A devastating cyber-attack that cost the maker of Durex and Dettol an estimated £100million crippled the company in just 45 minutes and wiped out swathes of its global computer network, its boss has revealed.

Reckitt Benckiser chief executive Rakesh Kapoor laid bare how the Petya ransomware virus rendered 15,000 laptops, 2,000 servers and 500 computer systems unusable in three-quarters of an hour – and the company has still not fully recovered.

An unusual piece of malware that can remotely take control of webcams, screen, mouse, keyboards, and install additional malicious software has been infecting hundreds of Mac computers for more than five years—and it was detected just a few months back.

Dubbed FruitFly, the Mac malware was initially detected earlier this year by Malwarebytes researcher Thomas Reed, and Apple quickly released security patches to address the dangerous malware.

Now months later, Patrick Wardle, an ex-NSA hacker and now chief security researcher at security firm Synack, discovered around 400 Mac computers infected with the newer strain of the FruitFly malware (FruitFly 2) in the wild.

Wardle believes the number of infected Macs with FruitFly 2 would likely be much higher, as he only had access to some servers used to control FruitFly.

Over the past couple of years, Roombas haven’t just been picking up dust and chauffeuring cats around, they’ve also been mapping the layout of your home. Now, Colin Angle, the chief executive of Roomba maker iRobot, has said he wants to sell the data from these maps in order to improve the future of smart home technology.

An unknown hacker has just stolen nearly $8.4 Million worth of Ethereum – one of the most popular and increasingly valuable cryptocurrencies – in yet another Ethereum hack that hit Veritaseum's Initial Coin Offering (ICO).

This incident marks as the fourth Ethereum hack this month and second cyber attack on an ICO, following a theft of $7 Million worth of Ether tokens during the hack of Israeli startup CoinDash's initial coin offering last week.

A few days ago, a hacker also stole nearly $32 Million worth of Ethereum from wallet accounts by exploiting a critical vulnerability in Parity's Ethereum Wallet software, which followed a $1 Million worth of Ether and Bitcoins heist in crypto currency exchange Bithumb earlier this month.

The era of artificial intelligence and technological deceit is upon us.

Pretty soon, computer wizardry and artificial intelligence will allow video footage to be created that is practically indiscernible from the real deal. Add to this holograph technology, and soon, a person could appear to be speaking, live, in front of you, and you’d never even know it was all fake.

Let's look at three technologies that bring the possibility of deception to dizzying heights. If you think "fake news" and media manipulation is bad now, you ain't seen nothin' yet.

Chinese authorities in the province of Xinjiang are forcing locals of the Uyghur Muslim minority to install an app on their phones that will allow the government to scan their device for "terrorist propaganda," local media reports. In reality, the app creates MD5 hashes for the user's files and matches them against a database of known terrorist content.

In this video, Vin Armani explains why you’ve been tricked into supporting net neutrality. Some big corporations don’t want a free market. They want a protected market with barriers. Lawmakers seem hungry to regulate the Internet. It’s a dangerous combination that infects most industries. Don’t let it happen to the Internet.

Marketing solution provider Three Square Market (32M) has announced that it had partnered with Swedish biohacking firm BioHax International for offering implanted microchips to all their employees on 1st August, according to the company's website.

Although the programme is optional, the company wants at least more than 50 of its employees to undergo the Biohacking procedure.

Like previous bio hacks, the chips will be implanted underneath the skin between the thumb and forefinger, and will also use near-field communications (NFC) — the same technology that makes contactless credit cards and mobile payments possible — along with radio-frequency identification (RFID).

According to the company, the implanted chips would allow its employees to log into their office computers, pay for food and drink from office vending machines, open doors and use the copy machine, among other purposes.

Some $32 million worth of ether cryptocurrency has been stolen by hackers. Ether, a digital currency, resides on the ethereum network and is now a rival to Bitcoin. The monumental theft was carried out due to a bug on a wallet software program.

The Israeli company has become a world leader in cyber infiltration and has been used against activists and dissidents the world over.

Last week, high street lender TSB announced that it was becoming the first bank in Europe to introduce iris recognition on its mobile banking app, allowing you to transfer money, check your balance and make payments, quite literally, in the blink of an eye.

