Security News
A 28-year-old has been arrested after allegedly carrying out what police have labelled a "Sophisticated cyber attack" on a school. A police spokesman told a local news website: "Officers received a report of a major IT outage at the school on Monday, January 18, that prevented the school from delivering remote learning and accessing material to support the children of keyworkers and vulnerable children who are attending school."
By distributing malware-ridden laptops to the most vulnerable and needy schoolkids, the Department for Education is guilty of an astonishing breach of responsibility. It turns out that "We want to run our software on your kids phones and teach them cybersecurity through surprising stuff" is a fun thing to say to educators, governments, and funding bodies.
Some of the laptops distributed by the UK Department for Education to vulnerable students have been found to be infected with malware as reported by the BBC. The devices are given out for free by the government to support disadvantaged students unable to access remote education during the COVID-19 pandemic, including children and young people who have no digital devices, have only a smartphone, or share a single device with other family members. Infection is not widespread. However, as revealed by Bradford Schools teachers, some of the files found on the government-provided Windows laptops were infected with malware as discovered while preparing the devices for delivery to students.
The UK's Information Commissioner's Office needs to update its Code of Employment Practices to tackle workplace spying by bosses, the Prospect trade union and the Labour Party have said. The call for more regulation of workplace surveillance comes after recent reports of new gadgets designed to tell bosses whether their toiling underlings are happy or sad. It also echoes previous calls by Prospect for stronger regulation of workplace surveillance tech.
The Ministry of Defence's multibillion budget overrun has been caused in part because of its spending splurge on flashy new "Cyber" capabilities, according to the National Audit Office. The MoD faces a budget black hole measured in billions thanks to its profligacy - and even the announcement of a cash top-up of £4bn per year between now and 2024, on top of its £41.2bn annual budget, won't be enough to plug it, according to the auditors.
A British judge on Monday rejected the United States' request to extradite WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange to face espionage charges, saying he was likely to kill himself if held under harsh U.S. prison conditions. In a mixed ruling for Assange and his supporters, District Judge Vanessa Baraitser rejected defense arguments that the 49-year-old Australian faces a politically motivated American prosecution that rides roughshod over free-speech protections.
21 WeLeakInfo customers have been arrested across the UK for using stolen credentials downloaded from WeLeakInfo following an operation coordinated by the UK National Crime Agency. "The NCA and UK policing's Cyber Choices programme aims to prevent young people inadvertently slipping into cyber crime and divert them to more positive pathways in tech."
United Kingdom's Information Commissioner's Office has warned organizations that fell victim to the SolarWinds hack that they are required to report data breaches within three days after their discovery. The UK independent authority urged organizations using compromised versions of the SolarWinds Orion IT management platform to check for evidence of attackers infiltrating their network and gaining access to personal information.
A group of lawmakers in the United Kingdom are looking to take on powerful bot organizations openly scalping gaming consoles by proposing potential legislation that would both ban the resale of goods acquired using bots and ban the resale of tech products above the manufacturers' price. The United States has tried its hand at rules against bots with the FTC's 2016 "Better Online Ticket Sales Act," which was designed to regulate secondary market ticket sales as a response to bots being used to drive up ticket prices.
Workplace pension provider NOW: Pensions has emailed a number of UK customers to warn about a data leakage caused by contractor error. NOW: Pensions did not disclose how many records were exposed, nor how many third parties copied the leaked data.