The Tech Corner
The Tech Corner is a weekly technology news and advice column presented each week courtesy of Melvin McCrary at Ga. Computer Depot in Cedartown.
London Police arrest Romanian ATM hacker who stole millions
A Romanian man Emanual Leahu, 30, was arrested in the western city of Bac u, Romania for his involvement in a prolific ATM malware campaign by the London Regional Fraud Team (LRFT) London police run by the City of London Police and extradited to the United Kingdom.
Leahu is believed to be a member of a European ATM hacking gang that stold more than $2 Million dollars from cash machines across the UK in 2014 using ATM malware to bypass security controls.
The gang physically broke into ATMs to load malware onto the machines, allowing them to withdraw "large amounts of cash." The malware was good enough to erase itself to hide its tracks, making it difficult to identify the culprits. Three out of the five gang members are now arrested with more to come. The gang hit 51 ATMs in standalone public areas.
Mac malware can secretly spy on your webcam and mic – here's how to stay safe
Apple Mac Computers are considered to be much safer than Windows at keeping viruses and malware out of its environment, but that’s not true anymore. It's because hackers are getting smarter and more sophisticated.
The bad news for Mac users is that malware targeting webcams and microphones has now come up for Mac laptops as well.
Patrick Wardle, an ex-NSA staffer who heads up research at security intelligence firm Synack, discovered a way for Mac malware to tap into your live feeds from Mac's built-in webcam and microphone to locally record you without detection.
Wardle is the same researcher who has discovered a number of security weaknesses in Apple products, including ways to bypass the Gatekeeper protections in OS X.
Wardle released a free tool called RansomWhere? earlier this year that has generic detection capabilities for Mac OS X ransomware variants.
How to prevent your webcam and mic from being hacked
Wardle has developed and released a free tool, dubbed OverSight, which not only monitors webcam and microphone activities but also alerts you when a secondary process accesses your webcam, asking whether you want to allow or block access. Oversight is a free download from Wardle’s website.
You may also cover your webcam with a small piece of card stock taped at the top for quick access.
Another NSA contractor arrested for stealing 'secret' documents
The FBI has secretly arrested another National Security Agency (NSA) contractor over a massive secret data theft.
The United States Justice Department charged Harold Thomas Martin, 51, with theft of highly classified government material, including "source codes" developed by the NSA to hack foreign government, according to a court complaint unsealed on Wednesday.
According to the DoJ's chief national security prosecutor John Carlin, Martin was employed by Booz Allen Hamilton, the same consulting firm that employed whistleblower Edward J. Snowden.
Yahoo built a secret tool to scan e-mail content for US spy agency
Users are still dealing with the Yahoo's massive data breach that exposed over 1 Billion Yahoo accounts and there’s more shocking news about the company. Yahoo might have provided your personal data to United States intelligence agency when required.
Yahoo built custom software programmed to secretly scan all of its users' emails for specific information provided by US intelligence officials, according to a report by Reuters.
The tool was designed to search for a specific set of character strings within Yahoo emails and "store them for remote retrieval," but it's unclear exactly what they were looking for.
When Yahoo's Chief Information Security Officer Alex Stamos found out that Mayer had authorized the surveillance program, he resigned from the company, telling his subordinates that "he had been left out of a decision that hurt users' security."
68 Million hacked Dropbox accounts are just a click away
Hackers have stolen more than 68 Million Dropbox accounts in a data breach that was initially disclosed by the online cloud storage platform in 2012.
Although the initial announcement failed to reveal the true scale of the data breach, it was in late August when the breach notification service LeakBase obtained files containing details on over 68 million accounts, which contains email addresses and hashed passwords for Dropbox users.
Last month, a hacker was selling this Dropbox data dump on a Dark Web marketplace known as TheRealDeal for around $1200.
Tech support scams use new tricks to hold browsers hostage
Tech support scammers are coming up with trickier methods to prevent a user from closing their browser. When you move your mouse cursor over the web browser showing the scam, the mouse cursor disappears. Instead you will see a mouse cursor moving randomly over the page, which is the scammers trying to trick you into thinking your mouse is not working properly.
The solution is to hold the ctrl and alt key and tap the delete key. You will then see five choices. Left click the last one - Start Task Manager. You will then see:
To prevent unwanted program installation during Adobe update, uncheck the boxes under Optional Offers in the center box. Computers don’t run very well with multiple Anti-Virus programs installed (Malwarebytes and Super Antivirus are OK). We have not tested True Key yet, so we are not installing it as of now.