What's new arround internet
| Src | Date (GMT) | Titre | Description | Tags | Stories | Notes |
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2017-03-22 09:43:37 | Hackers threaten to wipe millions of Apple devices, demand ransom (lien direct) | A group of hackers is threatening to wipe data from millions of Apple devices in two weeks if the company doesn't pay them US$150,000. The group, which calls itself Turkish Crime Family, claims to have login credentials for more than 627 million icloud.com, me.com and mac.com email addresses. These are email domains that Apple has allowed for users creating iCloud accounts over the years. Even though the Turkish Crime Family hasn't been in the media spotlight before, its members claim that they've been involved in selling stolen online databases in private circles for the past few years. The group said via email that it has had a database of about 519 million iCloud credentials for some time, but did not attempt to sell it until now. The interest for such accounts on the black market has been low due to security measures Apple has put in place in recent years, it said.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here | |||
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2017-03-22 09:42:00 | Cisco closes AppDynamics deal, increases software weight (lien direct) | Cisco today closed its approximately $3.7 billion deal for application analytics specialist AppDynamics giving the networking giant a nice revenue stream and bolstering its software strategy.The nine-year-old company – which Cisco bought Jan. 24, days before it was to go IPO -- and its almost 1,250 employees become part of Cisco as the 17th acquisition since Chuck Robbins took the CEO reins in 2015.+More on Cisco software from Network World: Has Cisco broken out of the network hardware box?+To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here | |||
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2017-03-22 09:06:00 | Facial recognition in public restroom required if you want toilet paper (lien direct) | When you gotta go, you gotta go, but there may be a line in public restrooms. Usually those lines don't have anything to do with surveillance. Let's hope a new biometric authentication trial in China doesn't roll out here, or else you would have to stop in public bathrooms in front of a device that uses facial recognition and wait for your allotted amount of toilet paper to be dispensed. Too bad, so sad if the 24-inch strip of toilet paper isn't enough. The dispenser will not spit out more paper to the same person until after nine minutes have passed. Why would this creepy type of surveillance be deployed in public restrooms? To combat toilet paper theft.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here | |||
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2017-03-22 08:33:00 | US lawmakers question police use of facial recognition tech (lien direct) | Reacting to concerns about the mass collection of photographs in police databases, U.S. lawmakers plan to introduce legislation to limit the use of facial recognition technology by the FBI and other law enforcement organizations.The FBI and police departments across the country can search a group of databases containing more than 400 million photographs, many of them from the drivers' licenses of people who have never committed a crime. The photos of more than half of U.S adults are contained in a series of FBI and state databases, according to one study released in October.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here | |||
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2017-03-22 07:15:00 | Stop using password manager browser extensions (lien direct) | It's been over a year since I presented on LostPass at ShmooCon, and in that time, many more bugs have been found in password managers. The most severe of which are in browser-based password managers extensions such as LastPass. Tavis Ormandy yesterday demonstrated a remote code execution on the latest LastPass version. This isn't the first extremely severe bug he's found in LastPass, either; there've been so many extremely severe bugs in LastPass it would be tedious to list them out. But LastPass isn't alone: Keeper, Dashlane and even 1Password have had severe vulnerabilities that allowed attackers to steal all of the passwords in a user's account without their knowledge.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here | LastPass | ||
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2017-03-22 07:13:00 | Double Agent attack can turn antivirus into malware (lien direct) | A zero-day attack called Double Agent can take over antivirus software on Windows machines and turn it into malware that encrypts files for ransom, exfiltrates data or formats the hard drives.Based on a 15-year-old feature in Windows from XP through Windows 10, the attack is effective against all 14 antivirus products tested by security vendor Cybellum – and would also be effective against pretty much every other process running on the machines.Double Agent was discovered by Cybellum researchers and has not been seen in the wild.“The attack was reported to all the major vendors which approved the vulnerability and are currently working on finding a solution and releasing a patch,†according to a Cybellum blog. All the vendors were notified more than 90 days ago, which is the standard length of time for responsibly disclosing vulnerabilities and giving vendors time to fix them.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here | |||