26 security fixes for 55 packages. You know what to do!

Falkvinge writes Sweden's government has been trying to handle the huge leak of sensitive data away from the public eye.

The story goes back to 2015, when Sweden's transport agency awarded IBM a contract to manage its databases and networks.

...

The leak seems to have happened over email after the transport agency e-mailed the entire database in clear text messages to marketers that subscribe to it – and when the error was discovered, the agency merely sent a new list and told subscribers to delete the old list themselves.

Another day, Another data breach!

This time sensitive and personal data of millions of transporters in Sweden, along with the nation's military secrets, have been exposed, putting every individual's as well as national security at risk.

Who exposed the sensitive data? The Swedish government itself.

Swedish media is reporting of a massive data breach in the Swedish Transport Agency (Transportstyrelsen) after the agency mishandled an outsourcing deal with IBM, which led to the leak of the private data about every vehicle in the country, including those used by both police and military.

The data breach exposed the names, photos and home addresses of millions of Swedish citizen, including fighter pilots of Swedish air force, members of the military's most secretive units, police suspects, people under the witness relocation programme, the weight capacity of all roads and bridges, and much more.

Bad news for Android users — Source code of for one of the oldest mobile and popular Android ransomware families has been leaked online, making it available for cyber criminals who can use it to develop more customised and advanced variants of Android ransomware.

Remember when all seventeen intelligence agencies agreed that Russia interfered with our elections?

Turns out it was only four.

Do you know how you get four agencies to agree on something of this nature? It’s easy. One publishes an opinion and the other three loyal agencies assume it is credible, so they support it. Do they all do independent investigations?

I kinda doubt it.

As developments in artificial intelligence and robotics advance, there is going to be a severe and swift disruption of many working classes. Large swaths of laborers are going to lose their jobs, leading to unprecedented levels of unemployment.

To account for this problem, having access to basic needs should become a right, not a privilege for the non-automated classes. It should be the responsibility of the corporations that have taken away working-class jobs to grant families this right—and the best solution would be in the form of a universal basic income.

The following video explains, amongst other things, why a universal basic income is doomed to fail:

In a little publicized section of Trump’s Immigration Executive Order, the president ordered Department of Homeland Security (DHS) to “expedite the completion and implementation of a biometric entry exit tracking system.” The purpose of the tracking system is to confirm who is entering and exiting the country to, for example, identify people who have overstayed their visas. Congress has already provided up to a billion dollars over the next ten years to implement the program.

Newcastle University has put out an alert over a website calling itself “Newcastle International University” which has copied its branding, colours and fonts as well as animation, blogs and photos as well as details of dozens of courses.

The site appears to target unsuspecting students to hand over online their course fees as one section allows people to apply and pay for courses with requests for their personal information and passport and bank details.

The warning from the real Newcastle University said: "We have been made aware of an unofficial website which is fraudulently using the Newcastle University brand and accepting credit card payments to apply for courses.

"The website 'newcastle international university' is in no way associated with the University and we are advising anyone who finds the website not to submit any personal details. All students should use our official website http://www.ncl.ac.uk/."

"It's the next thing that's inevitably going to happen, and we want to be a part of it," Three Square Market Chief Executive Officer Todd Westby said. The company designs software for break room markets that are commonly found in office complexes.

Hackers who breached a Kansas Department of Commerce data system in March had access to more than 5.5 million Social Security numbers in 10 states, along with another 805,000 accounts that didn't include the Social Security numbers, according to records obtained from the agency.

The department will be required to pay for credit monitoring for most of the victims of the hacking, according to records obtained through an open records request by the Kansas News Service.

Besides Kansas, the other states affected by the hack are Arkansas, Arizona, Delaware, Idaho, Maine, Oklahoma, Vermont, Alabama and Illinois.

By default, a Windows 10 update will use your bandwidth to share files on your PC with other PCs. This walk-through shows how to disable that feature--or tone it down a bit.

THE Spanish government has increased the pressure on Catalonia and its bid for independence by threatening to cut the funding it gives to the Spanish region.

A spokesman for Mariano Rajoy’s administration in Madrid, Méndez de Vigo, said that the government would slash funds from the FLA - the Liquidity Fund for the Autonomous Communities - in the event of any “disobedience” from the Catalan separatists.

