reports

Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates has had his credit information exposed by hackers. It's only the latest in a string of similar attacks launched against celebrities in recent weeks. According to reports, Gates' personal financial information was ... acquired by hackers and then shared online. The Federal Bureau of Investigation is currently trying to figure out how the data was accessed and who was responsible for the attack. Somewhat ironically, the attack occurred on the same day that Bill Gates discussed pressing cyber security threats with the Washington Post newspaper. Security Answers Found ... (view more)

More spam emails come from India than any other country, according to a pair of new reports from separate, reputable sources. SophosLabs has issued a report saying that 9.3 per cent of all spam messages transmitted in the first quarter of 2012 were ... relayed through India before arriving in people's inboxes. The firm lists the United States in second place with 8.3 per cent of spam, and South Korea in third at 5.7 per cent. (Source: sophos.com ) In a separate report on the same subject covering the same time period, security firm Trend Micro also put India in first place, but attributing 20 per ... (view more)

Israelis have recently been hit with one of the largest credit card hacks in recent memory. An estimated 20,000 people in that Mid-East nation have found their financial information exposed to web users by an unknown hacker claiming to be from Saudi ... Arabia. Israeli authorities believe the attack, which officials first detected on Tuesday (January 3, 2012), qualifies as cyber-terrorism. Other experts, however, believe it's too early in the hacking cycle to determine exactly what motivated the attack or who, precisely, may have been behind it. (Source: nytimes.com ) Exposed Credit Card Accounts ... (view more)

Valve Corporation, which is behind the major online video game retailer and social networking platform Steam, has been hacked. According to reports, gamer credit cards have been compromised, as well. Steam is a major online gaming platform that ... provides nearly 2,000 games for play by some 35 million users based in 237 countries. Not only can visitors to the site download games, but they can also use the platform to easily organize multiplayer sessions, and can interact with one another through instant messaging. User Database Infiltrated by Hackers Given the massive size of Steam's user base ... (view more)

The Washington Post reports that at least 8.3 million personal and financial records of consumers were potentially compromised by data spills or breaches at businesses, universities and government agencies in the first quarter of 2008, according to ... a report released from the Identity Theft Resource Center. The Identity Theft Resource Center ( ITRC ), based in San Diego tracked public reports of 167 data breaches in the first three months of 2008. 448 data breaches were recorded in 2007 by the ITRC. Detailed breakdowns from the first quarter of 2008 are available from the ITRC here (PDF) and ... (view more)