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2017-03-22 06:00:00 | Security Sessions: Where is VC security funding going? (lien direct) | In the latest episode of Security Sessions, CSO Editor-in-Chief Joan Goodchild sits down with Jeff Fagnan from Accomplice, a venture capital and private equity firm in Cambridge, Mass. The two discuss the current state of VC funding in security companies and where the money is going (and not going), and why CSOs should "follow the money." | |||
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2017-03-22 04:53:00 | 10 greatest inside security risks (lien direct) | Internal threats Image by ThinkstockLast year was the worst on record for information security incidents, and the majority of those were due to inside sources, many studies agree. Prime suspects are employees and contractors with privileged user access, says Sam Elliott, director of security product management at Bomgar. Elliott warns that these 10 employees could be your greatest internal security threat.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here |
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2017-03-22 04:51:00 | Critical infrastructure: Off the web, out of danger? (lien direct) | The debate over the chances of a catastrophic cyber attack taking down a major part of the nation's critical infrastructure (CI) has been ongoing for a generation.But it hasn't been settled – in some ways it is more intense now than ever.On one side are those, including high government officials, who warn of a “cyber Pearl Harbor†that could leave swaths of the country in darkness and cold – without electric power – for months.Retired Adm. James Stavridis, dean at Tufts Fletcher School and a former NATO supreme allied commander, used that term just three months ago, saying such an attack would be aimed either at the electrical grid or the financial sector.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here | |||
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2017-03-21 21:01:00 | IDG Contributor Network: Protect your unstructured data with user behavior analytics (lien direct) | The theft of unstructured data is extremely common. It can be very difficult to safeguard emails and files when a lot of people have access. Even the CIA is not immune, judging by the recent exposure of its hacking tools via WikiLeaks. It's ironic that the CIA's hacking guides have been hacked, but it just goes to show how difficult it can be to prevent.Carelessly handled unstructured data is an easy target, and it can prove very valuable for hackers. Since unstructured data may not be monitored, attacks and successful exfiltrations often go unnoticed for long periods.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here | |||
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2017-03-21 13:41:00 | What it takes to become an IT security engineer (lien direct) | When Scott Copeland got his associate degree in network administration back in 2004, the community college he attended didn't offer IT security courses, “but it gave me the foundation to learn more about network security,†he says. His determination and thirst for learning led him to his current job as an IT security engineer at FedEx Services in Memphis, Tenn. download What it takes to become an IT security engineer | PDF download CSO Online Getting started After being laid off in 2008 from his first IT job in tech support and systems administration, friends encouraged Copeland to use his networking talents to get a certification that would boost his career. He studied for three months and earned his Cisco Certified Network Associate (CCNA) certification in routing and switching. “CCNA was the biggest helper [for my security career path],†says Copeland. “It's one of the hardest network certifications in the industry.†Also, he notes, “because it ties networking for firewalls and VPN, it has security components to it.†He also scoured daily posts on Reddit, the news aggregation and discussion website, to learn as much as he could about network and IT security, and to keep up with the latest threats.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here | FedEx | ||
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2017-03-21 11:58:00 | IDG Contributor Network: Acoustic attack lets hackers control smartphone sensor (lien direct) | A newfound vulnerability in smartphones could let hackers remotely control the devices.With the acoustic injection attack, “attackers that deliver high intensity acoustic interference in close proximity†can interfere with a device accelerometer and get the sensor to send “attacker–chosen†data to the smartphone's processor, say researchers from the University of Michigan and University of South Carolina in a paper.Accelerometers measure changes of speed in a device, and they are used industrially to sense vibration for machinery health. In a smartphone, the accelerometer sensor can be used to detect screen orientation, for example.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here | |||
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2017-03-21 11:20:16 | UK follows US ban of electronic devices in cabins on some flights (lien direct) | The U.K. is joining the U.S. in its ban restricting passengers from bringing some electronic devices onto flights from the Middle East.Phones, laptops, and tablets that are larger than 16 cm (6.3 inches) in length and wider than 9.3 cm will no longer be allowed in the cabin on select flights coming from several Middle Eastern countries, the U.K.'s department of transportation said on Tuesday. The U.K. said it was in "close contact" with the U.S. since the country announced its own ban on Monday.  However, the U.K. made no mention of any specific risk, only that it faces "evolving" terrorism threats. To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here | |||
