Consumer Security

Yahoo on Thursday disclosed that a data breach in late 2014 resulted in the theft of information from at least 500 million customer accounts. Based on a recent investigation, it appears that state-sponsored hackers carried out the attack, the company said. Account information compromised includes na...

Dropbox last week confirmed that more than 68 million emails and passwords have been compromised from a hack that originally was disclosed in 2012. Exposure from the breach was limited to email addresses, Dropbox originally claimed. However, based on the latest revelations, the hackers actually stol...

The FBI has launched investigations into malicious cyberattacks on the electronic election infrastructures in Illinois and Arizona, and federal officials last month warned states to take steps to protect their systems as the presidential campaign heats up, according to reports that surfaced this wee...

Oracle has been investigating a point-of-sale system breach that may be the work of Russian cyberthieves. Hackers compromised at least 700 computers on the MICROS POS system, used by hundreds of thousands of hotels, restaurants and retail outlets worldwide to process credit card transactions, Krebs ...

There seem to be warning stickers for everything. There may soon be a new sticker for the autonomous car era: "Warning: Self-Driving Cars Get Hacked." Despite all the positive news about self-driving cars, there is a darker side to this story that's very important. It's one that can be particularly ...

Ransomware has become a scourge on the Internet -- but two information security companies, along with a pair of law enforcement agencies, this week launched an initiative to do something about it. No More Ransom is the centerpiece of a collaborative effort involving Kapersky Lab, Intel Security, the...

The number of government requests to Google for citizens' personal data rose in the second half of 2015, according to the company's latest Transparency Report, released Monday. The number has been trending upward for the past few years as the number of people connected to the Internet has increased....

Officials at the United States Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation, which insures deposits in U.S. banks, made false statements to Congress and failed to make timely notification of serious cybersecurity breaches, according to a U.S. House of Representatives Committee on Science, Space and Technol...

The United States Federal Trade Commission reportedly has launched an investigation into philanderers' dating site Ashley Madison. The company, which suffered a massive data breach last year that resulted in extortion attempts and ruined lives, as well as class-action lawsuits, earlier this week ann...

A hacker reportedly has offered to sell the account information of 117 million LinkedIn users, which was stolen in a 2012 hack. The data includes users' email addresses and passwords.The hacker, who goes by the handle "Peace," reportedly offered the data on The Real Deal -- a site on the dark web -...

A hacker dubbed "The Collector" turned over 272 million stolen email credentials in his possession, Hold Security announced Wednesday. The hacker bragged online about the stash, which included usernames and passwords, the firm said. It got a copy of the data -- which the hacker was peddling for 50 r...

Information technology -- especially the Internet -- can have a positive impact on the U.S. financial system. Used improperly, however, such tools have the potential to wreak havoc on the financial sector and consumers. The Office of the Comptroller of the Currency has launched an initiative on the ...

The EFF has filed suit against the Justice Department seeking to learn whether the federal government secretly ordered technology companies to decrypt the private communications of their customers. Such orders could place millions of customers in harm's way, the complaint says. The suit seeks the re...

Microsoft on Thursday filed suit against the U.S. Department of Justice challenging the gag orders that accompany requests to access customers' private emails and other data. The orders prevent the company from notifying affected customers about the government's demands. The case is the fourth publi...