Tomáš Foltýn

The vulnerability of critical infrastructure, including energy grids, to cyberattacks has been a growing concern worldwide. Many nations have been scrambling to improve their defenses vis-à-vis threats faced by services that are critical to the continuity of our daily lives.

A record-high proportion of organizations worldwide (67%) said that they had been breached at some point, up from 56% in the report’s previous edition.

Smart TVs afford us the opportunity to use them for purposes that are more commonly associated with computers. In fact, that’s what these TVs have become – internet-connected ‘computers’, much like mobile phones. It would no doubt help if we thought of them as such and treated them accordingly.

If undetected by a user’s security solution or content- or ad-blocker, the script ran in the background unbeknown to the user until the webpage was closed. A number of the affected websites, including that of the ICO, were also offline for hours in the aftermath of the attack.

According to US authorities, the enterprise aimed at becoming the premier destination for the buying and selling of stolen payment card data and forged identification documents. It is believed that the losses that the Infraud Organization had intended to cause were north of $2.2 billion.

The investigation showed that the tool, which required little technical knowledge to deploy, had over 8,600 users in 78 countries. Victims are believed to be in the thousands.

Another template attempts to scare, rather than thrill, the recipients. Upon learning that “your IP address and other identifying information were used to commit multiple online crimes”, the mark is urged to contact the sender by phone immediately.

The price puts the data records at a significant premium when compared to other stolen datasets. While, in general, many adverts in the dark recesses of the internet are fake, children’s personally identifiable information (PII) has for long been viewed as a particularly valuable commodity.

In some countries, the financial allure of looking for security vulnerabilities is (even) more striking, according to the findings of a survey released recently by bug bounty platform provider HackerOne.