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2017-03-21 10:39:08 | Flaws in Moodle CMS put thousands of e-learning websites at risk (lien direct) | Organizations that use the popular Moodle learning management system should deploy the latest patches as soon as possible because they fix vulnerabilities that could allow attackers to take over web servers.Moodle is an open source platform used by schools, universities, and other organizations to set up websites with interactive online courses. It's used by more than 78,000 e-learning websites from 234 countries that together have more than 100 million users.A week ago the Moodle developers released updates for the still supported branches of the platform: 3.2.2, 3.1.5, 3.0.9 and 2.7.19. The release notes mentioned that "a number of security related issues were resolved," but didn't provide any additional details about their nature or impact.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here | |||
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2017-03-21 07:45:00 | Cloud security still a work in progress (lien direct) | A few years ago, ESG (and other) research indicated that security concerns posed the biggest impediment for more pervasive use of cloud computing. What happened next? Business executives and CIOs found that cloud agility, flexibility and potential cost savings were too good to pass up, creating a “cloud or bust†mentality. Naturally, CISOs had to do their best and go along for the ride whether they were ready or not.+ Also on Network World: The top 12 cloud security threats + So, how's cloud security going at this point? ESG research indicates it is still a work in progress. As part of a recent survey, cybersecurity professionals were presented with a series of statements about cloud security and asked whether they agreed or disagreed with each one. Here are some of the results:To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here | |||
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2017-03-21 07:45:00 | IDG Contributor Network: Blockchain the perfect data protection tool for banks using mainframes (lien direct) | Technophobic thrillers in popular media are always trying to convince us hackers are just a few malicious keystrokes away from crashing the world economy. And while doing such a thing is more complicated than just “deleting all the money,†one could certainly do a great deal of damage by changing what a computer thinks is true.Wouldn't it be great if there were software that could guarantee which data was and was not correct, backed up by the most powerful computer processors available? I give you blockchain, which more and more fiscal institutions are using to protect their data, backed up by the undeniable power of mainframes.RELATED: Inside Bank of America's IT transformation Blockchain first entered the public's (OK, the techie public's) awareness in the orbit of Bitcoin, as a means of securing that controversial digital currency's code against someone who decided to break into the right server and add a couple zeroes to their account. But Bitcoin haters need not close this tab in disgust just yet, as blockchain has come into its own as a reliable security measure for more than just black market storefronts.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here | |||
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2017-03-21 05:00:00 | Mozilla beats rivals, patches Firefox\'s Pwn2Own bug (lien direct) | Mozilla last week patched a Firefox vulnerability just a day after it was revealed during Pwn2Own, the first vendor to fix a flaw disclosed at the hacking contest."Congrats to #Mozilla for being the first vendor to patch vuln[erability] disclosed during #Pwn2Own," tweeted the Zero Day Initiative (ZDI) Monday. ZDI, the bug brokerage run by Trend Micro, sponsored Pwn2Own.[ To comment on this story, visit Computerworld's Facebook page. ] Mozilla released Firefox 52.0.1 on Friday, March 17, with a patch for the integer overflow bug that Chaitin Security Research Lab leveraged in an exploit at Pwn2Own on Thursday, March 16. The Beijing-based group was awarded $30,000 by ZDI for the exploit, which combined the Firefox bug with one in the Windows kernel.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here | |||
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2017-03-21 04:56:00 | What to consider in developing BYOD policy (lien direct) | Why Have a BYOD Policy? Image by ThinkstockIn today's work environment, employees are increasingly expected to be constantly available and communicating. Regardless of whether the company permits it, employees will use their personal devices for work. Instead of ignoring the inevitable, companies should develop and implement a BYOD policy that protects the company and balances productivity with security. Brandon N. Robinson Partner, Balch & Bingham LLP - Privacy and Data Security Practice, provides some tips.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here |
