Silver lining! Close to 1 in 20 Deutsche Telekom customers avoided botnet infection because their routers got knocked offline instead.
Dismay as ‘snooper’s charter’ finally becomes law
Critics fear a surveillance state while tech firms question new law’s unintended effects
News in brief: Muni hacker is hacked; Facebook warned over data sharing; spy agency releases data tool
Your daily round-up of some of the other security stories in the news
IoT camera turned into a zombie in under two minutes
Even a security professional couldn’t stop his new IoT camera being turned into a zombie member of the Mirai botnet
America wonders what path Trump will tread on cybersecurity
Industry professionals say the president-elect’s penchant for the unpredictable could be bad – or good – for Internet security
It Will Soon Be Illegal To Punish Customers Who Criticize Businesses Online
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: Congress has passed a law protecting the right of U.S. consumers to post negative online reviews without fear of retaliation from companies. The bipartisan Consumer Review Fairness Act was passed by…
Facebook Is Bringing Games Like Pac-Man, Space Invaders To Messenger and Your News Feed
Facebook is launching Instant Games, “a new HTML5 cross-platform gaming experience” that is available on Messenger and Facebook News Feed for both mobile and web users. Since they’re built on the HTML5 mobile web standard, the games load in seconds…
Holding Shift + F10 During Windows 10 Updates Opens Root CLI, Bypasses BitLocker
An anonymous reader quotes a report from BleepingComputer: Windows security expert and infrastructure trainer Sami Laiho says that by holding SHIFT + F10 while a Windows 10 computer is installing a new OS build, an attacker can open a command-line…
Religious Experiences Have Similar Effect On Brain As Taking Drugs, Study Finds
A new study published in the journal Social Neuroscience finds through functional MRI scans that religious and spiritual experiences can trigger reward systems like love and drugs. “These are areas of the brain that seem like they should be involved…
Muni System Hacker Hit Others By Scanning For Year-Old Java Vulnerability
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: The attacker who infected servers and desktop computers at the San Francisco Metropolitan Transit Agency (SFMTA) with ransomware on November 25 apparently gained access to the agency’s network by way of…