Beware: Good Twitter handles are being stolen and sold for gold

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How important is a strong password on Twitter? Depends on how much you value your Twitter handle. If a hacker can spoof their IP address, they can hack away at your Twitter password all day without repercussions. They do this because good Twitter handles can be sold for a pretty penny, up to $1,000 in…

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Seven rent-to-own companies secretly monitored and remotely controlled customers’ rented PCs – captured users’ intimate moments

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It comes as no surprise that rent-to-own companies can be a little… seedy. Seven rent-to-own companies, comprising 1,617 stores in the United States and Canada, and a software developer based in Pennsylvania, have settled federal charges that they used spyware to remotely monitor their customers who rented personal computers, including turning on webcams to monitor…

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If you are running Tor, you might be running a botnet too

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Security researchers have identified a new botnet that is controlled by attackers from an Internet Relay Chat (IRC) server running as a hidden service inside the Tor anonymity network. Unable to determine its real location or sniff its encrypted traffic, law enforcement are going to have a tough time shutting it down.

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Iran launches organized cyberattack against U.S. banks

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The banks of JP Morgan Chase and Bank of America are being increasingly targeted this week, in a systematic denial-of-service (DoS) attack against their websites. National security officials told NBC News that the cyber attacks are originating from the government of Iran and as a result, the cyber threat level was raised from “elevated” to…

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Al Jazeera website hacked

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Visitors to Al Jazeera’s website got a surprise overnight.  Hackers replaced Al Jazeera’s home page with a message saying it was done in protest against the Doha-based television station’s coverage of the Syrian conflict.  The attack lasted for several hours during which visitors were served a page with a Syrian flag and a message explaining…

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