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2017-03-21 04:53:54 | US bans electronics larger than smartphones in cabins on certain flights (lien direct) | The U.S. Department of Homeland Security has ordered that passengers on flights departing for the U.S from 10 airports in the Middle East and Africa will have to carry personal electronics larger than a smartphone as checked baggage, citing increased terror threats.Giving the approximate size of a commonly available smartphone as a guideline for passengers, the DHS said that laptops, tablets, e-readers, cameras, portable DVD players, electronic game units larger than smartphones, and travel printers or scanners were the kind of personal electronics that would not be allowed in the cabin and would have to be carried as checked baggage.Approved medical devices may be brought into the cabin after additional screening. The size of smartphones is well understood by most passengers who fly internationally, according to the DHS, which in any case asked passengers to check with their airline if they are unsure whether their smartphone is impacted.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here | |||
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2017-03-20 13:25:00 | Can you imagine Mars with Saturn-like rings? (lien direct) | It's hard to fathom and may be even harder for it to happen but a couple NASA-funded scientists say Mars might have had Saturn-like rings around it in the past and may have them again sometime in the distant future.NASA's Jet Propulsion Lab said Purdue University scientists David Minton and Andrew Hesselbrock developed a model that suggests debris that was pushed into space from an asteroid or other body slamming into Mars around 4.3 billion years ago alternates between becoming a planetary ring and clumping together to form a moon.More on Network World: Elon Musk's next great adventure: Colonizing Mars+To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here | |||
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2017-03-20 12:50:45 | Russia will strike US elections again, FBI warns (lien direct) | Future U.S. elections may very well face more Russian attempts to interfere with the outcome, the FBI and the National Security Agency warned on Monday.“They'll be back,†said FBI director James Comey. “They'll be back in 2020. They may be back in 2018.â€Comey made the comment during a congressional hearing on Russia's suspected efforts to meddle with last year's presidential election. Allegedly, cyberspies from the country hacked several high-profile Democratic groups and people, in an effort to tilt the outcome in President Donald Trump's favor.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here | |||
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2017-03-20 12:08:03 | Pwn2Own hacking contest ends with two virtual machine escapes (lien direct) | Two teams of researchers managed to win the biggest bounties at this year's Pwn2Own hacking contest by escaping from the VMware Workstation virtual machine and executing code on the host operating system.Virtual machines are in used in many scenarios to create throw-away environments that pose no threat to the main operating system in case of compromise. For example, many malware researchers execute malicious code or visit compromise websites inside virtual machines to observe their behavior and contain their impact.One of the main goals of hypervisors like VMware Workstation is to create a barrier between the guest operating system that runs inside the virtual machine and the host OS where the hypervisor runs. That's why VM escape exploits are highly prized, more so than browser or OS exploits.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here | |||
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2017-03-20 09:07:00 | Cisco issues critical warning after CIA WikiLeaks dump bares IOS security weakness (lien direct) | A vulnerability in Cisco's widely deployed IOS software that was disclosed in the recent WikiLeaks dump of CIA exploits has triggered the company to release a critical warning for its Catalyst networking customers.+More on Cisco Security on Network World: Cisco security advisory dump finds 20 warnings, 2 critical+The vulnerability -- which could let an attacker cause a reload of an affected device or remotely execute code and take over a device -- impacts more than 300 models of Cisco Catalyst switches from the model 2350-48TD-S Switch to the Cisco SM-X Layer 2/3 EtherSwitch Service Module.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here | |||
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2017-03-20 08:52:00 | Pwn2Own 2017: Your stuff as mincemeat (lien direct) | They came from miles around to carry out a hallowed, decade-long mission: To eat your lunch. The security researchers assembled at the Pwn2Own 2017 hacking competition, sponsored by Trend Micro, and occasionally grouped together, then performed essentially zero-day exploits (at least by the rules, heretofore unknown) on your favorite stuff, such as Windows, MacOS and Linux. Smoldering pits in the screen were left, as teams collected cash prizes and creds. RELATED: How San Diego fights off 500,000 cyberattacks a day For giggles and grins, a Type 2 Hypervisor, VMWare Workstation was also left for shrapnel, one of the first times a hypervisor has been penetrated by a virtual machine in this way. It wasn't a cascade effect, but rather a shot across the bow. I suspect there are more ways to penetrate a foundational hypervisor, too, but they haven't been seen in captivity to my knowledge. To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here | |||
