Extremists exploiting small social media websites, experts warn

More needs to be done to stop small social media websites being exploited by extremists, experts have said.

The likes of Facebook and Twitter have responded to calls to remove extremist content over the last 18 months.

And some smaller social media sites have joined a scheme where information is shared to enable blocking content.

Unpicking the cyber-crime economy

urning virtual cash into real money without being caught is a big problem for successful cyber-criminals.

They often have to get creative when "cashing out" or laundering the money they have stolen, according to a security expert.

Ziv Mador, head of security research at Trustwave SpiderLabs. told the BBC that credit card thieves, for example, have limited time to profit, because at some point the victim will put a stop on their card.

What Drives Hackers to a Life of Cybercrime?

t likely comes as no surprise that cyber-criminals are financially motivated, but according to new research, many nefarious actors in the cyber world are also driven to a life of digital crime by ego as well as socioeconomic and psychological factors.

As follow-up to the recent report Under the Hoodie: Lessons from a Season of Penetration Testing published by Rapid 7, Wendy Zamora, malware intelligence at Malwarebytes, set to work on a months-long research piece exploring the psychology, motivations and other underlying factors that drive people to cybercrime.

The results of her work were published today in the long-form article "Under the Hoodie: Why Money, Power, and Ego Drive Hackers to Cybercrime" which includes interviews with reformed and active cyber-criminals as well as research from forensic psychologists, law enforcement officials and professors of criminology.

Dealing With Overlay Attacks: Adopting Built-In Security To Safeguard Mobile Experience

The growth of mobile technology and the increased importance of cybersecurity have dominated news cycles in the past year. At the same time, one of the biggest threats we’re seeing against mobile are overlay attacks - combining social engineering with inherent security weaknesses found in mobile apps, these attacks take advantage of users to trick them into sharing sensitive data.

In the past, these attacks were only spotted in Russia, but we’ve seen the first examples in Europe, such as the MazarBot Android malware, and the US, and there are likely to be more.

So how does it work? What can be done about it? What can organizations and financial institutions do to guard against becoming victims of this malicious attacks?

Malicious Windows executable files hidden in Google Play Apps

Palo Alto Unit 42 researchers identified 145 Google Play apps infected with malicious Window's Executable Files.

Researchers noted the infected APK files do not pose any threat to Android devices as they can only run on Windows devices but said the files are a threat to the software supply chain and can ultimately be used to carry out widespread attacks similar to KeRanger, XcodeGhost and  NotPetya, according to the blog post.

Dark web cyber crime markets thriving

The analysis, by researchers at Positive Technologies, included 25 sites on the dark web in Russian and English, with a total registered user base of about three million people.

The researchers examined whether the advertised tools and services would be enough for a real attack and how much technical knowledge was required by prospective clients.

They found that cyber criminals no longer require deep technical knowledge and that any type of attack is now feasible given sufficient funding.

105K Payment Cards Without Pin Protection Compromised in Cyber Attack on Dixons Carphone

British mobile phone and electricals retailer Dixons Carphone said on Wednesday it had been the victim of cybercrime, having discovered unauthorised access to payment card data held by the company. The group said an ongoing investigation indicated there was an attempt to compromise 5.9 million cards in one of the processing systems of Currys PC World and Dixons Travel stores.

It said 5.8 million of these cards have chip and pin protection and the data accessed contained neither pin codes, card verification values (CVV) nor any authentication data that would enable cardholder identification or a purchase to be made.