Hackers

The National Cyber Security Centre (NCSC) is advising people to tweak the settings after buying them.

Easy-to-guess default passwords might let a hacker secretly observe a home through connected devices, it said.

The NCSC's technical director, Dr Ian Levy, warned while the devices were "fantastic innovations", they were vulnerable to cyber-attackers.

There are many examples of devices being accessed without permission.

In one, the attacker spoke to a young girl, pretending to be Father Christmas.

The MoneyTaker group removed overdraft limits on debit cards and took money from cash machines, according to a report by cybersecurity firm Group-IB.

It also stole documentation for technology used by more than 200 banks in the US and Latin America.

The documents could be used in future attacks by the hackers, according to the report.

Group-IB has worked with both Europol and the Russian government to investigate cybercrime.

It has been found that a mischievous group of hackers claiming to have access to over 300 million iCloud accounts is threatening Apple to remotely wipe data from those millions of Apple devices unless Apple pays it $75,000 in crypto-currency or $100,000 worth of iTunes gift cards.

The hacking group, who identified themselves as 'Turkish Crime Family,' has demanded a ransom to be paid in Bitcoin or Ethereum, another popular crypto-currency.

A group of highly sophisticated state-sponsored hackers is spying on the Israeli military by hacking into the personal Android phones of individual soldiers to monitor their activities and steal data.

It looks like the same song is now being used by hackers to channel their sentiments across the country.

This is possible due to the lack of proper authentication and HSTS policy on Facebook’s CDN servers. While Facebook has acknowledged the bug, it’s yet to patch it. The company has also said that it’s working to roll out HSTS to its subdomains.

Personally, I don’t use Facebook Messenger’s voice messaging feature very often. But, there are millions of people out there who use this feature every day. It lets one communicate easily by ditching the typing effort. But, in its current state, Facebook’s voice messaging service is vulnerable.

Alonzo Knowles hacked email accounts, from the Bahamas, to steal the images and scripts, which he tried to sell.

Knowles used viruses and fake security notifications to obtain passwords.

He was caught when he travelled to the US to sell stolen scripts not knowing that he was meeting undercover police officers.

Dark ends

The US Department of Justice said Knowles had had a list of the email addresses and phone numbers of 130 celebrities, including actors, musicians and others, that he sought to steal from.

It is giving loyalty points to hackers for every short-lived attack they mount against a small number of websites.

Points are logged on a scoreboard and can be cashed in for free access to other hacking tools.

All the targeted websites are run by organisations that oppose Turkey's government.

Hackers hacked

Security firm Forcepoint discovered the site offering the points for attacks. Called "Surface Defence", the site is run from the Tor dark web network and gives hackers access to a web attack tool called Sledgehammer.

In a short period of time, Locky has become one of the favorite ransomware tools of spammers. It usually spreads via spam emails with a disguised downloader.

This attack was first discovered by malware researcher Bart Blaze. Surprisingly, the malware manages to bypass Facebook’s file extension filter.

"Lets face it: Cyberwarfare is a new front for the military, for business and now for elections," said Ohio Secretary of State Jon Husted.

To combat that threat, Husted has done something unprecedented in the state's history. He's called on the Ohio National Guard's elite cyberprotection unit to help secure the election.

The National Guard takes orders from the state's governor. The Ohio National Guard cyber unit's election mission consists of specialized teams running penetration tests on the state's computer networks.