Hotel chain data heist latest in string of major security leaks.

The global hotel chain Best Western has had its network security breached, leading to full details of thousands of its customers being harvested and made available for sale on hacker websites. The haul of sensitive information is one of the biggest in a wave of data leakage scandals over the past few months, and the discovery followed hot on the heels of yet another example, with an archiving firm specialising in banking data found to have allowed data on thousands of bank customers to leak out, via insecure retirement of hardware.

The Best Western incident was uncovered by Scottish newspaper the Sunday Herald, whose report suggests that login codes were acquired by implanting a trojan on hotel systems, and then used to access and download customer databases. Hackers made off with as many as 8 million separate records, relating to bookings made since 2007 and including complete details of customers' home addresses, phone numbers, employment details and travel plans, in what the article aptly describes as 'a complete identity-theft kit'. The full report is at the Sunday Herald here.

Posted by Justin Payton in Adware, Spyware and Trojans at 09:59

After learning of a possible email hoax, the Better Business Bureau in Bryan is warning area residents to be careful when opening email attachments.

The bogus email from UPS or FedEx is alerting consumers they have a shipment that cannot be delivered.

In the email, recipients are directed to open an attachment, but officials are warning people not to open it because the attachment contains a virus.

Posted by Justin Payton in Adware, Spyware and Trojans at 15:53

Viruses intended to steal passwords and send them to a remote server infected laptops in the International Space Station in July, NASA confirmed Tuesday.

And according to NASA, this wasn't the first infection.

"This is not the first time we have had a worm or a virus," NASA spokesman Kelly Humphries said. "It's not a frequent occurrence, but this isn't the first time."

That suggests that even in the future where space travel becomes an experience to complain about, rather than get dressed up for, computer viruses will still be tagging along uninvited.

NASA downplayed the news, calling the virus mainly a "nuisance" that was on non-critical space station laptops used for things like e-mail and nutritional experiments.

NASA and its partners in the space station are now trying to figure out how the virus made it onboard and how to prevent that in the future, according to Humphries.

Posted by Justin Payton in Adware, Spyware and Trojans at 09:27

Postgraduate students at a Scottish university are to be taught the art of computer hacking.

The MSc Ethical Hacking and Computer Security course at Abertay University will explore the methods criminals use to attack networks.

Students will learn how to test systems for vulnerabilities and come up with ways to protect them.

It is predicted that a couple of years after completing the course graduates could be earning about £55,000.

The university already runs an undergraduate course in Ethical Hacking and Countermeasures.

Posted by Justin Payton in Adware, Spyware and Trojans at 16:22