Security News
A British court has rejected the U.S. government's request to extradite Wikileaks founder Julian Assange to the country on charges pertaining to illegally obtaining and sharing classified material related to national security. In a hearing at Westminster Magistrates' Court today, Judge Vanessa Baraitser denied the extradition on the grounds that Assange is a suicide risk and extradition to the U.S. prison system would be oppressive.
Concern is gathering over the effects of the backdoor inserted into SolarWinds' network monitoring software on Britain's public sector - as tight-lipped government departments refuse to say whether UK institutions were accessed by Russian spies. Research by The Register has shown that SolarWinds' Orion is used widely across the British public sector, ranging from the Home Office and Ministry of Defence through NHS hospitals and trusts, right down to local city councils.
Christopher Taylor, 57, who "Confessed to disguising malware as recognisable and legitimate computer programs", installed Cybergate on more than 770 people's devices, covertly recording "Images of people in various stages of undress and involved in sexual activity" as Westminster Magistrates' Court found. In spite of claims that Taylor's malware-fuelled spree concerned mainly American citizens, close analysis of his seized laptop by an American expert found that just 7 per cent of his victims were located in the US - with the rest being spread between 37 different countries, including the UK. Taylor himself was suicidal at the thought of being sent to the US, found the judge, as was his disabled wife who had threatened to end her life if her husband, also her main carer, was extradited.
A social housing provider in Norwich, England, has said it was hit with the Sodinokibi ransomware following what it assumes was a successful phishing attack. "Whilst the investigation is still going on we can confirm that the incident was caused by ransomware, known as Sodinokibi, via a suspected phishing attack," said Flagship in a statement on its partially pwned website.
Britain's information commissioner has fined British Airways 20 million pounds for failing to protect personal data for some 400,000 customers, the largest fine the agency has ever issued. The ICO said in a statement Friday that the airline was processing personal data without adequate security measures.
British Airways is to pay a £20m data protection fine after its 2018 Magecart hack - even though the Information Commissioner's Office discovered the airline had been saving credit card details in plain text since 2015. It also condemned BA's claims during fine negotiations that credit card data breaches are "An entirely commonplace phenomenon" and "An unavoidable fact of life".
Nathan Francis Wyatt , 39, who is a key member of the infamous international hacking group 'The Dark Overlord,' has been sentenced to five years in prison and ordered to pay $1,467,048 in restitution to his victims. U.K. police first arrested Wyatt in September 2016 during an investigation into the hacking of an iCloud account belonging to Pippa Middleton, the younger sister of the British royal family member Duchess of Cambridge, and stealing 3,000 images of her.
In 1965, Gordon Moore published a short informal paper, Cramming more components onto integrated circuits. Based on not much more but these few data points and his knowledge of silicon chip development - he was head of R&D at Fairchild Semiconductors, the company that was to seed Silicon Valley - he said that for the next decade, component counts by area could double every year.
Capita's 2017 decision to implement bespoke IT systems on a £1.3bn British Army recruiting contract led to nearly 25,000 fewer applications to join the military in the following year, new figures have revealed. The switching-on of bespoke Defence Recruiting System IT systems contributed to the lowest number of wannabe Army recruits signing up since 2013 as well as a drop of 22 per cent in the number of applicants.
The United States hailed Britain's decision Tuesday to order the phased removal of China's Huawei telecoms giant from its 5G network, following months of pressure from Washington. "We welcome news that the United Kingdom plans to ban Huawei from future 5G networks and phase out untrusted Huawei equipment from existing networks," Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said in a statement.