Android Overlay Malware Targeting Banking Apps
There is a growing crop of mobile malware that is designed to overlay a user’s phone screen and harvest banking and other credentials, and the attackers behind these tools have thoughtfully created a range of options, from low-end to premium priced. Researchers at IBM’s X-Force team have been tracking a variety of mobile malware samples […]
Cyber.Police Android Malware Infects Without User Interaction
There is a new piece of ransomware that is using an exploit for an Android vulnerability to infect devices without any user interaction whatsoever. The Cyber.Police ransomware uses JavaScript to exploit the bug and one of the exploits it employs is a known one that’s been public for more than a year. Researchers at Zimperium […]
Dutch Police Shut Down Encrypted Mobile Phone Network
Dutch police have seized servers and other equipment operated by Ennetcom, a communications provider in the Netherlands that operates an encrypted mobile phone service. The Dutch National Police Corps allege that the company was providing encrypted communications for criminal groups. The police said they have copied the contents of several servers belonging to the company, both in the […]
New Tool Detects Ransomware on OS X
Ransomware has become a serious threat for both businesses and consumers, and security researchers have had a difficult time addressing it, both in detection and cleanup. But now one researcher has developed a tool that he believes can work as a generic detection mechanism for ransomware on OS X systems. Known as RansomWhere?, the tool provides […]
Lieu Pushes for Congress to Look at SS7 Security Flaw
Rep. Ted Lieu, who has been one of the loudest voices in Congress on security and privacy issues, is urging the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform to look into the vulnerabilities in the SS7 phone protocol that allowed researchers to track and compromise Lieu’s phone in a demonstration this week. The letter comes […]
Google Report Shows 30% of Android Devices Don’t Get Regular Patches
A series of new security and privacy features added to Android in the last year have reduced the number of potentially harmful apps installed from Google Play by 40 percent, Google said in a new report on Android security. The company released its second annual Android Security Report on Tuesday, and there is a multitude […]
BlackBerry CEO: ‘We Are the Gold Standard’ in Security
In a response to reports that Canadian police have had the private key to decrypt BlackBerry Messenger messages for years, the company’s CEO said BlackBerry complies with “lawful access requests” and is still committed to customer privacy. In a blog post that only addressed the BBM encryption issue obliquely, BlackBerry CEO John Chen said that […]
What a Future of Backdoored Crypto Looks Like
The debate over the use of strong encryption in mobile devices and other communications methods can be a difficult one to understand for casual observers. Encryption is the most complex of security disciplines, but there can be no clearer picture of what a backdoored encryption system would like than what’s emerged this week from a complex […]
Draft Bill Would Force Vendors to Give Plaintext Data to Law Enforcement
The tension between the FBI and Apple may have subsided, but that doesn’t mean Washington is no longer focusing on encrypted communications. A pair of senators is circulating a draft bill that would require communications providers to maintain a method of giving law enforcement agencies cleartext communications, a requirement that could effectively prevent the use of […]