Hacking News

Sixty app were removed from the Google Play marketplace in December that were infected with malware dubbed AdultSwine that in some cases generated pornographic ads on apps aimed at children. Read more

A security vulnerability in Intel’s Active Management Technology (AMT) remote access monitoring and maintenance platform could allow attackers to bypass logins and place a backdoor on a laptop enabling remote access and operation of the machine. Read more

Research that claims WhatsApp’s group messaging feature can be compromised by an attacker is being called into question by WhatsApp and the developer of the underlying messaging technology. Read more

Meltdown and Spectre are bad news with a capital B. While Intel has gotten most of the ink for its design mistakes, AMD chips, contrary to what you might have heard, aren’t completely safe either. Read more

The first Android malware designed to steal information, carry out click ad fraud, and sign users up to premium SMS services without their permission, written using the Kotlin programming language has been found in the Google Play store. Read more

The campaign apparently selects victims carefully and uses social networks and chat applications to directly interact with selected victims in South Korea and plant spyware onto their smartphones. Researchers at McAfee have attributed the attacks to an operation they’ve dubbed Sun Team, named after deleted files used to help carry out the attacks. Read more

Winners of a security quiz staged by Taiwan’s Criminal Investigation Bureau may be wondering why they tried so hard to do well after some of the USB drives handed out as prizes turned out to be wretched hives of malware and villainy. Read more

A computer programmer has been accused of hacking, committing identity theft, and creating child pornography after allegedly developing custom malware to take control of thousands of computers. Read more

On Wednesday, the UK Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) said the fine is one of the largest issued in the data watchdog’s history. In 2015, Carphone Warehouse said that a data breach had led to the theft and exposure of sensitive, personal information belonging to up to 2.4 million customers. Read more

Wi-Fi security should become a bit less laughable with the pending introduction of the WPA3 protocol this year. In conjunction with this week’s commencement of CES – letters that once stood for Consumer Electronics Show and now come meaning-free – the Wi-Fi Alliance on Monday heralded the arrival of WPA3 as the successor to WPA2,