Security News
Planning portal back online with a more secure connection Reading Borough Council has securely restored its planning portal after facing criticism for recommending questionable tech security...
Staff at NHS Lanarkshire - which serves over half a million Scottish residents - used WhatsApp to swap photos and personal info about patients, including children's names and addresses. This, the watchdog said, "Demonstrates that information governance expectations regarding WhatsApp were not understood by staff involved in the WhatsApp Group."
Britain's data watchdog has slapped a financial penalty on two energy companies it claims were posing as third parties, including the National Grid and UK government, when making unsolicited marketing calls. Both were deemed by the Information Commissioner's Office to have contravened the Privacy and Electronic Communications Regulations Act - Section 21 in the case of Crown Glazing, and Section 21 and 24 by MPS. The ICO found that between January and November 2021, Crown Glazing made more than 500,000 direct marketing calls to people on the TPS, and this generated 37 complaints.
A 23-year-old British citizen has confessed to "Multiple schemes" involving computer crimes, including playing a part in the July 2020 Twitter attack that saw the accounts of Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos, Kanye West, and former President Barack Obama hijacked by an unidentified crew. The 2020 Twitter attack happened when blue ticks still meant "Verified account" and was accomplished using social engineering just as the COVID-19 pandemic was starting to gain traction.
Several police forces in Britain are being put on the naughty step by the UK's data watchdog for using a calling app that recorded hundreds of thousands of phone conversations and illegally retained that data. The Information Commissioner's Office said today it was made aware in June 2020 that Surrey Police and Sussex Police were given access to the Another Call Recorder app that recorded all incoming and outgoing conversations.
Five British companies are collectively nursing a £405,000 fine from the UK's data watchdog for making a combined total of 750,000 unsolicited marketing calls targeting vulnerable elderly people. The Information Commissioner's Office was alerted to the quintet's dodgy dealings after receiving complaints from the public and information from Action Fraud, Trading Standards, consumer rights group Which?, and call block provider trueCall.
British infosec pro Vic Harkness traveled to Ukraine to offer humanitarian help - and while taking a break in the western city of Lviv she described to The Register what it's like in the war-torn country. Harkness, who originally traveled to Poland with a group of friends to try to help out before crossing the border, is not there to do any infosec work, she explained.
Court documents obtained by The Register show that the secret surveillance capability was baked into otherwise mundane bulk SMS sending carried out by MMGRP Ltd. The tax collection agency, which has the power to retrospectively change laws, had been using SMS reminder messages as an enforcement tool. We asked HMRC for comment, posing a series of questions including how long had it used HLR look-up techniques against taxpayers; did HMRC obtain necessary warrants to carry out HLR lookups and, if so, under what legislation and from which courts; how many times it had used this technique; under what circumstances it was deployed; and is the capability present in a contract with its new supplier.
Frustrated at lack of activity from the "Standard setting" UK Cyber Security Council, the government wants to pass new laws making it into the statutory regulator of the UK infosec trade. Government plans, quietly announced in a consultation document issued last week, include a formal register of infosec practitioners - meaning security specialists could be struck off or barred from working if they don't meet "Competence and ethical requirements."
De Rose allegedly conspired with members of a gang known as The Community to defraud someone identified in court as "RM". He is currently contesting extradition to the US to stand trial on wire fraud, theft, and money laundering charges. De Rose's extradition hearing comes after the National Crime Agency arrested eight men aged between 18 and 26 back in February on suspicion of carrying out SIM-swap attacks targeted at US citizens.