The impending loss of third-party digital cookies will soon force the e-commerce advertising industry to shift its strategies fast. These developments are issuing a real blow to advertisers seeking to leverage third-party data. At issue now is how brands will regroup from these substantial changes to online advertising.

Early adopters seeking a premature peek of Windows 11 via unauthorized channels may be in for a nasty surprise -- a dose of malware. Kaspersky Lab reports that an unofficial installer is in the wild that promises to install the next version of Microsoft's ubiquitous operating system on a user's computer -- but actually contains a malicious payload.

Anyone with a stake in keeping ahead of cybersecurity assaults and enterprise network intrusions through API vulnerabilities can now tap into expert advisories and security reports. API security company Salt Security last week launched Salt Labs, a now-public forum for publishing research on API vulnerabilities.

Called Email Protection, the feature will be initially distributed through a waiting list that anyone can add their name to. Consumers chosen from the list will be able to create a personal @duck.com email address. Email sent to the @duck address will be denuded of trackers before being forwarded to a consumer's primary email address.

Shouldn't you get paid when businesses use your personal information gleaned from the internet? How much is your personal data posted online worth to you? Would you register your personal data so that you get paid when companies track you and use your own data to target you for ads? That is precisely what Invisibly lets you do.

Ransomware gangs are increasingly turning to specialists to complete their capers on corporations, according to a Dark Net intelligence provider. A report issued by Tel Aviv-based Kela noted that the days when lone wolves conducted cyberattacks from start to finish are nearly extinct, as the one-man show has given way to specialization.

Thousands of hacker attacks were launched on a network of smart home devices designed by researchers to assess the risk the gadgets pose to consumers. During the initial week the "honeypot" network was online, 1,017 unique scans or hacking attempts were directed at the devices on the net, which included smart TVs, printers, wireless security cameras and Wi-Fi kettles.

Microsoft recently disclosed that it too was no doubt a victim of the same Russian-based hacker gang responsible for the SolarWinds onslaught. As some of the details surrounding the cyberattack become known, the bleak disclosures might justifiably cause a sniffled gasp indicating that if Microsoft can be breached, what hope is left for everyone else?

Cancel culture and politics aside, one of the more brutal threats lurking in the shadows of the internet is the slander industry. All too often, unsuspecting people become victims of websites that promote slanderous, often unverified information about individuals. This false and vilifying information lives on the internet forever and can sully an otherwise spotless reputation.

Clients of SolarWinds, which experienced a high-profile data breach last year, are being targeted in a probe by the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, according to a Reuters report. "The impact of these large-scale breaches clearly has the potential to destabilize stock prices and the broader stock market, so it makes sense that the SEC would pursue such a line of inquiry," said Oliver Tavakoli, CTO of Vectra AI.

Reports of a data breach of TurboTax have been overblown, according to Intuit which owns the tax preparation platform. Several news outlets recently reported that an unspecified number of TurboTax accounts were compromised in a wave of credential stuffing attacks. Those kinds of attacks exploit credentials stolen from other websites and reused at the TurboTax site.

Organizations, regardless of industry, must do a better job maintaining open source components given their critical nature in software, according to this year's risk analysis report by cybersecurity firm Synopsys.

A Russian-language dark web marketplace called Hydra that is known to facilitate the illegal sale of narcotics has seen cryptocurrency transactions soar over the last five years. According to a report by Flashpoint and Chainalysis, Hydra's crypto business began accelerating in 2017 after its chief competitor was shut down by Russian law enforcement authorities.

That old adage about crime never pays could not be more false, at least when it comes to modern-day cybercriminals. For those bad actors using ransomware as their weapon, crime is paying more than ever. A new report by the eSentire security research team found that six ransomware gangs claimed at least 290 new victims fo far this year. The combined spoils tallied potentially $45 million for the hackers.

IT experts at the hacked Colonial Pipeline did a good job in mitigating the May 7 cyberattack and successfully stopped it when discovered by shutting down the network. But the attack was mostly invisible in the weeks-long initial stages, according to a briefing NTT Security executives conducted Tuesday.

