Items tagged with security
Microsoft hasn’t exactly had good luck lately with its Windows 10 operating system. Microsoft was especially shown in a negative light when the Windows 10 October 2018 Update introduced a number of critical faults that made the company take the extreme measure of pulling the update from its servers.
Now, we’re...
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It was just a few weeks ago when we told you about the SPOILER speculative attack that affects Intel processors, and now we’re learning of a new security exploit that takes advantage of the company’s Visualization of Internal Signals Architecture (VISA). The VISA exploit was detailed to the public at a Black Hat Asia...
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If you have an ASUS computer that is running the company’s Live Update utility, it’s possible that your system was susceptible to backdoor intrusions during the latter half of 2018. The folks at Kaspersky say that they first discovered the existence of Operation ShadowHammer on January 29th, and has been performing...
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For anyone who uses IFTTT (If This Then That), a free web-based service to create chains of simple conditional statements via applets, be aware that Gmail integration is about to be broken in a big way. Simply put, every IFTTT action and trigger for Gmail will stop working at the end of the month, save for "Send and...
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Tesla builds one of the most tech-infused cars on the roads today. Not only are Tesla vehicles packed with features but they also offer over-the-air updates with new features, fixes and optimizations. Tesla was able to get the price of the Model 3 down to the long-anticipated $35,000 late last month, but a team of...
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Facebook just can’t seem to keep its nose clean with respect to security and user privacy. The latest blunder was first reported on by KrebsonSecurity, which discovered that the social networking giant was storing user account passwords in plain text instead of hashing them.
What’s more troubling about this discovery...
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The revelation that practically every processor made in the past couple of decades is affected by at least one variant of Meltdown and Spectre, the names given to multiple versions of the same general execution vulnerability, shook the tech industry pretty hard. It also led to further discoveries of similar bugs. The...
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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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Citrix Systems said it is cooperating with the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) to investigate a major data breach by international cyber criminals into the company's internal network. Based on what Citrix knows so far, the hackers may have accessed and downloaded business documents, though the full extent is not...
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If you are reading this, there is a good chance you are doing so on a Chrome browser, based on the available market share data. And if that is the case, do yourself a solid and update Chrome, "like right this minute." That suggestion is not coming directly from us, but from Justin Schuh, Google Chrome's security boss...
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In somewhat of a surprise, the National Security Agency announced the release of Ghidra, a free and open source software reverse engineering toolkit, at the RSA security convention. Ghidra is what the NSA has been using for years, though it is not clear if the public release is the exact same version that it uses...
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Are physical wallets a necessity? Mobile payment apps like Apple Pay and Venmo have overall made it easier to forgo carrying around cash and credit cards. However, very few apps have been able to entirely replace physical identification cards like driver’s licenses or passports. Google is currently working on an API...
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Through its Project Zero team, Google has appointed itself a vanguard of software security and accountability. As such, every so often Project Zero publicizes a security flaw that has gone unpatched for at least 90 days, sometimes at the contentious objection of the company it affects. This time it is Apple and its...
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Where computing is concerned, security should always be a major focus. In 2018, that focus almost seemed overwhelming, thanks in part to the fact that the infamous Spectre and Meltdown security vulnerabilities impacted so many end users and industries. And let's not forget then-Intel CEO Brian Krzanich during his CES...
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A set of vulnerabilities related to Thunderbolt connectivity leave most Mac systems released in the past several years susceptible to malicious exploits, according to researchers who presented the data at the Network and Distributed Systems Security Symposium in San Diego earlier this week.
Dubbed "Thunderclap," the collective vulnerabilities
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The security of devices has never been more at the forefront of thought for many users as it is now. Hackers from around the world are targeting the devices that we use each day from smartphones to tablets to PCs. One of the ways that consumers can avoid being hacked is to choose passwords that are more complex and...
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Privacy is a big issue for users of the social network Facebook. The company has been called out for violating the privacy of users multiple times and faces fines that could be in the billions from the FTC. While Facebook will shutter one of its apps for privacy issues, called Onavo, there are still multiple...
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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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It is bad practice to use the same password for multiple accounts, because even if only one of them is compromised in a security breach, then all of the accounts are compromised. That is where password managers like LastPass come in handy. Are they truly secure, though? A new report sheds light on the shortcomings of...
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Some Nest users have been having problems of late with people gaining access to their accounts and spying on them, using their own security cameras, according to reports. The reason for this in some instances is that the Nest users chose passwords that were ineffective or left at default. Google has sent out emails...
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Last year was a big year for hacks of high profile services like Facebook. In late 2018, Facebook announced that a hack had occurred that left the private messages of 81,000 accounts up for sale. Now, photography website 500px has announced that it was hacked last year and that at least some data on all of its users...
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Is your data secure? Researchers recently discovered a new variation of the Bleichenbacher oracle attack that could threaten TLS 1.3 encryption. Seven researchers discovered that OpenSSL, Amazon s2n, MbedTLS, Apple CoreTLS, Mozilla NSS, WolfSSL, and GnuTLS utilized TLS protocols vulnerable to attacks. Google's new...
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