Items tagged with security
Following the initial leaks against the NSA by Edward Snowden this past summer, there was speculation that what was being exposed would end up hurting the business of US-based tech companies overseas. It's easy to understand why - when it's discovered that a country has been literally spying on those in friendly...
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The train carrying a vast amount of NSA confidential information continues to trek along today, with a revelation that the government agency conducted man-in-the-middle (MITM) attacks involving a couple of the Web's largest companies. Falling under the guise of "FLYING PIG", one of the main traffic sources to...
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Microsoft may need to take yet another mulligan on more Patch Tuesday updates that, for some, are causing more problems than they purport to fix. The latest round of updates were supposed to address 14 security flaws, though some users are complaining that certain patches are causing weird and frustrating problems...
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Over the past few months, as the Snowden leaks have exposed increasing levels of detail about the scope and nature of the NSA's "oversight" of the Internet, there's been a great deal of discussion on how users can protect themselves. The latest leaks from the Guardian, New York Times, and Pro Publica shed light on...
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TRENDnet, a maker of home networking and security products, has agreed to settle charges brought on by the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) alleging that its "lax security practices" left consumers susceptible to remote viewing by hackers. Specifically, the FTC took issue with TRENDnet's SecurView line of cameras and...
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If you’ve been avoiding signing up for Google’s two-token authentication system because you thought the inconvenience outweighed the extra security for your Google account, you’re probably feeling pretty smug about now. An update today for the Google Authenticator iPhone app wiped out user data for...
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Samsung has previously rolled out a mobile security solution with KNOX, which is for Android devices and has been marketed to enterprises, primarily aimed at enhancing security amidst the BYOD trend. Earlier this year, KNOX was deemed a strong enough solution on Samsung mobile devices that the U.S. government approved...
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Yesterday, we reported that two security researchers successfully reverse-engineered Dropbox, intercepting SSL traffic and bypassing its two-factor authentication. The duo that did it, Dhiru Kholia and Przemyslaw Wegrzyn, wrote a paper on the process and said that although Dropbox has been quick to plug any holes in its security, the service...
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The typical smartphone contains a wealth of information, including contacts, photos, text messages, and more. They also serve as portals to cloud services, so you can imagine how stressful it would be to misplace one of these devices. Plus, they're expensive to replace. Be that as it may, security outfit Avast claims...
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Another day, another thing-that-is-hacked. This time it was popular cloud storage service Dropbox, but fortunately, the hackers were security researchers. Two of them, actually, named Dhiru Kholia and Przemyslaw Wegrzyn, who found a way to reverse engineer Dropbox, which the SD Times calls a heavily obfuscated Python...
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Android may have been birthed as an operating system for digital cameras, but after being acquired by Google, it's since grown to become the most popular mobile OS in the world. Cyber criminals have taken notice, and according to a study by the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and Federal Bureau of Investigation...
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Privacy and security have been steaming-hot topics these past few months, and as evidenced in comment sections around the Web, they're topics not everyone can agree on. This latest story, of a school district in Glendale, California, is likely to have the same divided opinion. To help keep an eye on student goings-on...
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Orbit Downloader is a nifty tool. It’s a web browser file downloading add-on, and it lets users more easily manage their downloaded files, download embedded videos, speed up downloads, and more. Unfortunately, it’s also apparently now an effective tool for delivering Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attacks. The ESET security...
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The game's acronym may inspire laughter, but a recent hacking targeting it is as serious as a heart-attack (alright, maybe not that serious). Riot Games, LoL's developer, posted on its website this week that 120,000 transaction records from 2011 have been exposed (to someone, or some group), although thanks to the...
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Well, that’s one way to prove a point. One Khalil Shreateh (pictured), after discovering a bug in Facebook that allows users to post on someone else’s Timeline even if they’re not friends, failed to get Facebook’s attention regarding the matter. So he used the exploit he found to post on Mark Zuckerberg’s wall....
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It’s not news that Android has some security problems, but here’s another one: Android wallets aren’t secure. According to Bitcoin, the issue stems from a secure random number generator in the OS itself, which is vulnerable to exploits. The generator is needed to secure the wallets, so thus, the wallets are not secure. Bitcoin...
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One of the worst things about Web security - and perhaps security in general - is that many people don't pay any attention to it. When Chrome, or another Web browser, asks you to store a password, do you happen to think about how it's stored, or how vulnerable it may leave you? A number of years ago, when I was...
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One of the most frustrating things on earth is being censored, and if there's one group that likes to be vocal in battling such things, it's The Pirate Bay. Censorship can come in many forms, however, such as restricting what you can say in public, or which websites you can visit. TPB might not be able to take care of...
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During a speech to the Bipartisan Policy Center in Washington, DC on cybersecurity, former NSA and CIA chief Michael Hayden confessed that if whistleblower Edward Snowden is captured by the US and brought back for trial, cyber-attacks by his defenders can be expected. While I find it hard to agree with most of what...
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You should always practice caution when connection to an unsecured Wi-Fi hotspot, but Windows Phone users need to be extra careful due to a newly discovered vulnerability in Microsoft's mobile operating system. If a Windows Phone user connects to the 'wrong' hotspot, a hacker could sniff out and steal their domain...
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As the prevalence of the Android OS grows, so grows a commensurate vector for malicious attacks from malware. Apparently, the number of malicious apps is growing, too. According to a study released by security software maker Trend Micro, the number of malicious and high-risk Android apps has jumped to about 718,000--which is more startling...
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Getting hacked is a bummer and can leave you feeling violated, but we can only imagine what it's like to get hacked in the most sacred room of the house: the bathroom. For those who own a luxury Satis toilet controlled by an accompanying smartphone application, it's entirely possible to fall prey to a hacker attack while you're doing your...
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