New research by threat detection and response firm Vectra AI shows that the most common threats to corporate networks remain consistent throughout all companies -- regardless of their size. Researchers calculated the relative frequency of threat detections that were triggered during a three-month span. The results detail the top 10 threat detections that customers receive by relative frequency.

As the value of cryptocurrencies continue to soar, new investors are eager to get in on the action, and scammers are more than willing to accommodate them. According to the Federal Trade Commission, claims of losses from cryptocurrency fraud skyrocketed from October 2020 to March 2021. The median loss reported neared a 1,000 percent increase over the same period a year ago.

Cybercriminals are deliberately targeting phones, tablets, and Chromebooks to increase their odds of finding a vulnerable entry point. The Financial Services Threat Report from Lookout disclosed that 20 percent of mobile banking customers had a trojanized app on their devices when trying to sign into their personal mobile banking account.

Advancements in 5G connectivity and accelerated digital transformation of business operations creates heightened risk and expanded attack surfaces for security teams to harden and protect. Now, efforts by several internet industry groups are focused on new measures to fix inherent security weaknesses with the rapidly expanded use of IoT devices for enterprises and consumers.

The 2021 edition of Proofpoint's Voice of the CISO report -- based on a survey of more than 1,400 CISOs in 14 countries -- found 66 percent of the executives acknowledged their organizations were unprepared to handle a targeted cyberattack this year. In addition, more than half the CISOs admitted they are more concerned about the repercussions from a cyberattack this year than they were in 2020.

More than 90 percent of U.S. users of the latest version of Apple's mobile operating system iOS 14.5 are taking advantage of a new feature to block an application's ability to track their activity on their phones. Worldwide, 88 percent of users shut down app tracking on their iPhones. This is bad news for advertisers.

As cryptocurrency values continue to rise, cryptojacking becomes more attractive to cybercriminals. Now, a powerful hardware-based threat detection technology is being integrated into a Microsoft enterprise security product to help protect businesses from cryptojacking malware. The action integrates Intel Threat Detection Technology with Microsoft Defender for Endpoint.

The notorious Emotet botnet software began uninstalling itself from some one million computers Sunday. The uninstall command was part of an update sent to the infected computers by law enforcement servers in the Netherlands after Emotet's infrastructure was compromised in January during a multinational operation mounted by eight nations.

From coin shortages and curbside operations to contactless transactions, how consumers pay for their purchases has been completely transformed during the pandemic. Marketers expect that transformation to continue and expand. It is not just family staples that are seeing a jump in consumer digital payment options. The retail and gaming sectors are also leading the digital charge.

DuckDuckGo has announced an add-on to the Chrome browser that blocks Google's new scheme to provide marketers with information for targeting advertising at Internet users. The scheme called FLoC -- Federated Learning of Cohorts -- is being tested in Chrome, in some cases without the knowledge of the browser's users.

A recent study from Consumer Reports' Digital Lab reveals that 96 percent of Americans agree that more should be done to protect consumer privacy. But don't expect to see a whole new alternative Internet emerging any year soon. Instead, you will see a focus on software offerings built around privacy and security rather than hardware.

A set of flaws in a widely used network communication protocol that could affect millions of devices has been revealed by Forescout Research Labs and JSOF Research. The nine vulnerabilities discovered by security researchers dramatically increase the attack surface of at least 100 million Internet of Things devices, exposing them to potential attacks that could take the devices offline or to be hijacked by threat actors.

Jonathan Cran, founder and CEO of Intrigue, a cybersecurity startup based in Austin, Texas, used his company's network security tools to compile a list of Fortune 500 companies still exposed to last month's Microsoft Exchange breach. Potentially, many of those companies may not know their networks are compromised.

Startup information security firm Intrigue has announced a US$2 million seed round led by LiveOak Venture Partners for a new attack service management platform that helps secure enterprise networks. The Intrigue tools scan all public, exposed attack surfaces inside and outside a company. The seed funding will also support the security and developer communities contributing to Intrigue Core.

Businesses fearful their workers may be targeted by fraudsters will want to take a look at the free Tax Scam Awareness Kit offered by Proofpoint. The kit, for both Windows and macOS, includes materials for an employee education campaign about tax fraud, three educational videos, an infographic, answers to frequently asked questions about tax scams, and a tax scam flyer.