Back in January, the FDA has finally acknowledged that some pacemakers and other cardiac devices are vulnerable to hacking. But how vulnerable are they, exactly? A security company called WhiteScope has discovered 8,000 bugs that hackers can exploit in pacemaker programmers — the tools used to adjust and monitor the device itself — from four different manufacturers. More importantly, the researchers said they’ve also discovered that pacemakers don’t authenticate programmers, so any working tool listed on eBay has the potential to harm patients with the implant.Manufacturers are supposed to control programmers’ distribution, but the researchers themselves got their test devices from the auction website for as little as $500 to as much as $3,000. In addition to those issues, the team has found that doctors’ monitoring systems don’t require log-in names and passwords when pacemakers connect to them. They even found unencrypted patients’ data stored in the tools, including SSNs, names, phone numbers and medical conditions.

Somaliasamtalen som drabbat tiotusentals svenskar de senaste dagarna sköts via datorer och det är inte troligt att de som ligger bakom finns i Somalia eller på Seychellerna. Det menar polisens bedrägerirotel i Sundsvall som också anser att telebolagen borde kunna spåra var pengarna för samtal hamnar.Samtalen från Somalia har avlösts av en andra våg som tycks komma från Seychellerna men på polisens bedrägerirotel i Sundsvall tror man inte att samtalen rings från de länder som dyker upp på telefonens display.– Det sköts via datorer och jag tror inte att de som ringer finns i Somalia, säger Lars Andersson på polisens bedrägerirotel i Sundsvall.

SAN FRANCISCO — It took only one attempt for Russian hackers to make their way into the computer of a Pentagon official. But the attack didn’t come through an email or a file buried within a seemingly innocuous document.A link, attached to a Twitter post put out by a robot account, promised a family-friendly vacation package for the summer. It was the kind of thing anyone might click on, according to the official hit by the attack, who was not authorized to speak publicly about it.That is exactly the problem, Pentagon officials and cybersecurity experts said. While corporations and government agencies around the world are training their staff to think twice before opening anything sent by email, hackers have already moved on to a new kind of attack, targeting social media accounts, where people are more likely to be trusting.Pentagon officials are increasingly worried that state-backed hackers are using social media sites such as Twitter and Facebook to break into Defense Department computer networks. And the human error that causes people to click on a link sent to them in an email is exponentially greater on social media sites, the officials said, because people are more likely consider themselves among friends.

British Airways was operating most of its flights from London’s two largest airports on Monday after a computer system failure stranded thousands of passengers over a holiday weekend and turned into a public relations disaster.The airline planned to run more than 95 percent of flights from London Heathrow and Gatwick on Monday, Chief Executive Alex Cruz told Sky News.BA had been forced to cancel all its flights from Heathrow, Europe’s busiest airport, and Gatwick on Saturday after a power supply problem disrupted its operations worldwide and also hit its call centres and website.The disruption had continued on Sunday. Some stranded passengers curled up under blankets on the floor or slumped on luggage trolleys, images that played prominently in the media at the start of a week when schools were on holiday.”Apologizes all well and good but not enough. BA has lost another loyal customer #disgraceful,” tweeted Tom Callway, who had been due to fly to Budapest.

Target Settles 2013 Hacked Customer Data Breach For $18.5 Million – NBC News

Retail giant Target agreed this week to pay $18.5 million to settle claims by 47 states and the District of Columbia and resolve a multi-state investigation into a massive data breach in late 2013.The investigation — led by the Attorneys General of Connecticut and Illinois — found that cyber attackers had accessed Target’s gateway server through credentials stolen from a third-party vendor, New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman said in a statement on Tuesday. New information in Target data attack 3:37In one of the biggest data breaches to hit a U.S. retailer, Target had reported that hackers stole data from up to 40 million credit and debit cards of shoppers who had visited its stores during the 2013 holiday season.

Stephen Fry has called for Facebook and other “aggregating news agencies” to be reclassified as publishers in order to stop fake news and online abuse spreading by making social media subject to the same legal responsibilities as traditional news websites.Outlining his “reformation” for the internet, as part of the Hay literary festival’s programme to mark the quincentenary of Martin Luther’s Ninety-five Theses in 1517, Fry accused social media platforms of refusing to “take responsibility for those dangerous, defamatory, inflammatory and fake items whose effects will have legal consequences for traditional printed or broadcast media, but whoch they can escape”.