Tag Archives: passwords

Crook made millions by breaking into execs’ Office365 inboxes, feds say

Getty Images reader comments 28 Federal prosecutors have charged a man for an alleged “hack-to-trade” scheme that earned him millions of dollars by breaking into the Office365 accounts of executives at publicly traded companies and obtaining quarterly financial reports before they were released publicly. The action, taken by the office of the US Attorney for… Read More »

Meta pays the price for storing hundreds of millions of passwords in plaintext

Getty Images reader comments 90 Officials in Ireland have fined Meta $101 million for storing hundreds of millions of user passwords in plaintext and making them broadly available to company employees. Meta disclosed the lapse in early 2019. The company said that apps for connecting to various Meta-owned social networks had logged user passwords in… Read More »

NIST proposes barring some of the most nonsensical password rules

Getty Images reader comments 156 The National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), the federal body that sets technology standards for governmental agencies, standards organizations, and private companies, has proposed barring some of the most vexing and nonsensical password requirements. Chief among them: mandatory resets, required or restricted use of certain characters, and the use… Read More »

Chrome will now prompt some users to send passwords for suspicious files

reader comments 54 Google is redesigning Chrome malware detections to include password-protected executable files that users can upload for deep scanning, a change the browser maker says will allow it to detect more malicious threats. Google has long allowed users to switch on the Enhanced Mode of its Safe Browsing, a Chrome feature that warns… Read More »

Vulnerability in Cisco Smart Software Manager lets attackers change any user password

reader comments 26 Cisco on Wednesday disclosed a maximum-security vulnerability that allows remote threat actors with no authentication to change the password of any user, including those of administrators with accounts, on Cisco Smart Software Manager On-Prem devices. The Cisco Smart Software Manager On-Prem resides inside the customer premises and provides a dashboard for managing… Read More »

Google makes it easier for users to switch on advanced account protection

Getty Images reader comments 17 Google is making it easier for people to lock down their accounts with strong multifactor authentication by adding the option to store secure cryptographic keys in the form of passkeys rather than on physical token devices. Google’s Advanced Protection Program, introduced in 2017, requires the strongest form of multifactor authentication… Read More »

Researchers crack 11-year-old password, recover $3 million in bitcoin

Flavio Coelho/Getty Images reader comments 52 Two years ago when “Michael,” an owner of cryptocurrency, contacted Joe Grand to help recover access to about $2 million worth of bitcoin he stored in encrypted format on his computer, Grand turned him down. Michael, who is based in Europe and asked to remain anonymous, stored the cryptocurrency… Read More »

UK outlaws awful default passwords on connected devices

Getty Images reader comments 29 If you build a gadget that connects to the Internet and sell it in the United Kingdom, you can no longer make the default password “password.” In fact, you’re not supposed to have default passwords at all. A new version of the 2022 Product Security and Telecommunications Infrastructure Act (PTSI)… Read More »

Attack wrangles thousands of web users into a password-cracking botnet

Getty Images reader comments 23 Attackers have transformed hundreds of hacked sites running WordPress software into command-and-control servers that force visitors’ browsers to perform password-cracking attacks. A web search for the JavaScript that performs the attack showed it was hosted on 708 sites at the time this post went live on Ars, up from 500… Read More »

Researcher uncovers one of the biggest password breaches in recent history

Getty Images reader comments 42 Nearly 71 million unique credentials stolen for logging into websites such as Facebook, Roblox, eBay, and Yahoo have been circulating on the Internet for at least four months, a researcher said Wednesday. Troy Hunt, operator of the Have I Been Pwned? breach notification service, said the massive amount of data… Read More »