Twitter has come under fire after it emerged that paedophiles are using its Periscope live streaming app to groom children as young as nine.

They are bombarding the youngsters with sexual questions and requests, asking them to lift up their shirts and take off their clothes.

The app – which has more than 10million users – allows people to film themselves on their mobile phones and broadcast to strangers over the internet.

People watching then can send the ‘broadcasters’ messages, which flash up on the screen for everyone to see.

It is supposed to be restricted to children over the age of 13, but users can simply state they are older.

Children as young as nine are broadcasting to strangers from their bedrooms and even from school, the BBC reported.

While many American parents think ‘smart toys’ are a great idea, the FBI has issued an unprecedented warning that internet-enabled items may pose a privacy and safety risk for children by harvesting personal information.

YouTube creators ZombieGoBoom are leading a class-action lawsuit against YouTube, claiming the streaming service intentionally demonetized and removed creator content in order to appease advertisers.

By Catherine J. Frompovich

Do you brush your teeth with a ‘smart’ toothbrush?

Did you know there are ‘smart’ toothbrushes?

According to the package information that comes with the Oral-B Triaction/Precision 5000/5500, it contains an “interactive wireless display,” i.e., a radio transmitter that puts out electromagnetic frequencies. Holy moly—one more smart device to track us, even while brushing our teeth...

The popular My Friend Cayla doll is accused of recording kids’ words

Your call records, showing who you’ve called and texted, when, and how long the calls lasted. Your IP logs, showing where you access websites from—whether it’s home, work, a friend’s house, or on the go via your mobile phone. Your banking and credit card information. The email address you used to sign up for online services. Records showing every time you’ve logged on to your favorite social networking site, and how long those sessions lasted.

iPhone owners should update their smartphone as soon as possible.

Apple has rolled-out a new operating system update – iOS 10.3.3 – that patches a number of vulnerabilities in the software, including some that could enable remote code execution on the device.

This would allow a hacker to take control of your iPhone, thanks to a bug in the Broadcom Wi-Fi chip.

Hackers would have complete control over the device, allowing them to access your data and features remotely.

WhatsApp users should be on the look-out for a dangerous new form of malware that disguises itself as the successful messenger.

Dubbed GhostCtrl, the malware disguises itself as a number of popular apps, including WhatsApp and Pokemon Go to trick users into downloading the virus.

As soon as the fraudulent app is downloaded, a malicious software package is installed to takeover the device.

This creates a backdoor into the device, enabling cybercriminals to siphon data, including call logs, text messages, contact details, phone numbers, GPS location data and web browser history.

GhostCtrl is also capable of gathering information about core details of the device, like software version, Wi-Fi information, battery level, and more.

Worse still, GhostCtrl can be used to secretly film and record the victim using the smartphone’s built-in camera and microphone.

On Wednesday, Smart contract coding company Parity issued a security alert, warning of a critical vulnerability in Parity's Ethereum Wallet software, which is described as "the fastest and most secure way of interacting with the Ethereum network."

Exploiting the vulnerability allowed attackers to compromise at least three accounts and steal nearly 153,000 units of Ether worth just almost US$32 million at the current price.

A security researcher has discovered a code injection vulnerability in the thumbnail handler component of GNOME Files file manager that could allow hackers to execute malicious code on targeted Linux machines.

Dubbed Bad Taste, the vulnerability (CVE-2017-11421) was discovered by German researcher Nils Dagsson Moskopp, who also released proof-of-concept code on his blog to demonstrate the vulnerability.

The code injection vulnerability resides in "gnome-exe-thumbnailer" — a tool to generate thumbnails from Windows executable files (.exe/.msi/.dll/.lnk) for GNOME, which requires users to have Wine application installed on their systems to open it.

It does seem that our dystopian future is going to be (is) a mix of both 1984 and A Brave New World.

Matt Hillman, a principal security researcher at MWR InfoSecurity, said the custom ransomware associated with these attacks is typically getting distributed through phishing emails rather than software exploits. The attacks are targeted against banking and infrastructure firms worldwide.

"This ransomware is targeted at big organisations because the amount they are prepared to pay is greater," Hillman explained. "Hackers are timing their attack to add pressure," for example by launching assaults just before sales quarters close or a major announcement or industry event.

