SecurityWeek

South Korean President Park Geun-Hye on Friday appointed an army general to the new post of national cyber-security tsar, tasked with defending against North Korean hacking attacks.

IBM has unearthed evidence of an international cybercrime operation that has plundered more than $1 million from the corporate accounts of U.S. businesses.

Researchers at Malwarebytes have identified an attack campaign believed to be exploiting a vulnerability in a WordPress plugin.

Snapchat, the social network known for its disappearing messages, released its first transparency report Thursday showing hundreds of requests from US and foreign law enforcement agencies. Between November 1 and February 28, Snapchat said it received 375 requests from US law enforcement officials, and produced at least some data in 92 percent of those cases.

SSL – the bell tolls for thee.

Google said Thursday that malware infections on Android devices have been cut in half in the past year following security upgrades for the mobile platform. In a security review for 2014, Google said it made significant strides for the platform long seen as weak on security.

Austin Alcala, a 19-year-old of McCordsville, Indiana, has admitted being part of a cybercriminal group that targeted Microsoft and several video game companies, the U.S.

The recent executive order signed by President Obama establishing a sanctions program for overseas cyber-attackers gives the government a new tool to deter malicious attacks. The challenge lies in knowing who to punish, security experts warned.

Cisco has addressed several denial-of-service (DoS) vulnerabilities in Cisco Unity Connection, the company’s unified messaging platform.The security holes affect Cisco Unity Connection version 10.0 and prior, but only if the product is configured with Session Initiation Protocol (SIP) trunk integration. Skinny Call Control Protocol (SCCP) integrations are not impacted.

Cyber threat intelligence firm IID announced this week that Emerging Threats, a provider of threat intelligence recently acquired by Proofpoint for $40 million, will make some of its data available via IID's threat intelligence management system, ActiveTrust.

Network and data security firm Check Point Software Technologies (NADAQ:CHKP) said on Thursday that it would acquire Lacoon Mobile Security, a provider of enterprise security solutions for iOS and Android devices.

Researchers at Trend Micro have identified a 64-bit version of NewPosThings, a point-of-sale (PoS) malware designed to steal payment card and other sensitive information from infected systems.

Small and midsized businesses (SMBs) are the engine of the recovering economy. According to recent U.S. government numbers, just over 60 percent of the U.S. private sector workforce is now employed by companies with fewer than 1,000 employees. Not only are SMBs significant employers, they are also among the earliest adopters of new technologies.

Following the incident in which an Egypt-based company issued unauthorized digital certificates for several Google domains using an intermediate certificate from the China Internet Network Information Center (CNNIC), the search giant has decided to revoke trust in CNNIC certificates.

Negotiating with criminals is risky, but it is apparently a risk some people are willing to take if it is going to get them their data back.