Host Card Emulation (HCE) is a mobile technology that emulates a physical smart card using only software. It gives payment issuers more control and flexibility over their mobile payments strategy as credentials can be stored on a remote server rather than on the mobile (NFC) device.

Manual Imprinter

Scottsdale, Ariz. (June 12, 2014) — On Tuesday, June 10, P.F. Chang's learned of a security compromise that involves credit and debit card data reportedly stolen from some of our restaurants. Immediately, we initiated an investigation with the United States Secret Service and a team of third-party forensics experts to understand the nature and scope of the incident, and while the investigation is still ongoing, we have concluded that data has been compromised. 
At P.F. Chang's, the safety and security of our guests' payment information is a top priority. Therefore, we have moved to a manual credit card imprinting system for all P.F. Chang's China Bistro branded restaurants located in the continental United States. This ensures our guests can still use their credit and debit cards safely in our restaurants as our investigation continues.

the National Science Foundation (NSF) revealed that more than $8,000 (£4,760) worth of bitcoins had been generated from NSF-funded computers. 
The researcher said he was conducting tests. 
Equipment worth $150,000 (£89,230) at the government-backed organisation was used to mine the digital currency.

A member of the Harvard community was stripped of his or her access to the University’s research computing facilities last week after setting up a “dogecoin” mining operation using a Harvard research network. 
The individual in question allegedly utilized the high-powered network that Harvard calls the “Odyssey cluster” to collect the coins.
The Odyssey cluster is a bunch of computers networked together in a way that allows fast data transfer between processors. 

While researching POS RAM scraper malware, I came across an interesting sample: a RAR archive that contained a development version of a POS RAM Scraper malware and a cracked copy of Ground Labs’ Card Recon software. Card Recon is a commercial Data Leakage Prevention (DLP) product used by merchants for PCI compliance. It looks like the criminal gangs are using the RAM scrapers to dump memory, and (ironically) using DLP to find the cards. 

The criminals need to check and validate the data they have stolen, which they then sell in the underground carder marketplace. Selling bad data will damage their reputation and might even have nastier repercussions than merely losing credibility.
The malware will use the regex to capture data from the RAM and then use the function Luhn to validate the data. This function takes a string as input and returns a Boolean value: true or false. Invalid data is discarded, and the malware exfiltrates only valid results.
While this code is functional, it’s not particularly suitable for high-volume data collection: it’s just too computationally intensive. Using an offline DLP solution like the cracked Card Recon is ideal. If you recall the massive Target data breach from last year, pragmatically validating 70 million payment cards is best done outside any compromised network.

A number of forums devoted to Bitcoin have been filled with husbands discussing the option of using digital currencies, a London divorce lawyer has claimed. 
It comes as courts are facing more legal battles from divorcing spouses who claim the other side has tried to conceal their wealth.
It is feared that spouses could use Bitcoin to hide wealth by transferring the currency between online wallets, to friends, or to areas outside of legal jurisdiction.Ayesha Vardag said that more divorce lawyers could start including digital currency in financial disclosure orders if there is evidence they have been used.
Courts in California are already beginning to issue search and discovery orders of assets - including digital currencies such as Bitcoin.