Security News
UK energy supplier People's Energy this week started informing customers of a data breach that affected some of their personal information. In a data breach notification published on its website, the energy supplier reveals that, on December 16, it was the victim of a cyberattack in which an unauthorized party accessed one of the systems used to store member data.
Police forces were found by IPCO to be treating applications to use spying powers as a tickbox exercise, perhaps unsurprisingly given that these are self-authorisations rubberstamped by police managers themselves. "To provide oversight that satisfies this judgment, IPCO reviewed the use of bulk data at GCHQ and has now incorporated the sharing of bulk data with foreign partners into its regular oversight and inspection arrangements," said IPCO in a statement.
The UK's Home Office has handed a £30m contract to engineering and IT outfit Leidos to help government agencies access and analyse communications data for combatting terrorism and organised crime. The Home Office's National Communications Data Service launched the Agile Data Retention and Disclosure Services last year with a prior information notice to the market.
Britain's Telecommunications Security Bill will allow anyone to sue their telco if they suffer "Loss or damage" as a result of a system breach - but only if they get Ofcom's permission. Buried in the details away from the China-bashing stuff is a potentially heavy stick to be wielded by telco regulator Ofcom, pitting baying crowds against telecoms operators.
A massive phishing campaign pretending to be a Subway order confirmation is underway distributing the notorious TrickBot malware. TrickBot is a trojan malware infection commonly distributed through phishing campaigns or installed by other malware.
UK trade union Prospect has chimed in with the chorus of disapproval at technologies such as Microsoft's Productivity Score being used on the nation's workers. The letter [PDF], sent to data watchdog the Information Commissioner's Office, makes clear the disquiet felt at the potential level of employee monitoring afforded even while acknowledging the rapid back-pedalling undertaken by Redmond amid the furore.
The UK's Ministry of Defence has launched a bug bounty scheme, promising privateer pentesters they won't be prosecuted if they stick to the published script. The MoD has joined forces with bug bounty platform HackerOne, with the scheme seemingly being aimed at those who probe external web-facing parts of the ministry's sprawling digital estate.
A war of words has erupted between the National Police Chiefs' Council and a British web security pro after a senior cop declared it would be "a waste of public money" to keep discussing security flaws in the body's Cyberalarm product. Paul Moore says he uncovered what he described as a number of serious flaws in Cyberalarm, a distributed logging and monitoring tool intended to be deployed by small public-sector organisations.
UK-based cybersecurity company Glasswall this week announced that it has raised £18 million in equity capital, which it will use to fund its expansion. Glasswall has developed a product designed to protect organizations against file-based threats using content disarm and reconstruction technology, which removes potentially malicious code from files.
Wireless carriers in the U.K. won't be allowed to install Huawei equipment in their high-speed 5G networks after September 2021, the British government said Monday, hardening its line against the Chinese technology company. The government of Prime Minister Boris Johnson in July banned Huawei from having a role in building Britain's next-generation mobile phone networks over security concerns triggered by U.S. sanctions.