The attacks are more geared at making money than causing disruption, unlike the recent NotPetya outbreak.

Security researchers investigating internet-connected video cameras have uncovered a bug that could conceivably leave millions of devices open to easy pwnage.

The team from embedded security specialists Senrio was looking into the code running an M3004-V network camera from Axis Communication. They found a serious hole that would allow an attacker to either shut down the camera or hijack the feed.

Cases such as this are very common in a world infected with Internet of Sh!t devices.

A CIA proposal to destroy files deemed no longer of historical importance has been authorized. Critics are questioning how honest the agency will be when it comes to the purging of potentially serious files.

The National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) has authorized the move to dump CIA documents that include classified information that was leaked, according to the Daily Beast.

AN APPROACH TO MACHINE LEARNING INSPIRED BY THE HUMAN BRAIN IS ABOUT TO REVOLUTIONIZE STREET SEARCH. EVEN IF THE COP WHO PULLS YOU OVER DOESN’T RECOGNIZE YOU, THE BODY CAMERA ON HIS CHEST EVENTUALLY JUST MIGHT.

While many American parents think ‘smart toys’ are a great idea, the FBI has issued an unprecedented warning that internet-enabled items may pose a privacy and safety risk for children by harvesting personal information.

More than $7m was stolen by hackers on Monday from folks investing in a cryptocurrency startup.

Israel-based CoinDash – which bills itself as an "an operating system" for "interacting, handling and trading crypto assets" – launched what's called an initial coin offering. This is a process in which people buy virtual tokens from a fledgling biz, such as CoinDash. These tokens are vital to whatever service the company is offering. As the startup grows, these tokens are supposed to increase in value. Buying the tokens early is akin to buying shares during a normal business's IPO. It's a way of crowdfunding investment.

Well, on Monday, $7m of that investment, all in the Ethereum cyber-currency, went not to CoinDash in exchange of tokens, but to hackers, it's claimed. Security and financial technology experts voiced concerns that this latest online heist only serves to undermine confidence in digital currency trading platforms.

The latest two-wheel transporter toy from Segway was disturbingly easy to hack, with miscreants requiring just seconds to take control of a vehicle, we're told.

Researchers at hacking house IOActive probed the Chinese Segway miniPro, and said they found the wireless link between the machine and its accompanying mobile app was insecure – allowing anyone in radio range to potentially reconfigure and commandeer passing rides.

Remember SambaCry?

Almost two months ago, we reported about a 7-year-old critical remote code execution vulnerability in Samba networking software, allowing a hacker to remotely take full control of a vulnerable Linux and Unix machines.

We dubbed the vulnerability as SambaCry, because of its similarities to the Windows SMB vulnerability exploited by the WannaCry ransomware that wreaked havoc across the world over two months ago.

Despite being patched in late May, the vulnerability is currently being leveraged by a new piece of malware to target the Internet of Things (IoT) devices, particularly Network Attached Storage (NAS) appliances, researchers at Trend Micro warned.

While many American parents think ‘smart toys’ are a great idea, the FBI has issued an unprecedented warning that internet-enabled items may pose a privacy and safety risk for children by harvesting personal information.

Smart toys and entertainment devices for children typically contain sensors, microphones, cameras, data storage chips and multimedia capabilities such as speech recognition or global positioning (GPS).

Device-maker Motorola announced Monday that would partner with artificial intelligence software startup Neurala to build “real-time learning for a person of interest search” on Motorola products such as the Si500 body camera for police, the AI firm announced in a press release today.

Previously we reported on a robot burger flipper replacing line cooks in California. Now Walmart is replacing registers with a monolithic tower in Tulsa. Zach Ferguson for Western Journalism reports, Small-time grocery store-turned-mega-chain Walmart is rolling out massive self-serving kiosks that obtain customers’ online orders.

Large shipping vessels and aircraft are often equipped with VSAT systems, allowing crewmembers to send and receive messages and access the Internet during voyages. Turns out, some of these VSAT systems are profoundly insecure, and could allow an attacker to gain access, and disrupt communications.

Security researcher x0rz discovered that many VSAT systems can be reached from the public Internet. Not only does this mean they can be tracked through services like Shodan, but some are configured in a way that could see a remote attacker gain access using default credentials.

