Imgur confirms breach, 1.7 million users affected

Popular image hosting website Imgur has announced on Friday that hackers stole usernames and passwords of 1.7 million of its users. The breach dates back to 2014, when Imgur still encrypted the stored passwords with the SHA-256 algorithm, which has since been found too weak to withstand brute forcing.

Industry reactions to Trump’s executive order on cybersecurity

On Thursday, President Donald Trump signed a long-awaited executive order on cybersecurity. Mainly, the order requires a number of cybersecurity reviews across the various agencies of the federal government, in order to determine what must be done to strengthen federal computer systems, as well as United States’ critical infrastructure. Here are some industry reactions to…

Connected home solutions adoption remains limited

Adoption of newer connected home solutions is still at the early adopter phase, according to Gartner. The survey, of nearly 10,000 online respondents in the U.S., the U.K. and Australia during the second half of 2016, found that only about 10 percent of households currently have connected home solutions. Connected home solutions consist of a…

US legislation revived to curb warrantless geolocation tracking

U.S. legislators have reintroduced bills that would place curbs on warrantless access by the government to electronically generated geolocation information of Americans, including on the use of cell-site simulators that can capture cellphone data. Bicameral legislation introduced Wednesday, called the Geolocation Privacy and Surveillance Act, aims to create clear rules for when law enforcement agencies…

Doubts abound over US action on cybersecurity

How should the U.S. respond to cyber attacks? That’s been a major question at this year’s RSA security conference, following Russia’s suspected attempt to influence last year’s election. Clearly, the government should be doing more on cybersecurity, said U.S. lawmakers and officials at the show, but they admit that politics and policy conflicts have hampered the…

The global decline of cybersecurity confidence

Tenable Network Security solicited insights from 700 security practitioners in nine countries and across seven industry verticals to calculate a global index score reflecting overall confidence that the world’s cyber defenses are meeting expectations. According to this year’s data, global cybersecurity confidence fell six points over 2016 to earn an overall score of 70 percent…

US election day faces specter of cyberattacks

Don’t be surprised if hackers make their presence felt on U.S. Election Day. Distributed denial-of-service attacks and high-profile leaks are among the tactics they might use if they try to influence Tuesday’s vote. Cybersecurity experts stress it would be incredibly difficult to hack the U.S. election. The system itself is distributed across the country over thousands…

U.S. Should Strike Back at Cyberattackers: Report

The US government and private sector should strike back against hackers to counter cyber-attacks aimed at stealing data and disrupting important computer networks, a policy report said Monday. A panel of experts assembled by the George Washington University Center for Cyber and Homeland Security said policies should be eased to allow “active defense” measures that…

Critical cybersecurity priorities for the next US president

While the US presidential campaign has occasionally focused on cyber security, the topic demands more urgent attention from the individual elected as the 45th President of the United States. ISACA recommends that cyber security be a significant component of the next president’s 100-day agenda, especially given its overlap with geopolitical and economic issues. Bolstering the…