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2017-03-20 08:36:00 | FBI looks into Russian hack of US election, possible Trump involvement (lien direct) | The FBI is actively investigating Russia's attempts to influence the 2016 U.S. presidential election and possible cooperation from President Donald Trump's campaign, agency director James Comey confirmed. The existence of an investigation isn't a surprise, but Comey's announcement Monday is the first time the FBI has acknowledged an active case. The FBI typically does not comment on active investigations, but the Russian actions targeting the U.S. election represents an "unusual" case, he told members of the House of Representatives Intelligence Committee. Comey told lawmakers he couldn't comment more on the investigation, but he said the FBI is looking into possible contacts and cooperation between the Trump campaign and the Russian government. The FBI is looking into "the nature of any links" between the Trump campaign and the Russian government, he said.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here | |||
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2017-03-20 06:50:00 | FBI arrested man for allegedly sending seizure-causing GIF to reporter (lien direct) | A man accused of sending an animated GIF of a strobe light to a reporter with epilepsy was arrested and charged with criminal cyberstalking with the intent to kill or cause bodily harm.Back on December 15, 2016, Twitter user @jew_goldstein tweeted a flashing image to Newsweek reporter Kurt Eichenwald along with the message: “YOU DESERVE A SEIZURE FOR YOUR POSTS.†Eichenwald, who has epilepsy, immediately suffered a seizure.After his wife found him on the floor and called 911, she replied to @jew_goldstein, telling him that the tweet caused a seizure. “I have your information and have called the police to report the assault.â€On Friday, the FBI arrested 29-year-old John Rivello at his home in Maryland.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here | |||
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2017-03-20 06:21:00 | Possibly the worst mass invasion of internet privacy ever (lien direct) | In January, a bank in Edina, Minnesota, received a request for a $28,500 wire transfer from someone claiming to be local resident Douglas Junker. Though bolstered with a faked picture of a passport, the request later turned out to be fraudulent, and local cops were reportedly stymied on how to catch the thief. Until, that is, they came up with a novel idea: Hoping to find out how the fraudster got the picture, Edina Police Detective David Lindman applied for a search warrant to obtain the names, email addresses, account information and IP addresses of everyone in the entire town of 50,000 who had searched for any variation of the victim's name between Dec. 1, 2016, and Jan. 7, 2017. To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here | |||
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2017-03-20 06:02:00 | Credit-card breach hits another restaurant chain (lien direct) | Another sizeable payment card data breach has been discovered at a U.S. restaurant chain.In the latest example, several high-end eateries run by Select Restaurants in Cleveland were the victims of fraudulent cards used by customers at its restaurants, according to a report posted Thursday on KrebsOnSecurity, a reliable site written by reporter Brian Krebs. Krebs said he learned about the case from anti-fraud teams at multiple financial institutions investigating "a great deal of fraud on cards used at a handful of high-end restaurants around the country."To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here | |||
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2017-03-20 05:45:00 | How much is a bug worth? (lien direct) | 1Password recently raised its top bug bounty reward from $25,000 to $100,000. They increased the amount to further incentivize researchers, according to its blog. Separately Google paid out $3 million last year for its vulnerability reward program.But how are these figures determined?David Baker, vice president of operations at Bugcrowd, believes these big bounties demonstrate that organizations are really starting to think about the market and where the market is pricing vulnerabilities.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here | |||
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2017-03-20 05:43:00 | 6 of the most effective social engineering techniques (lien direct) | Social engineering is the strongest method of attack against the enterprise's weakest vulnerability, its people. Criminal hackers recognize this fact. In 2015, social engineering became the No. 1 method of attack, according to Proofpoint's 2016 Human Factor Report.These successful social engineering methods often use phishing and malware. But deceptive information assailants have more tools and approaches to draw on than these.That's why CSO covers six of the most effective social engineering techniques that attackers use both on and off the internet, providing insights into how each one works, what it accomplishes, and the technologies, methods, and policies for detecting and responding to social saboteurs and keeping them at bay.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here | |||
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2017-03-20 03:38:00 | Ultimate guide to strategic tech partners (lien direct) | The IT vendor landscape is constantly in flux, with mergers, acquisitions, new technology developments and the growth of the cloud having a huge impact on which companies might be the most strategic partners for organizations looking to enhance their technology infrastructure. Consider some of the major technology merger and acquisition activities just over the past year: Microsoft acquired LinkedIn, Oracle acquired NetSuite, Broadcom acquired Brocade, HPE is buying Nimble Storage, and Dell acquired EMC.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here | |||
