Guide to Cybersecurity - Recent Threats

Guide To Cybersecurity - Recent Threats

Credit: Reuters/Pawel Kopczynski 1 of 2. A hand is silhouetted in front of a computer screen in this picture illustration taken in Berlin May 21, 2013. A Vietnamese man last month confessed in U.S.

If you were awake in the pre-dawn hours on Sunday morning, you would have seen a slew of racist, anti-government, anti-Obama posts and a swastika on Chipotle's Twitter account. Just before 4:30 am EST, Chipotle was able to regain control of its account.

Around 1:09 p.m. ET the Twitter account was suspended. A YouTube page labeled as belonging to Centcom was also apparently hacked. By 1:30 p.m. ET, that page had been blanked. "We can confirm that the U.S. Central Command's Twitter and YouTube accounts were compromised earlier today.

Several U.S. states are investigating a massive cyberattack on No. 2 U.S. health insurer Anthem Inc that a person familiar with the matter said is being examined for possible ties to China. Attorneys general of Connecticut, Illinois, Massachusetts, Arkansas and North Carolina are looking into the breach, according to representatives of their offices and internal documents.

Taylor Swift has a message for all you hackers out there: "You got NOTHING." The pop star's Twitter and Instagram accounts were hacked Tuesday morning, a noticeable breach given Swift is the fourth most-followed tweeter on the planet with more than 51 million followers.

The data breach that was the nightmare before Christmas for Target Target and its millions of customers just got a little bit worse: the retailer said Friday morning that the information stolen between November 27 and December 15, 2013 included personal information of as many as 70 million people - more than the 40 million the company originally estimated.

The Twitter account of Twitter CFO Anthony Noto has been hacked. Noto's account appears to be tweeting spammy links at other users. The former Goldman banker who led Twitter's IPO, Noto joined Twitter last summer. In November, he accidentally tweeted what was supposed to be a direct message about acquiring a company.

By Newsweek appeared Tuesday to have become the latest prominent media organization to have its Twitter account hacked but by 11 a.m. Eastern time had regained control of the account.

A Russian-speaking gang of computer criminals has stolen millions of dollars since late 2013 from banks in Russia, Eastern Europe and the U.S., according to a report from Kaspersky Lab ZAO, a Russian computer-security firm. It is unclear exactly how many, or which, banks were hit. Some U.S.

SAN FRANCISCO (AP) -- Did the National Security Agency plant spyware deep in the hard drives of thousands of computers used by foreign governments, banks and other targets under surveillance abroad? A new report from Russian cybersecurity firm Kaspersky Lab said its researchers identified malicious programs or worms that infected computers in multiple countries.

TurboTax suspended electronic filing of state returns for about a day after there was a spike in reports of fraud. After investigating, the popular tax preparer said that it has not been breached itself, and began filing forms again Friday evening. But there's another issue.

If scammers can't get that information from you, they may try to pry it from your computer. Vaughn Silcox received an email, supposedly from the IRS, telling him he was eligible for an additional tax refund. It came at the right moment, he said.

Three months after the State Department confirmed hackers breached its unclassified email system, the government still hasn't been able to evict them from the department's network, according to three people familiar with the investigation. Government officials, assisted by outside contractors and the National Security Agency, have repeatedly scanned the network and taken some systems offline.

AMSTERDAM-Digital-security firm Gemalto NV said Friday it was investigating a report that alleged it was hacked on a massive scale by U.S. and U.K. intelligence agencies. The Intercept reported Thursday that the National Security Agency and the U.K.'s Government Communications Headquarters hacked the Netherlands-based firm to steal encryption...

SAN FRANCISCO (AP) - A little-known Silicon Valley startup was caught in a firestorm of criticism this week for making software that exposed Lenovo laptop users to hackers bent on stealing personal information. But Superfish Inc. has also won praise for producing visual search technology that many see as the next big thing in online shopping.

WASHINGTON - A newly disclosed National Security Agency document illustrates the striking acceleration of the use of cyberweapons by the United States and Iran against each other, both for spying and sabotage, even as Secretary of State John Kerry and his Iranian counterpart met in Geneva to try to break a stalemate in the talks over Iran's disputed nuclear program.

Gemalto, the SIM card maker that reportedly had its encryption keys stolen by the NSA and GCHQ, has claimed that its products are secure, despite apparent leaked NSA documents suggesting otherwise. The Amsterdam-based company is putting on a brave, if defiant, face.

A few years ago, the New York City Human Resources Administration decided to try a new way to root out fraud among people receiving government benefits. Data detectives began running benefit recipients through a computerized pattern-recognition system. They discovered that the behavior of a small percentage of people stood out.

NEW YORK CITY-The FBI, NYPD and the Multi-State Information Sharing and Analysis Center are investigating a hacking attack against the city's e-mail system that left all agencies unable to receive messages last week. According to a City Hall source, the "universal" denial of service attack had been slowed but there was still "ongoing malicious activity" as recently as Monday.