The Marriott hotel chain announced today that their Starwood property has suffered a massive data breach of as many as 500 million guest records. Note that even though the breach was discovered days earlier, they are announcing it on a Friday morning; Friday is known to be the day to announce things if you want them to get the least amount of attention.

Reddit experienced a “security incident” in June, which they announced by email this month (August, 2018). While an email to Reddit users says that the hack affected “account credentials from 2007”, the full story paints a substantially broader picture.

If your child, or someone you know, received a My Friend Cayla doll, a Furby Connect doll, a Q50 children’s smartwatch, or a Sphero BB-8 droid (or quite likely one of a number of other toys or devices aimed at children, and that connect to the Internet via Bluetooth), that device – and thus the child who plays with it or uses it – is at risk of being hacked, personal data stolen, and even a hacker talking to the child, all because of unsecure Bluetooth connections.

A newly announced exploitable security weakness in the WPA2 protocol is spelling trouble for most Internet wi-fi routers, including home routers, and Internet of Things (IoT) devices. The KRACK (Key Reinstallation Attacks) vulnerability in WPA2 has the potential for such widespread security incidents (because WPA2 is deployed nearly everywhere, and because this is not OS-specific, but attacks the router) that the revealing of it was coordinated among the researchers who have discovered it.

Now that the Impact Team hackers put the data of all 37 million Ashley Madison users online, you may be wondering how to check to see whether your email address is exposed in that data dump.

Those of you who breathed a sigh of relief over the hacking of the Ashley Madison adult cheaters site because instead you are on one of the Friend Finder sex hookup sites, such as Adult Friend Finder (AdultFriendFinder.com) – guess what? It turns out that last month Friend Finder Networks, parent company of Adult Friend Finder and other associated sites such as Penthouse.com, Cams.com, iCams.com, and Stripshow.com – totaling over 412 million accounts – was hacked, exposing email addresses, passwords, and IP addresses – everything your spouse or significant other needs to nail you nailing someone else.

This morning many large, widely used Internet sites, including Twitter, Spotify, GitHub, Etsy, Vox, Paypal, Starbucks, Airbnb, Netflix, and Reddit, just to name a few, were taken down and offline owing to a massive distributed denial of service (DDoS) against DNS provider Dyn. Below is a list of all of the sites that we know have been affected – and may still be being affected – by the Dyn DDoS outage. Also, until it’s all fixed, here is a workaround. [UPDATE: It has been confirmed that this was the result of hackers taking advantage of unsecured Internet of Things devices, probably using the Mirai malware.]

Yahoo today released a statement indicating that a data breach that occurred in 2014 may be the most massive breach yet. Moreover, Yahoo is claiming that they believe that the 2014 breach was “state-sponsored”.

Jonathan McRae was arrested while wearing an Anonymous mask during a public hearing regarding election and voting issues in Maricopa county, Arizona. Note that we did not say that he was arrested for wearing the Anonymous mask, but rather while wearing the Anonymous (Guy Fawkes) mask. And, in fact, the mask wasn’t even covering his face (he had it up on his head – see the below video link).

If you ever wondered just who gives in to ransom demands from hackers (which experts always agree one should never do), well, the answer today is Hollywood Presbyterian Medical Center hospital. And to the tune of $17,000 (in the form of 40 bitcoins).

You’ll need to pardon our rant, and if you are easily offended, you may want to skip this article. Because we want to know who the hell lets their kids register their personal information, including home address, pictures, and other personally identifying information or – even more mind-boggling – registers this information for their kids, online?

Did you get a message recently across the top of your Gmail account that says “Warning: We believe state-sponsored attackers may be attempting to compromise your account or computer. Protect yourself now”? Worried that someone may have hacked your Google or Gmail account? Read on…

The hacker group known as Anonymous has declared cyber war on ISIS (the Islamic State, which also goes by ISIL and Daesh). While Anonymous has actually stated this previously, they have stepped up their game, and their public announcements of this war on ISIS, following last Friday’s attacks in Paris. In response to the announcement, ISIS released their own statement, calling Anonymous “idiots”.

Experian, that keeper of your credit information and reputation, has been hacked, and the hackers got away with the personally identifiable information (PII) of 15 million T-Mobile customers and applicants.

As we told our readers last month, the ‘have an affair and cheat on your spouse’ website Ashley Madison was hacked, and information on their “37,765,000 anonymous users” was grabbed by the hackers, who call themselves The Impact Team. Now the Impact Team has dumped and revealed all of the data online, and many people are worrying “Is my email address in the Ashley Madison data?”