Items tagged with security
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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Take a look at your printer. Give it a good stare. Do you trust it? Probably not, considering it jammed the last time you had to print an important paper right up against a deadline. However, what if we told you that your printer just has to sit there on your network to be a very serious security problem? HP Inc...
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Newer versions of Windows, including Windows 10 are vulnerable right now to a new Server Message Block (SMB) zero-day exploit that has been shown as a proof-of-concept. The vulnerability was first demonstrated by @PythonResponder and requires a user to connect to a SMBv3 server for a successful attack.
Given the...
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Microsoft has a long and somewhat bumpy road in the antivirus field. Even its latest AV solution, Windows Defender, has not always garnered praise, though that is beginning to change. A recent blog post by a security expert who heaped praise on the default security software in Windows has prompted others to come out...
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When ransomware strikes, its impact could range from mild to severe. Sometimes, ransomware targets regular users, while other times, it targets important mega-corporations (or even police stations). In this latest incident, it affected a hotel, and subsequently ran the risk of affecting all of its guests.
Here it...
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For what we're sure are obvious reasons, Google has long blocked certain types of attachments from being sent through its Gmail service. Those include .bat (Windows Batch), .exe (Windows executable), and .msc (Microsoft Management Console). Soon, .js (JavaScript) will be joining the prohibited ranks.
This is the...
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President Donald Trump turned in his much-used Android phone for something more secure (likely a modified Blackberry or iPhone handset), but in case it has not been made clear to this point, he has no intention of giving up Twitter. Trump is the first United States president to tap into social media to the extent that...
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Like a massive army of Storm Troopers willing to follow devious commands, a pair of researchers from the University College London warn that a "large number of Twitter users are bots" that are ready to "contaminate the Twitter API stream." There are more than 350,000 in all, comprising what the researchers have named...
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Apple has received criticism for not injecting more innovation into its iPhone 7 and iPhone 7 Plus handsets, and the same will probably be true of the inevitable iPhone 7s and iPhone 7s Plus variants. However, Apple will have an opportunity to shake things up when it releases its iPhone 8 and one of the things it...
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