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News briefs: May 2016

»Apple has found itself the winner of what can only be called a very dubious honor: The brand most used by scammers to trick victims into opening a phishing email, according to a new study by the security firm Area 1. Apple was given a boost this year, the report said, by its near-constant presence in the headlines as it battled with the FBI over whether it should unlock an iPhone used by one of the San Bernardino, Calif. shooters.

»Hacktivist group Anonymous made good on its promise to launch a full frontal assault on Donald Trump, revealing private information, including his Social Security number and cell phone, while chiding the billionaire presidential hopeful in a video, saying he “should have expected us.”

»Trend Micro researchers spotted a new ransomware variant, dubbed Petya, that is delivered to victims who believe they are linking to a résumé stored on a cloud storage site like Dropbox.

»Known for its highly respected “Data Breach Investigations Report,” Verizon Enterprise Solutions suffered its own data breach after a cybercriminal was discovered selling information linked to 1.5 million Verizon customers.

»In a post-Valentine's Day attack, the e-commerce site of 1-800-FLOWERS was accessed by an unauthorized person for more than a day during which time about 7,000 customers placing orders on the site may have had their personal and payment information compromised.

»The Internal Revenue Service has dramatically increased the number of citizens impacted by a May 2015 breach to 700,000 from the original 114,000 originally announced. The additional victims were discovered during the IRS's ongoing investigation into the the incursion.

»A Seagate employee was victimized by a phishing scam and unknowingly emailed the income tax data for current and some former company employees to an unauthorized third party making them all potentially vulnerable to potential income tax refund fraud.

»A new security report from Kaspersky Lab is shedding light on Steam Stealer, a growing family of malware that hackers are using to steal credentials for the Steam online gaming platform from Valve Corporation for eventual resale on the black market.

»David Kent, founder of the Houston-based professional networking website Oilpro.com, was arrested on charges relating to computer hacking and wire fraud. The DoJ alleges that Kent repeatedly hacked into a competitor's site to siphon off customer information and then tried to sell his company's services to that company. Kent, 40, of Spring, Texas, formerly owned the business he allegedly hacked into, Website-1. He was charged with one count of conspiracy to commit computer hacking and wire fraud (which carries a maximum term of five years in prison), and one count of wire fraud (which carries a maximum term of 20 years in prison).

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