Items tagged with security
Surfing the Web unprotected is like running out into traffic and hoping you don't get hit. Chances are you'll end up a hood ornament. Google is doing its part to keep you safe from all the malicious Web traffic out there, and it's been five years since it announced its malware and phishing protection via the company's...
Read more...
A new security post at the Xen.org community blog warns Intel users to patch their operating systems or risk falling prey to a particular type of escalation vulnerability. What makes this warning unique is that it's not related to a software problem only effects Intel users running 64-bit operating systems. This is an...
Read more...
After researchers identified the terrifying Flame malware recently, they called it the most sophisticated cyber weapon they’d ever seen, which is impressive, considering how powerful the Stuxnet and Duqu bugs that wrought havoc in the Middle East a couple of years ago were. As it turns out, Flame and Stuxnet and...
Read more...
Yesterday, there were rumors aplenty that around 6.5 million LinkedIn passwords were stolen and posted on a Russian hacker forum, where the poster presumably was looking for some help decrypting them. LinkedIn, by way of a blog post by CEO Vicente Silveira, has confirmed that at least some of the leaked passwords belong to LinkedIn accounts....
Read more...
It's all fun and games until someone gets hurt, or until someone uses a the same programming language behind one of the most popular mobile games of all time to construct one of the largest cyberweapons the world has ever seen. The folks at Fox News spoke with a number of cyber security experts who said that the...
Read more...
Although we’ve been told anecdotally by industry pros that the cyber security field is actually kind of boring, it sure sounds like a lot of heart-pounding adventure. According to a blog post from Kaspersky Labs, there’s a new cyber weapon tearing through the Middle East called “Flame”. The...
Read more...
This is one of those little tidbits that breaks like a tactical nuke, not because it's a major policy change, but because the company in question has just revealed an astonishing degree of stupidity and is blissfully ignorant of it. In the wake of massive hacks, Blizzard released a statement reassuring world+dog that...
Read more...
Anyone who's been playing with PCs for awhile has probably heard of AVAST Software, makers of the self-titled and popular free antivirus software heralding from the Czech Republic. AVAST is generally considered one of the 'good guys' in the fight against malware, and given the company's track record, it's no surprise...
Read more...
Whether Mac OS X was ever truly secure or just didn’t receive the same attention from cybercriminals as Windows operating systems, Apple was once a bastion of malware invulnerability. Those days are long gone, as recently somewhere between half a million and 600,000 Macs were found to be infected with the Flashback Trojan and security...
Read more...
One of the greatest advantages of choosing an Android device over an iOS equivalent is that Google's open source operating system plays nice with Adobe's Flash platform. Unfortunately, Flash doesn't always play nice with Android users, at least not when it's been mucked with. According to security firm Trend Micro, a fake Flash Player infested...
Read more...
As any software company well knows, there comes a time where you simply cannot support older versions. Try getting Microsoft to give you tech support on Windows 3.1, for example. But that line has always been a fine one, and Adobe has been pushing its luck of late. For instance, Lightroom 3 will never get a RAW...
Read more...
Kudos to California's state Assembly for passing a bill that would make it illegal for employers to pry Facebook usernames and passwords from employees and potential job candidates. Assembly Bill 1844, sponsored by Assemblywoman Nora Campos (D-San Jose), would put all private content on social networks out of reach of...
Read more...
Tens of thousands of Twitter accounts have been compromised in a recent hack attack in which more than 55,000 passwords were leaked and posted to Pastebin by anonymous hackers. Most of the accounts supposedly belonged to spammers, and there were many duplicate entries, Twitter officials pointed out, but to play it...
Read more...
Favicons may seem harmless enough, but according to Mozilla, they can be pretty dangerous. The problem, as Mozilla explains it, is that pesky Web miscreants intentionally misuse and abuse favicons in order to do harm to your PC. How so, you ask? "While the favicon can represent a piece of a site’s identity...
Read more...
This month's Patch Tuesday will plug up less than a dozen vulnerabilities -- 11, to be exact -- in various flavors of Windows, Microsoft Office, Internet Explorer, and other software, Microsoft announced in a Security Bulletin Advance Notification for April 2012. Microsoft issued half a dozen bulletins in all, the same number as last month,...
Read more...
While many have dogmatically adhered to the idea that Macs are impervious to malware, some experts have been warning that it was only a matter of time before the Apple systems were hit with significant bugs. Findings like the one from Doctor Web late yesterday confirm that indeed, the malware threat looms large for Mac users. According to...
Read more...
After what's being described as a "massive data breach" at Global Payments, Visa has decided to part ways with the payment processor and try its luck elsewhere, Global Payments CEO Paul Garcia said, according to a report in the Associated Press. MasterCard, meanwhile, is either willing to give Global Payments the benefit of the doubt that...
Read more...
As you head into the weekend getting ready to party and celebrate the end of another long and grueling work week, take some time to keep tabs on your MasterCard and Visa accounts. If you don't, you could be in for a rude awakening when you go to pay for drinks and find out that your card has been declined. At issue...
Read more...
Microsoft did its Windows customers a solid when it released its Microsoft Security Essentials (MSE) antivirus software as a free download. That in and of itself is nothing to write home about, but the program is actually good -- very good -- at detecting and neutralizing security threats, both in real-time and after they've already occurred....
Read more...
Microsoft is planning to keep things relatively low-key on March 13th, otherwise known as Patch Tuesday, which will contain only six security bulletins. Only one of those is deemed Critical; the other five consist of four that are labeled Important and one that is rated Moderate. The critical fix applies to all...
Read more...
Gabe Newell, head of Valve, has begun emailing Steam users today to let them know he and his company continue to investigate last year's security breach in which hackers vandalized Steam's forums. He also wants to give users a heads up that a backup file containing encrypted credit card details and other personal...
Read more...
Security software maker Avast sike'd out scores of Steam users over the weekend when its antivirus program identified the gaming platform as being infected with a Trojan virus. Gamers flocked to Steam's forums in the wee hours of the morning last night trying to figure if the warning was a false positive, which is exactly what it turned out...
Read more...
