Security News
Two UK VoIP operators have had their services disrupted over the last couple of days by ongoing, aggressive DDoS attacks. South Coast-based Voip Unlimited has confirmed it has been slapped with a "Colossal ransom demand" after being hit by a sustained and large-scale DDoS attack it believes originated from the Russian cybercriminal gang REvil.
The names and home addresses of 111,000 British firearm owners have been dumped online as a Google Earth-compatible. Dumped online last week onto an animal rights activist's blog, the reformatted Guntrader breach data was explicitly advertised as being importable into Google Earth so randomers could "Contact as many [owners] as you can in your area and ask them if they are involved in shooting animals."
The China-based surveillance equipment manufacturer accused of being linked to the human rights abuse of the Uyghur ethnic minority in Xinjiang has denied any wrongdoing in a heated exchange with the UK's Surveillance Camera Commissioner. Eye-catchingly, Hikvision's denials came in a series of letters published by Surveillance Camera Commissioner Professor Fraser Sampson on the GOV.UK website.
The British government has intervened in the US buyout of defence supplier Ultra Electronics, temporarily halting the acquisition and prohibiting any tech transfer overseas. The business is a major supplier of high-end electronics to the Royal Navy and the other British armed forces.
Tanium announced that its cloud-based endpoint visibility and control solution, Tanium as a Service, is now available via local data centers in Canada, the UK, Brazil and Australia to support customers. By delivering TaaS via local data centers, Tanium is able to provide customers in these regions with enhanced TaaS performance, better support for their compliance programs and high-fidelity endpoint data to inform their critical IT decisions.
Britain's Telecoms Security Bill will be accompanied by a detailed code of practice containing 70 specific security requirements for telcos and their suppliers to meet, The Register can reveal. The Telecom Security Bill, which is near the end of its journey through Parliament, has been rather unpopular with some ISPs who have previously complained about the high cost of compliance.
UK data watchdog sees its approach to government health tech during COVID-19 outbreak as 'pragmatic'
The UK's data watchdog has defended its approach to regulating government health technologies during the pandemic as "Pragmatic." In its annual report, the Information Commissioner's Office said it had supported public health innovation, reflecting the flexibility of data protection law.
The Ministry of Defence has paid out the first bug bounties to ethical computer hackers who probed web-accessible systems for vulnerabilities, according to a cheery missive from HackerOne. A month-long "Hacker security test" culminated in a couple of dozen folk being handed unspecified rewards - and marking the first public confirmation of HackerOne's UK government partnership.
Parliamentary criticism of the National Cyber Security Centre's "Image over cost" London HQ is being shrugged off by the government because of the GCHQ offshoot's successful response to the WannaCry ransomware outbreak. George "Eleventy Jobs" Osborne, who at the time of NCSC's establishment in 2016 was the Chancellor of the Exchequer, overrode procurement processes and gave the panicking Cheltenham set at GCHQ their desired Westminster base - and not the grubby Shoreditch "Tech hub" the spies feared they'd be dropped into.
The British government wants to make Amazon, Google, and other digital service providers report cybersecurity breaches to the Information Commissioner, according to newly published plans. Due to Brexit, the government can amend the UK's Network and Information Security Regulations to let the Information Commissioner's Office, the local data watchdog, dictate what kind of cybersecurity breaches must be reported to it.