Duuuuuude, default creds everywhere. I'm connected to a motherfucking ship as admin right now. Hacking ships is easy ???? pic.twitter.com/UmLPIveTah

— x0rz (@x0rz) July 18, 2017

If someone finds one of your old phone numbers, they can easily access your account using a simple trick, a security expert has found.

A flaw in Facebook's account recovery system, which lets users log in using their phone number if they lose their password, leaves accounts exposed to hackers.

If a hacker buys an old number that is still linked to a Facebook account, they can easily gain access the profile through the account recovery system.

The United Arab Emirates was behind an effort to hack Qatari government news and social media websites, sparking a diplomatic dispute among Arab states, US intelligence officials say.

Cashless transactions are fast becoming a thing of the past. People are reluctant to use cashless facilities, which has made the government’s much-hyped campaign a failed episode.

By Aaron Kesel

After nearly a year of unsubstantiated claims that Russia hacked the U.S. election, the U.S. government is now poised to create an independent Military Cyber Command eventually splintered off from the NSA, Reuters reported.

The agency was created in 2009 under then president Barack Obama, but it seeks to stem out and become separate from the NSA while still keeping some employees of the spying agency.

Cryptocurrency investors have suffered heavy losses following a dramatic drop in the price of Bitcoin and Ethereum in recent days.

Bitcoin fell to around $1,863 and Ethereum to around $133 over the weekend – 38 percent and 67 percent off their all-time high respectively. Bitcoin, in particular, suffered heavy losses since hitting a high of $3,018 on June 12.

By Monday, Bitcoin had recovered slightly to $2,129 while Ethereum also rose to $176.

For millions of MySpace users, it has likely been years since they last logged into their account.

The once-popular social network, which launched in 2003, was quickly replaced by the likes of Facebook, Twitter and Instagram and has since faded into obscurity.

But those who still have a MySpace account are being urged to delete their account after a security expert found that old profiles are easy to hack into by criminals using basic personal details.

By Nicholas West

Given the steady roll-out of biometrics in banking, personal computing, and travel as of late, it seemed to be just a matter of time before police were equipped the latest biometric ID technology...

A Republican donor and operative from Chicago’s North Shore who said he had tried to obtain Hillary Clinton’s missing emails from Russian hackers killed himself in a Minnesota hotel room days after talking to The Wall Street Journal about his efforts, public records show.

HTC, which needs all the love it can get these days, has enraged its customers by bunging adverts into the onscreen keyboard on its phones.

Outrage over the tacky money-grab exploded online at the weekend after folks spotted banner advertisements appearing in the TouchPal keyboard that came with the HTC 10. These are annoying at the best of times, but when you're trying to type, screen acreage is very limited and adverts are a serious disadvantage to easy use.

Cisco has patched its Chrome and Firefox WebEx plugins to kill a bug that allows evil webpages to execute commands on computers.

A malicious page, when visited by a vulnerable Windows machine, can exploit the security flaw (CVE-2017-6753) to run arbitrary commands and code with the same privileges as the browser. In other words, the page can abuse the installed plugins to hijack the PC.

The hole is present in the Chrome and Firefox plugins for Cisco WebEx Meetings Server and Cisco WebEx Centers, and affects products including WebEx Meeting Center, Event Center, Training Center and Support Center. Internet Explorer and Edge are not considered vulnerable, and both OS X and Linux versions of Chrome and Firefox are also safe.

Officials at a British school announced they will implement strict rules on the technologies students are allowed to use during the day to help stymie addiction to social media, the Guardian reported Monday.

In the first of a series, we report on stunning new evidence that the U.S. Department of Defense is waking up to the collapse of American primacy, and the rapid unraveling of the international order created by U.S. power after the Second World War. But the Pentagon’s emerging vision of what comes next hardly inspires confidence. We breakdown both the insights and cognitive flaws in this vision. In future pieces we will ask the questions: What is really driving the end of the American empire? And based on that more accurate diagnosis of the problem, what is the real solution?

The United Arab Emirates was behind an effort to hack Qatari government news and social media websites, sparking a diplomatic dispute among Arab states, US intelligence officials say.

