hacked

"Password" and "123456" continue to battle it out for the worst password choice according to two annual studies. While this tells us very little about why users continue to use such weak passwords, there's some mixed news elsewhere. Several ... companies chase headlines each year by publishing lists of the worst passwords, meaning the ones that appear most frequently. The data source is usually a collection of stolen website login databases published online. Sometimes these are stored in plain text while sometimes cyber criminals have successfully cracked decryption. The ... (view more)

Infopackets Reader Neil W. writes: " Dear Dennis, Thanks for your interesting article on whether a VPN is safe for online banking . However, one question I can't seem to find the answer to is: do I need VPN on a public network? Do I need a VPN on a ... private network? What about a VPN on a shared network? An example might include a student doing banking at a university shared network. What do you think? " My response: Short answer: A VPN, or virtual private network is useful in a few cases - for example: hiding your tracks online (to some extent, but with major limitations) or accessing geo- ... (view more)

Chrome may soon warn users if their passwords have been compromised. It works by checking inputted passwords against those exposed in public data breaches. The feature is already available for Chrome from an official Google extension known as ... Password Checkup, but users need to actively install this extension to use it. Web browser Mozilla Firefox already has a similar feature built-in. Now a similar feature named "password leak detection" has been spotted in the code of Chrome Canary. That's a version of Chrome that includes test features planned for release in the main Chrome edition in a ... (view more)

Financial records of almost every adult in Bulgaria have been stolen in a cyber attack. It's led to the unlikely situation of the country's leader reportedly exaggerating the attacker's skills. One man has been arrested following the attack, which ... looks to have involved unauthorized access to a database with records for every working adult in the country. That's almost five million people. There's some debate over exactly what was involved in the breach. Press reports suggest it not only included personal information such as date of birth and address, but also tax ... (view more)

An airline faces a fine of more than $200 million after its customers were hit by a hacking scandal. Around 500,000 worldwide customers of British Airways were affected by the breach. British Airways reported the breach in September last year. It ... doesn't appear that the hackers were able to get into BA's system and take any customer data that way. Instead, traffic to the site was hijacked. The attack is believed to have begun last June and involved the hackers exploiting security flaws in the design of BA's site. They were able to intercept traffic to the site and redirect visitors to a bogus ... (view more)

Infopackets Reader Nathan J. writes: " Dear Dennis, I recently received an email stating that hackers have hacked my phone. As proof of their hack, they gave me the last 2 digits of my phone number. They claim to have uploaded spying software on my ... phone and have supposedly 'caught me' visiting raunchy websites. To keep this quiet, they are demanding bitcoin payment of $800 USD. How can they hack my phone like this? Can they hack my PC too? Should I be worried? " My response: This is yet another version of the same scam that is currently going around the Internet. Related: How to Fix: Hackers ... (view more)

Infopackets Reader Sam G. writes: " Dear Dennis, I get emails from hackers a few times a week saying that they have cracked my email account. As proof, they have supplied me with the correct password for the account. The message goes on to say that ... they have planted a Trojan on my computer which allows them to spy on me. Here's where it gets interesting. The hackers say I have been visiting websites of people in the buff. They are demanding I pay them bitcoin (worth $831) to keep this quiet, otherwise they will send images from the purported site I've visited and also a picture of me on my ... (view more)

Infopackets Reader Marjie H. writes: " Dear Dennis, I just received an email offer from Norton Security asking if I would like to enroll in the Norton Identity Protection. In order to do so, the form says I need to provide my social insurance ... number. The protection being offered is free, so long as I renew my Norton Antivirus subscription. From what I understand, this service includes protection against personal credit, credit cards, bank, social insurance number (SSI), etc. My question is - with all this information they are asking for, what is the possibility they could be hacked and all my ... (view more)

A security company has released its list of the worst passwords of 2017. As always with this annual survey, it tells us more about culture than security practices. The list comes from SplashData, which compiles the rankings based on how many times ... particular passwords appears in leaked lists of user databases (mainly among English language users). The survey this year totaled more than five million passwords, though it's worth noting the company deliberately excluded leaks of passwords from adult sites. (Source: cnet.com ) The most common are hardly any surprise with "123456" beating out " ... (view more)

Management at TeamViewer, a remote access computer tool, have confirmed that a "significant number" of users have fallen prey to hackers. However, the company insists that all evidence suggests that there is no flaw in the system, but is instead ... pointing fingers at its users. TeamViewer allows users to login to a remote computer (even their own) from anywhere with an Internet connection. Once connected, users can operate the computer just as if they had physical access to the machine. The security for the system works in two ways: first, users get a reference number that identifies ... (view more)