Chinese spies accused of Marriott hack by Mike Pompeo
The latest twist to the Marriott saga has seen US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo accuse China of being the ones behind the recently reported attack.
Up to half a billion people are suspected to have been affected. The stolen data includes passport information and credit card numbers, an huge cause for worry.
The FBI is said to be investigating the attack, and the smart money says there will be even more twists and turns to the story in coming weeks.
Source: Al Jazeera
Google Plus to shut down earlier
After already announcing the impending shutdown of Google Plus, the tech giants are reportedly hastening the demise of their ill-fated social network.
The reason behind the expedited end date is a discovery that another 53 million users may have been compromised due to another bug.
D-day for Google Plus will now be in April next year.
Source: The Washington Examiner
Facebook pays its biggest bug bounty
Facebook has paid $50,000 to a researcher, its single biggest bug bounty. This was for a bug found in their developer subscriber mechanism, which could have allowed malicious developers to gain access to user behavior that shouldn't have been available to the public.
The bug bounty program has paid over US$7.5 million since it started in 2011. It's paid out a total of US$1.1 million this year.
Source: WIRED
The return of Shamoon
The Shamoon malware family, known as one of the most destructive in existence, has apparently returned.
Known for its extensive data-wiping capabilities, Shamoon's authors are suspected to be targeting the Middle East.
Shamoon can overwrite master boot records and wipe out files on any PC that it infects.
Source: Threat Post
People are not getting any smarter about their passwords
If you're looking to protect your data, then you better not be using any of the passwords listed in the most recent iteration of Splash Data's 100 Worst Passwords. We implore you to change your password if you see it on the list.
The top 10 are:
- 123456
- password
- 123456789
- 12345678
- 12345
- 111111
- 1234567
- sunshine
- qwerty
- iloveyou
Source: Splash Data
