Barnes & Noble Suffer Major Cyber Incident

In a still-developing story, it was reported by Bleeping Computer that Barnes and Noble, the well-known US book retailer, appeared to have suffered a cyber incident of some kind. Barnes and Noble is the largest brick-and-mortar bookstore in the US with over 600 stories spread across the country. Further, the company also operates Nook, the popular eBook and eReader platform. It appeared that something was not right when customers of the company took to social media to complain about service blackouts. Customers began taking to various social media platforms to enquire, and in some cases complain, as to why certain Nook services were inaccessible on October 10, 2020. Many of the problems reported by customers involved not being able to access their library of purchased eBooks and magazine subscriptions. Often attempts to do so online or on their Nook, customers experienced no joy as the library was coming up blank...

Smashtab Browser Hijacker

Smashtab is a piece of rogue software, classified as a browser hijacker. Following successful installation, it makes changes to browser settings - to promote smashtab.net - a fake search engine. Additionally, Smashtab has data tracking abilities, which are used to spy on users' browsing activity. Due to the questionable methods used to distribute browser hijackers, they are deemed to be PUAs (Potentially Unwanted Applications). Browser hijackers primarily target popular browsers with large user bases. They operate by reassigning browsers' homepage, default search engine and new tab/window URLs - to the addresses of fake web searchers. Therefore, with such a piece of software installed: every new browser tab/window opened and search query typed into the URL bar - redirect to the promoted address. Smashtab also makes these modifications to browsers and the aforementioned actions redirect to smashtab.net. I...