One of the fundamentals of internet security, secure certificates, is under attack. Researchers at threat intelligence firm Recorded Future Inc. said today that they’ve found criminal groups selling both code signing certificates and domain name registrations with accompanying SSL certificates. The research notes that previously it was believed that security certificates circulating in the underground had been stolen ...

A founder of a defunct bitcoin stock exchange has been arrested after the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission filed fraud charges against him Wednesday. Jon E. Montroll, the operator of a bitcoin stock exchange called BitFunder that operated between 2012 and 2013, is alleged to have defrauded exchange users by misappropriating their bitcoins and failing to disclose ...

Intel Corp. has released a new software patch to address one of the Spectre vulnerabilities that have plagued the synonymous chip maker since they were revealed in early January. The patch, described technically as a “microcode update,” is being offered to original equipment manufacturers and partners for Kaby Lake and Coffee Lake-based platforms, along with Skylake-based platforms. The ...

A new report from McAfee and the Center for Strategic and International Studies claims that cybercrime now costs the global economy $600 billion, up considerably from $445 billion in 2014. The “Economic Impact of Cybercrime – No Slowing Down” report, released today, attributed the growth in cybercrime over the last three years to cybercriminals quickly adopting new ...

Scammers in Nigeria are believed to be behind a significant increase in business email compromise attacks, according to a report today from IBM’s X-Force Incident Response and Intelligence Services team. The BEC campaigns are said to be targeting accounts payable personnel at Fortune 500 organizations. They’re focused on credential harvesting, phishing and social engineering to steal financial assets via wire ...

Trillions of botnet requests have driven a massive increase in credential abuse, with more than 40 percent of login attempts found to be malicious, according to a newly published report. The number comes from Akamai Technologies Inc.’s Fourth Quarter 2017 State of the Internet/Security Report, which detected a staggering 7.3 trillion botnet requests per month. That headline number breaks down ...

Sixteen cryptocurrency exchanges in Japan are joining forces to create a self-regulating body that will oversee crypto markets within the country in response to the hack of the Coincheck exchange in January, Reuters reported today. The as yet to be named body could be formed as soon as next week and comes after a failed attempt to merge two ...

Venezuela is set to become the first country to launch its own cryptocurrency, as the failing socialist state today launched a presale as part of an initial coin offering. Announced by President Nicolas Maduro in December, the “Petro” will allegedly be backed by Venezuela’s oil reserves and is squarely aimed at bypassing U.S. trade sanctions — or as Maduro ...

Updated: Elon Musk may be able to send a Tesla Inc. vehicle into space, but apparently his staff can’t secure data online so easily. A shocking report released this morning details the theft of data from the electric car company, blaming it on gross staff incompetency. According to researchers at cloud security firm RedLock Ltd., hackers ...

Bitcoin’s bull run continued today as its price traded above $11,000 for the first time since Jan. 28. One reason: An anonymous investor is reported to have purchased approximately 41,000 bitcoin valued at $344 million. That’s seen by many as a sign that serious money is flooding back into the market. The so-called “bitcoin whale” made the bitcoin purchases ...