Items tagged with security
Some things are better late than never, right? Chicago Cubs fans who watched their team win the World Series last year can certainly attest to that, but it does not only apply to sports. Case in point, Intel has finally plugged a security hole that affects every Intel platform with Active Management Technology (AMT)...
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Windows 95 is alive and well in the United States Pentagon. Daryl Haegley, program manager for the Office of the Assistant Secretary of Defense for Energy, Installations and Environment reported at an event hosted by OSIsoft that 75% of the Department of Defense computers Windows XP or older (including Windows 98 and...
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We can't seem to go a single week without news of a severe vulnerability out there in the wild, and it looks like our streak isn't about to end. Not too long ago, a number of NSA-derived tools were released online, giving us an idea of how desperate the folks at one of the US government's leading intelligence agencies...
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In 2013, security research firm DefenseCode revealed a major issue that plagued a large number of wireless routers, and because the number of affected devices was in the millions, the company held off on revealing the specifics. Fast-forward four years to the present day, and those details have finally been...
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If you're using Google's Chrome browser as your primary vehicle to surf the web, you may want to think about temporarily parking it and puttering around in something else. That's because the most recent version of Chrome is vulnerable to a devious phishing attack, one that is capable of spoofing a legitimate website...
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In less than a month from now Microsoft will stop dishing out security updates for the original version of Windows 10 (build 1507) that was released back in July 2015. Microsoft had actually planned to stop supporting Windows 10 Version 1507 on March 26, 2017, but later decided to push back its end of servicing date...
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Microsoft made headlines early last year when it announced that users of Intel Skylake (and newer) processors, would need to run Windows 10, as support would be dropped on older versions of Windows. After that initial announcement, there wasn't much additional news related to the story. That is until last fall, when...
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As always, be wary of opening email attachments, especially from untrusted sources. Security outfits FireEye and McAfee have both observed malicious Microsoft Office RTF documents in the wild that are exploiting a zero-day vulnerability in Microsoft Windows and Office that has not yet been patched. The samples...
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As our world becomes increasingly connected, the risk of exploitation continues to rise. Last October, we wrote of an issue that could become an all-too-common occurrence in the future: exploitation of our emergency systems.
A hot topic in recent years has been exploiting mobile emergency alert systems, which...
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New and used games retailer GameStop has found itself in a bit of a rough patch these days. The company recently reported less-than-stellar fourth quarter results and is planning to close at least 150 brick-and-mortar locations, and perhaps as many as 225. That is on top of the store locations it closed just a few...
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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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Intel has sold more than half of its stake in McAfee, the security outfit it acquired in 2010 for $7.68 billion, and will not support the brand as a standalone company. The deal makes McAfee one of the largest pure-play cybersecurity firms in the world. Upon closing the transaction, McAfee CEO Christopher D. Young...
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A terrorist attack in the UK has sparked a debate over whether encrypted services should provide backdoor access to law enforcement. The terrorist, Khalid Masood, killed four people in Westminster. It is believed that Masood used the encrypted communication service WhatsApp just minutes before the attack. That...
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Apple is not going to play ball with a group of hackers that is threatening to remotely wipe hundreds of millions of iPhone devices if the Cupertino outfit refuses to pay a ransom. While the hackers claim to have a large cache of iCloud and other Apple email account data at their disposal, Apple insists that its...
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Security researchers at Cybellum, a PC security firm in Tel Aviv, Israel, have discovered a rather nasty new zero-day attack that allows remote attackers to hijack popular antivirus programs and turn them into malicious agents. The technique is called DoubleAgent, named after the fact that a compromised antivirus...
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Bitcoin seems to be the currency of choice when it comes to demanding ransoms, and that is because culprits demanding payment can hide behind a pseudonym (Bitcoin itself is not actually anonymous). So it is no surprise that a hacking organization has instructed Apple to fork over a Bitcoin ransom in exchange for not...
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There are many different methods of hacking. Most of them involve some sort of software code, whether it is installing malware on a system or hacking a vulnerability to gain unauthorized access to a system or device. The Internet of Things (IoT) category is especially susceptible to hacking due to a surprising lack of...
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For whatever reason, Samsung had only been doling out security updates to unlocked Galaxy devices every three months in the United States. Given the growing threat landscape and attention being paid to mobile, that meant a Galaxy device owner could conceivably wield an insecure device for a quarter of a year, leaving...
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The usefulness of social networks is undeniable, but the convenience of sharing our daily lives should also be met with some caution. If our data is so easy to find for a regular person, it's going to be an absolute cinch for a bot or nefarious parties.
Worrying about having your data siphoned is fairly common and...
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For over 13 years, Microsoft has been issuing monthly security updates for Windows on what is known as Patch Tuesday, typically the second Tuesday of every month. This month's update would have fell on Valentine's Day, except that Microsoft did something highly unusual—it delayed the Patch Tuesday rollout following...
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Here we go again. For the second time in a mere three months, Google decided to spill the beans on a Windows bug before the engineers in Redmond could release a patch for it. Microsoft has a Google countdown timer to thank for this latest disclosure; one that shows mercy to absolutely no one, or any company.
The...
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Businesses are having to contend with a lot more ransomware attacks than ever before. According to SonicWall's 2017 Annual Threat Report, there has been a meteoric rise in ransomware attacks in recent years, going from nearly 4 million attack attempts in 2015 to 638 million in 2016. That is a staggering 167x...
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