CloudPets' internet-facing MongoDB installation, on port 2701 at 45.79.147.159, required no authentication to access, and was repeatedly extorted by miscreants, evidence shows. The database contains links to .WAV files of voice messages hosted in the Amazon cloud, again accessible with no authentication, potentially allowing the mass slurping of more than two million highly personal conversations between families and their little ones.

As proof that CloudPets' security was hopeless, Hunt's informant provided him more than 580,000 records from the CloudPets database, along with screenshots of three attempts to alert the toy manufacturer to the gaping hole. Each warning, we're told, fell on deaf ears.

Hunt concluded: “The CloudPets data was accessed many times by unauthorised parties before being deleted and then on multiple occasions, held for ransom.”

Wix said that it will continue to operate DeviantArt as a standalone site, but it will also use it to boost its own business in a couple of ways.

Wix will open up DeviantArt’s repository of art and creative community to the Wix platform, giving Wix’s users access to that work to use in their own site building.

“For example, in January 2017, the most prolific submitter submitted notices that Google honored for 16,457,433 URLs. But on further inspection, 16,450,129 (99.97%) of those URLs were not in our search index in the first place.”

A proactive takedown of a non-existent URL necessarily happens in advance of any determination of whether that URL is infringing, which goes way beyond any legislation currently being demanded.

"He is accused of being the mastermind behind the attack," Cologne public prosecutor Dr Daniel Vollmert told the Press Association.

Once hijacked, the routers would be used to mount what is known as "distributed denial of service" attacks. These attempt to knock sites and servers offline by sending them more data than they can handle.

The programme, which encourages youngsters to develop useful computer skills, is also informing parents of the signs they may encounter if their children are on the path to becoming cybercriminals.

While readers may be unconcerned that their children are doing illegal things online, Warrington told the Echo that "children as young as eight have gotten involved in hacking, and most often it starts with online gaming."

The company said Thursday that the number of people regularly using the service grew by less than 1 percent despite Trump's prolific and often controversial tweeting, a deal with the NFL to broadcast games, and a new push to stream live video.

Twitter's shares plummeted as much as 18 percent and were down 12.4 percent when the market closed Thursday.

Behind the scenes, a tired sysadmin, working late at night in the Netherlands, had accidentally deleted a directory on the wrong server during a frustrating database replication process: he wiped a folder containing 300GB of live production data that was due to be replicated.

"So in other words, out of 5 backup/replication techniques deployed none are working reliably or set up in the first place."

At the time of writing, GitLab says it has no estimated restore time but is working to restore from a staging server that may be “without webhooks” but is “the only available snapshot.” That source is six hours old, so there will be some data loss.

The tool is part of Facebook's larger push to develop technology that will make passwords unnecessary, Hill wrote.

To use this tool, you'll have to wait for your favorite web services to implement it. Facebook released an open-source protocol that any online service can use to let you prove you are who you say you are with your Facebook account.

The largest network ties together more than 350,000 accounts and further work suggests others may be even bigger.

The pair's most recent work had uncovered a bigger network of bots that seemed to include more than 500,000 accounts.

To have normal access the web, Chinese users have resorted VPNs, which bypass the censorship firewall. But now these services are the target of a new 14-month "cleanup" campaign that cracks down on "unauthorized internet connections."

Apart from VPNs, the campaign also requires all internet service providers, content distribution networks and data centers operated in the country to be licensed by the government.