IHG, The Intercontinental Hotels Group, which owns Crowne Plaza and Holiday Inn, has recently announced a serious data breach that impacted 1174 of its franchise locations. The company reports that their Point of Sale (POS) system was found to have been infected with malware which intercepted and copied credit card transactions between September 29 and December 29, 2016. All but one of the
impacted hotels were located in the US, including:

• 163 in Texas
• 64 in California
• 61 in Florida
• 53 in Indiana
• 50 in Ohio
• 45 in New York
• 42 in Michigan
• And 39 in Illinois

The one hotel outside the US that was also impacted was a Holiday Inn in San Juan, Puerto Rico, making this a far-reaching, carefully orchestrated operation.

The landscape of ransomware attacks is changing. When the malicious software first hit the internet a couple years back, it did so in a big way, primarily targeting large hospitals, insurance companies or other health-related businesses. These high-profile attacks temporarily paralyzed a number of companies, many of whom opted to simply pay the ransom to get their files back instead of wrestling with backup systems.

Last year, the Department of Health and Human Services made headlines by issuing more than a dozen hefty fines to big companies that deal with Protected Health Information for noncompliance with HIPAA regulations.

That trend has continued into 2017, but with a new twist.

Microsoft is in the habit of releasing regular security updates and patches on the second Tuesday of each month. This month, though, in addition to the regular patch, the company’s massive user base got a second update that was rushed through development.

It’s not an overstatement to say that Linksys, to a large degree, powers the web. The company makes a broad range of routers that lie at the heart of everything from small home networks to keeping small and medium sized businesses interconnected.

Unfortunately, a pair of researchers from IOActive recently discovered a total of ten different security vulnerabilities that impact the company’s popular EA3500 router, and more than two dozen other models as well, including models from the company’s Smart Wi-Fi, Wireless-AC and WRT series.

Hackers have once again pushed the envelope. They’ve again come up with a new way to infect target computers and get around whatever detection software is in place. The latest twist is sending encrypted Word files to your employees.

These files are accompanied by an email, describing the attachment as an invoice for some service your company has supposedly paid for.

Each month, hundreds of millions of people rely on Google Maps. It has become the replacement for GPS in most of our cars. We rely on the service for everything from getting simple directions to doing research on a new location you’re scouting out, finding a new restaurant to try out for dinner, looking for nearby service providers and more.

Microsoft is taking some heat, thanks to a nasty exploit in Microsoft Word that is being used to install malware on the PCs of unsuspecting users. The exploit was discovered by both McAfee and security firm FireEye, and based on the joint research by both firms, it has been in use since at least January.

If you shop at GameStop.com, keep an eye on the credit card you used for signs of suspicious activity. According to security researcher Brian Krebs, sources inside the financial industry are reporting that the company’s website was breached between September 2016 and February 2017.

GameStop itself has confirmed that they’ve hired a third party to help them investigate a possible breach.

The city of Dallas, Texas is under siege by hackers.

Not long ago, an unknown hacker took control of several of the city’s signal lights. Even more recently, another hacker commandeered all 156 of the city’s emergency sirens and activated them simultaneously for nearly two hours.