Today’s Cyberthreats: Stolen Starbucks, Hacking the Hackers
Each weekday, TechNewsDaily’s colleagues at SecurityNewsDaily give us a roundup on what’s worrying the guardians of cyberspace. Here’s what’s happening:
SOME THEFT WITH THAT COFFEE? Starbucks’ new iPhone and BlackBerry app that lets caffeine addicts pay for their fixes with their phones has a glaring security flaw, according to one expert. The app works by generating a barcode, which is then read by a cash-register scanner. But a third party could simply snap a photo of the barcode on your phone with his own smartphone, then use the image to make you pay for his coffee.
HACKING THE HACKERS: The skirmish between a small Washington, D.C.-area security firm and the “hacktivists” of Anonymous keeps producing more collateral damage. Leaked e-mails from the firm show that it and two other companies proposed hacking into servers belonging to WikiLeaks and various liberal groups at the behest of a New York law firm whose clients included Bank of America (a likely WikiLeaks target) and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce (a pro-business tax-exempt group that funded many GOP candidates in the recent midterm Congressional elections).
SHHH! NO CYBERSPYING: Staffers at two public libraries in a posh suburb of Manchester, England, were surprised to find keystroke loggers plugged into general-use PCs last week. The USB devices look like flash drives, but actually collect every keystroke typed into the computers, a ripe trove of data for identity thieves and fraudsters of all sorts.
