Ransomware is a global problem that can strike individual, organizations, and even health institutions to disastrous results. It demands that the user send money, typically in the form of cryptocurrency to the attackers to have their devices and files unlocked. An old ransomware threat called Black Rose Lucy that was...
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Bicyclist Zachary McCoy found himself at the center of a police investigation thanks to his Android phone's location-tracking information. McCoy was riding his bicycle while using fitness tracking app RunTracker to record his rides. The man says that one Tuesday afternoon in January, he received an email from Google's...
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It's all fun and games until a nasty bit of malware infiltrates your PC and wreaks havoc, right? To quote the late, great Bill Paxton, at that point it's "Game over man! Game over!" Fortunately, common sense computing habits are highly effective. Malware writers can be a clever, however, and security researchers are...
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Enabling two-factor authentication (2FA) wherever possible is generally recommended—it helps keeps the hackers at bay, even if your password has been compromised. Better security is a reward in and of itself. Electronic Arts is taking things a step further, though, by gifting a free month of Origin Access who lock...
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Microsoft is warning Windows users of several new "wormable" exploits similar in style to BlueKeep, two of which are tagged as critical Remote Code Execution (RCE) vulnerabilities. As with BlueKeep, which Microsoft patched a few months ago, the exploits exist within the Remote Desktop Services protocol (formerly known...
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As has been warned in the past, if your company uses Box to share files and is employing a custom domain, you might be exposing confidential data. That is not because of a bug or vulnerability in Box. Instead, it's due to improperly configured settings that could allow a snoop to find your files.
Security firm...
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We have all heard of the dark web: a lawless digital world, uncharted and unstructured, full of data -- much of it illegally acquired and illegally for sale -- that cannot be viewed without special tools: proxy servers, TOR browsers, and the like. It's a murky and mysterious place, a place where much information...
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An increasing number of companies and agencies are turning to facial recognition technology for various things, but is it really ready for prime time? It's a valid question in the wake of some concerning developments, the latest of which involves the South Wales police force using facial recognition technology to scan...
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It looks as though Microsoft has a bit of a security issue on its hands that affects both Windows 7 and Windows 10 operating systems. Back in July 2017, Bitdefender researcher Marius Tivadar discovered an exploit in Windows operating systems that allows anyone with physical access to a computer to invoke a BSOD by...
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Are consumers putting too much trust into smart speakers that a monitor their surroundings and send recorded data over the web? That is a question that was recently posed, drawing a comment from the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) calling digital assistants and other IoT devices a "triple threat to privacy." Now...
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A security company called Armis is spilling the beans on a collection of eight different exploits that it is collectively calling BlueBorne. These exploits can allow a hacker access to your phone in seconds without having physical access to the device. Perhaps the scariest part of the exploit is that BlueBorne isn't...
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There are lots of obvious examples of how IoT (Internet of Things) connected and smart devices can enrich our lives. However, as we've noted numerous times over the past year, there are a number of caveats that can also come with them. The glaring issue of course has to do with security, or the lack of it really. And...
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Researchers at Aarhus University in Denmark caused quite the online kerfuffle when they posted personal information of nearly 70,000 users registered at OkCupid, a popular online dating website. The data dump contained usernames, ages, gender, religion, personality traits, and answers to questions designed to help the...
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Have you ever seen a dog chase its own tail? That pretty much describes what's going on at BBC News this morning. The site suffered a pretty large distributed denial of service (DDoS) attack earlier today, one that knocked out the company's entire network and iPlayer streaming service, causing grief for web visitors...
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Canadian phone maker BlackBerry today announced that it's pulling out of Pakistan next month due to government requests to monitor communications of its customers. Even though BlackBerry's struggling to regain share of the global smartphone and mobile OS markets, the company said that forfeiting its commitment to...
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It's been an exciting week for BlackBerry, its fans, and those who've been wanting to see the company score some big success with a new smartphone release. Kicking the week off, the company's PRIV smartphone was shown off in good detail, which included specs in addition to a close-up of the hardware design. Continuing...
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With its upcoming PRIV smartphone, BlackBerry needs to strike the right chord with people. While the company was once a giant in the smartphone market, it's taken a nosedive in recent years, and has yet to deliver a product that anyone would consider a "win". Fortunately, PRIV does boast a couple of fantastic...
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A new device from an MIT alumnus will soon be helping police assess dangerous situations from a safe distance. The softball-sized explorer triggers its six cameras when tossed into a room. It then sends the images back to police, where they are rapidly stitched into a panoramic image for tactical assessment. The...
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Like something out of a sci-fi movie, researchers from Binghamton University just published a study on the use of brain signals to replace traditional means of logging into secure accounts, such passwords, fingerprint reading, and even fancy retina scans. What the researchers found is that your brain responds to...
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One of the definitions of irony is "a situation that is strange or funny because things happen in a way that seems to be the opposite of what you expected." So here's a question -- what if a situation seems ironic, only those affected don't find it funny? Is it still ironic? We pose this question because Wink sent out...
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Another week, another breach-related arrest. In Britain, an unnamed 23-year-old man was arrested for being tied to a cyberattack that took place against the US' Department of Defense last June, though the DoD stresses that no data taken affects national security.
The man is accused of accessing DoD systems...
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BlackBerry's bread and butter has always been the enterprise sector, and in a bid to make sure it retains that market, the Canadian handset maker went out and acquired Secusmart, a major player in high-security voice and data encryption and anti-eavesdropping solutions for government organizations, enterprises, and...
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