Indonesia is blocking access to web versions of the encrypted messaging service, Telegram, citing concerns the app is being used to spread “terrorist propaganda.”

Microsoft has withdrawn at least three of the patches released at the end of June and early July, but left it to users to find out for themselves.

The three patches – KB 4011042, KB 3191849 and KB 3213654 – fixed the same file-handling bugs in Outlook's 2010, 2013 and 2016 editions. Attachments containing “...” (ellipsis) or exclamation points were blocked; e-mails with unsafe file extensions in the subject, ditto; and attachments using ShowLevel1Attach caused errors.

The three have been updated to say the update "is not currently available. This article will be updated as soon as the update is available again", so rather than give users a heads-up, Microsoft is telling you to watch the pages for news.

A couple of weeks ago, Redditors started discussing crashes after the updates were released, and quotes Microsoft that this was the reason for their removal.

An approach to machine learning inspired by the human brain is about to revolutionize street search. Even if the cop who pulls you over doesn’t recognize you, the body camera on his chest just might in the future.

Dubbed Karo, the malicious software holds users to ransom, threatening to leak personal and financial data online.

Unlike the majority of ransomware, which encrypts users’ files and withholds the key until the ransom is paid, Karo compels a much higher rate of payment amongst victims by using social engineering.

In addition to threatening to permanently delete affected files, Karo also threatens to leak personal and financial data online, as well as distribute any nude photos found on the victim’s computer to the victim’s contacts and to pornographic websites.

According to analysis conducted by phishing threat management firm PhishMe, the Karo ransomware does not actually have the ability to extract the information it threatens to leak from the victims’ computer.

V Saxena for The Conservative Tribune reports, When faced with taunts and bullying, grown men and women typically hold their heads up high and withstand the pressure like champions. But for CNN reporter Alisyn Camerota, that apparently was too much for her.

Yes, the Canadian government has rolled out an app that gives you points for eating well and exercising and taking quizzes about the flu shot and other healthy activities! And everyone seems totally fine with this. Welcome to the future, everyone, because the totalitarian states of tomorrow will be more carrot then stick, and we will all be pigeons in a virtual Skinner box. What could go wrong?

NBC News reported last week that Customs and Border Protection (CBP) concedes it lacks authority to access data stored only on the cloud when its agents examine the electronic devices of US citizens crossing the border. The NBC news report, Border Patrol Says It’s Barred From Searching Cloud Data on Phones, was based on a CBP Letter, dated June 20, sent in response to written questions posed to CBP acting commissioner Kevin McAleenan by Senator Ron Wyden. Last April, Wyden and Senator Ron Paul introduced the Protecting Data at the Border Act that require border officials get a warrant based on probable cause before they could to search or seize cellphones at the border.

By Nicholas West

The Kalashnikov AK-47 is certainly one of the most iconic automatic weapons ever devised. Today, nearly 70 years after its debut, worldwide demand continues to rise so rapidly that the company announced earlier in the year that they were hiring 1,700 employees to meet projected sales.

While the AK-47 is known for its bare-bones utility, Kalashnikov is clearly seeing the present trend in warfare that is leading to a future where an increasing number of robots will share the battlefield with humans, and will be empowered with a rising degree of autonomy via artificial intelligence...

The troops of tomorrow may be able to pull the trigger using only their minds. As artificially intelligent drones, hacking, jamming, and missiles accelerate the pace of combat, some of the military’s leading scientists are studying how mere humans can keep up with the incredible speed of cyber warfare, missiles and other threats.

As a backdrop to the Russia-gate hysteria and the heightened fear of China is a budget war over how much U.S. taxpayer money to pour into space warfare, explains Jonathan Marshall. By Jonathan Marshall There’s a civil war being fought on our nation’s soil, right in our capital. It pits the Secretary of Defense and senior generals against a bipartisan band of militant legislators who accuse the Pentagon of standing pat while Russian and China work to achieve military superiority over the United States in space.

By Nicholas West

What at first seemed like creeping tip-toe incrementalism toward the use of biometric ID for travel is quickly becoming a warp-speed reality.

Over the past couple of months I’ve been covering some disturbing developments at national airports that seem to show an acceleration of the plan to use biometric identification in a variety of ways...