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2017-03-20 02:44:00 | (Déjà vu) New products of the week 3.20.17 (lien direct) | New products of the week Image by SolarWindsOur roundup of intriguing new products. Read how to submit an entry to Network World's products of the week slideshow.Asavie Industrial IoT Accelerator Kit Image by asavieTo read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here |
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2017-03-19 23:00:02 | Cebit showcases security after Snowden (lien direct) | It's almost four years since Edward Snowden leaked U.S. National Security Agency documents revealing the extent of the organization's surveillance of global internet traffic, but he's still making the headlines in Germany.At the Cebit trade show in Hannover, Germany, he'll be looking back at that period in live video interview from Moscow on Tuesday evening.There have been a lot of changes on the internet in those four years, but one of the biggest is the growth in the use of encryption.In 2013, the NSA had free rein and could listen in on almost any communication it wanted. Now, it's commonplace to encrypt traffic to webmail services and even popular websites such as Microsoft.com or Google.com using the https protocol. And you don't have to be an enemy of the state to use an end-to-end encrypted messaging system such as WhatsApp simply to chat with friends.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here | |||
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2017-03-19 22:20:56 | McDonald\'s India asks users to update app after data leak report (lien direct) | McDonald's India operation asked users to update their McDelivery app as a 'precautionary measure' after a security firm said it had found that it was leaking personal data of over 2.2 million users.The Indian operation of the food chain, which is owned and managed by franchisees, said in posts on Facebook and Twitter over the weekend that its website and app do not store any sensitive financial data of users.The operation did not admit or deny that there had been a breach, but urged users to update the online ordering app as a precautionary measure. “The website and app has always been safe to use, and we update security measure on regular basis,†according to the post.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here | |||
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2017-03-19 14:07:00 | iPhone 8 Rumor Rollup: Gentler curves and facial recognition security (lien direct) | Apple just might whet our appetites for a September unveiling of the iPhone 8 (or iPhone X) with an event later this month or early in April regarding some new iPads and maybe some low-end iPhones. But we won't be distracted: On to the iPhone 8 rumors! KINDER, GENTLER CURVES The word is that Apple and Samsung are going to hogging up most of the shiny, energy-efficient OLED displays being pumped out this year, leaving poor Huawei and others on the outs. And after all that, it turns out that Apple's OLED displays on its anticipated 5.8-inch iPhone 8 will have a “gentler†curved screen than that found on the rival Samsung Galaxy S7 (and likely, the S8). To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here | |||
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2017-03-19 10:58:22 | BlackBerry readies a more secure version of the Samsung Galaxy S7 (lien direct) | Secusmart, the BlackBerry subsidiary that secures the German Chancellor Angela Merkel's smartphone, will roll out a version of its SecuSuite security software compatible with Samsung Electronics' Knox platform later this year.That means that organizations looking for smartphones offering government-grade security will be able to buy the Samsung Galaxy S7 or, soon, the S8 rather than the now-discontinued BlackBerry OS smartphones like the one Merkel uses.In addition to encrypting communications and data stored on the device, the new SecuSuite also secures voice calls using the SNS standard set by Germany's Federal Office for Information Security (BSI). Organizational app traffic is passed through an IPsec VPN, while data from personal apps can go straight to the internet. Encrypted voice calls go through a different gateway, not the VPN.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here | |||
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2017-03-19 08:40:00 | Star Trek-themed Kirk ransomware has Spock decryptor, demands ransom be paid in Monero (lien direct) | While you may want to live long and prosper, you don't want to be “kirked†– an extension added to files encrypted by the new Star Trek-themed Kirk ransomware.Kirk ransomware, which was discovered by Avast malware researcher Jakub Kroustek, doesn't want the ransom to be paid in bitcoin; Bleeping Computer said it “may be the first ransomware to utilize Monero as the ransom payment of choice.â€It is not known how the ransomware is being distributed, but researchers know that Kirk ransomware masquerades as the Low Orbital Ion Cannon network stress tool; LOIC was once favored for denial of service attacks. The fake version sports the LOIC slogan, “When harpoons, air strikes and nukes fail,†and claims to be initializing once executed.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here | |||
