikoglu’s extradition. However, Germany’s

On Tuesday, a federal judge rejected Target Corporation’s attempt to dismiss multiple claims made by several banks in an effort to minimize their financial burdens caused by the retailer’s massive data breach in late 2013.Following the compromise of 40 million customers’ credit cards, a group of financial institutions filed lawsuits against Target, claiming

The recent hack against Sony Pictures Entertainment offers companies a lesson on the value of protecting against data loss.Earlier this week, the FBI issued a “flash” alert on the malware behind a breach that thus far has not only leaked five unreleased motion pictures onto the Internet but also may have resulted in the theft of sensitive employee data, incl

Retailers are urged to tread lightly after another piece of point-of-sale malware has been found and seen traded on the underground markets.The malicious software, known as LusyPOS, was submitted on Nov. 30 to VirusTotal – a free online virus, malware and URL scanner. The tool revealed the malware is now currently detected by 30 of its 55 AV engines.Security

The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) issued an alert to U.S. companies on Monday warning them of malicious software following the recent large-scale network disruption at Sony Pictures Entertainment.According to Reuters, the five-page confidential alert included details of how Sony’s attack was successfully carried out, as well as advice on how to respo

For more than a year, a group of cybercriminals has been targeting more than 100 companies in an attempt to steal information that could affect global financial markets.FireEye, a security company, recently published a report on the group, which it has dubbed “FIN4.”The report explains how FIN4 has been using sophisticated spearphishing techniques to trick e

The media has been active the last few days regarding the Sony breach and publishing claims that North Korea may be connected to the breach. The source of the attribution is from a  post on Re/code, stating an anonymous source provided information that Sony and security analysts were “actively exploring the theory” that North Korea was involved in the attack

Several banks in the U.S. and British Virgin Islands have discovered a security breach in their customers’ accounts.Scotiabank, Banco Popular, and FirstBank have not reported how many of their cardholders have been affected by the incident. However, estimates suggest that as many as 10,000 FirstBank customers’ card numbers have already been compromised.First