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2017-03-17 15:14:28 | Some HTTPS inspection tools might weaken security (lien direct) | Companies that use security products to inspect HTTPS traffic might inadvertently make their users' encrypted connections less secure and expose them to man-in-the-middle attacks, the U.S. Computer Emergency Readiness Team warns.US-CERT, a division of the Department of Homeland Security, published an advisory after a recent survey showed that HTTPS inspection products don't mirror the security attributes of the original connections between clients and servers.HTTPS inspection checks the encrypted traffic coming from an HTTPS site to make sure it doesn't contain threats or malware. It's performed by intercepting a client's connection to an HTTPS server, establishing the connection on the client's behalf and then re-encrypting the traffic sent to the client with a different, locally generated certificate. Products that do this essentially act as man-in-the-middle proxies.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here | |||
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2017-03-17 11:12:00 | A cybersecurity risk assessment is a critical part of M&A due diligence  (lien direct) | This column is available in a weekly newsletter called IT Best Practices.  Click here to subscribe.  As of mid-February, the plan for Verizon Communications to acquire a majority of Yahoo's web assets is still on, despite the announcement of Yahoo having suffered two massive breaches of customer data in 2013 and 2014. The sale price, however, has been discounted by $350 million, and Verizon and Altaba Inc. have agreed to share any ongoing legal responsibilities related to the breaches. Altaba is the entity that will own the portion of Yahoo that Verizon is not acquiring.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here | Yahoo | ||
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2017-03-17 10:54:00 | String of fileless malware attacks possibly tied to single hacker group (lien direct) | Several attacks observed over the past few months that rely heavily on PowerShell, open-source tools, and fileless malware techniques might be the work of a single group of hackers.An investigation started by security researchers from Morphisec into a recent email phishing attack against high-profile enterprises pointed to a group that uses techniques documented by several security companies in seemingly unconnected reports over the past two months."During the course of the investigation, we uncovered a sophisticated fileless attack framework that appears to be connected to various recent, much-discussed attack campaigns," Michael Gorelik, Morphisec's vice president of research and development, said in a blog post. "Based on our findings, a single group of threat actors is responsible for many of the most sophisticated attacks on financial institutions, government organizations, and enterprises over the past few months."To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here | |||
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2017-03-17 09:21:00 | DARPA wants to cultivate the ultimate transistor of the future (lien direct) | Researchers with the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency will this month present a program that looks to develop a new generation of radiofrequency (RF) and millimeter-wave transistors to address the power and range requirements for billions of wirelessly communicating devices in everything from unmanned aircraft and home appliances to sensors and smartphones.+More on Network World: DARPA plan would reinvent not-so-clever machine learning systems+“The same basic transistor types have been dominant since their invention and we have been engineering the heck out of them for 50 years,†said Dan Green, a program manager in DARPA's Microsystems Technology Office (MTO) and the overseer of the forthcoming Dynamic Range-enhanced Electronics and Materials (DREaM) program. “We've gotten a lot out of that approach, but the focus on so few types of transistor technologies and just a few semiconductor materials also has fundamentally limited us in the RF world.â€To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here | |||
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2017-03-17 06:09:00 | Ask.com serves as a conduit for malware - again (lien direct) | Businesses that allow the Ask.com toolbar in their environments might want to rethink that after endpoints equipped with the browser add-on were compromised last November and then again the very next month using pretty much the same attack methods.In both cases attackers managed to infiltrate the Ask.com updater infrastructure to the point that they used legitimate Ask signing certificates to authenticate malware that was masquerading as software updates.And in both cases Ask Partner Network (APN), which distributes the Ask.com toolbar, told the security vendors who discovered the incidents that it had fixed the problem. The first one was discovered by security vendor Red Canary, and the second was caught by Carbon Black, whose researchers just wrote about it in their company blog.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here | |||
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2017-03-17 05:54:00 | Cobol plays major role in U.S. government breaches (lien direct) | New research is turning on its head the idea that legacy systems -- such as Cobol and Fortran -- are more secure because hackers are unfamiliar with the technology.New research found that these outdated systems, which may not be encrypted or even documented, were more susceptible to threats.By analyzing publicly available federal spending and security breach data, the researchers found that a 1% increase in the share of new IT development spending is associated with a 5% decrease in security breaches."In other words, federal agencies that spend more in maintenance of legacy systems experience more frequent security incidents, a result that contradicts a widespread notion that legacy systems are more secure," the paper found. The research paper was written by Min-Seok Pang, an assistant professor of management information systems at Temple University, and Huseyin Tanriverdi, an associate professor in the Information, Risk and Operations Department at the University of Texas at Austin.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here | |||
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2017-03-17 05:46:00 | Do you have an incident response plan in place? (lien direct) | Details matter when developing an incident response (IR) plan. But, even the most successful IR plans can lack critical information, impeding how quickly normal business operations are restored.This guide from Cybereason takes a closer look at nine of the often forgotten, but important steps that you should incorporate into your IR plan.Preparation across the entire companyGood security leaders should be able to get people from across the company to help develop the IR plan. While CISOs will most likely manage the team that handles the threat, dealing with the fallout from a breach requires the efforts of the entire company.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here | Guideline | ||
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2017-03-17 05:43:00 | Experts divided on value of Cyber National Guard (lien direct) | This past weekend at SXSW, two Congressmen suggested that the U.S. create a cybersecurity reserves system, similar to the National Guard, but the idea has received a mixed welcome from the cybersecurity community.According to House Rep. Will Hurd, a Republican from Texas, a national cybersecurity reserve could help strengthen national security and bring in a diversity of experience. Hurd, who has a degree in computer science from Texas A&M, has served as an undercover CIA officer and has worked as a partner at cybersecurity firm FusionX.He has been pitching the idea of a Cyber National Guard for a while, and has suggested that the government could forgive student loan debt for those who serve. It would also help ensure a cross-pollination of experience between government and industry.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here | Guideline | ||
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2017-03-16 17:57:45 | Yahoo breach exposes the drawbacks of state-sponsored hacking (lien direct) | When governments turn to private hackers to carry out state-sponsored attacks, as the FBI alleges Russia did in the 2014 breach of Yahoo, they're taking a big risk. On the one hand, it gives them a bit of plausible deniability while reaping the potential spoils of each attack, but if the hackers aren't kept on a tight leash things can turn bad. Karim Baratov, the 22-year-old Canadian hacker who the FBI alleges Russia's state security agency hired to carry out the Yahoo breach, didn't care much for a low profile. His Facebook and Instagram posts boasted of the million-dollar house he bought in a Toronto suburb and there were numerous pictures of him with expensive sports cars -- the latest an Aston Martin DB9 with the license plate "MR KARIM."To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here | Yahoo | ||
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2017-03-16 13:18:50 | Unpatched vulnerability puts Ubiquiti networking products at risk (lien direct) | An unpatched command injection vulnerability could allow hackers to take over enterprise networking products from Ubiquiti Networks.The vulnerability was discovered by researchers from SEC Consult and allows authenticated users to inject arbitrary commands into the web-based administration interface of affected devices. These commands would be executed on the underlying operating system as root, the highest privileged account.Because it requires authentication, the vulnerability's impact is somewhat reduced, but it can still be exploited remotely through cross-site request forgery (CSRF). This is an attack technique that involves forcing a user's browser to send unauthorized requests to specifically crafted URLs in the background when they visit attacker-controlled websites.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here | |||
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2017-03-16 11:48:00 | IDG Contributor Network: Smarter authentication makes mobile experiences more secure, user friendly (lien direct) | To make our lives easier, digital experiences have become much more interconnected and the volume of personal data captured in the cloud is growing exponentially. While these trends make us more productive, they can also make security breaches much more damaging. Once a hacker gains access to one aspect of your digital life, he can easily reach across multiple applications and accounts, laying a path of destruction and heartache.Today's mobile and digital experiences need authentication strategies that keep up with the constantly changing digital ecosystem, and simple passwords are not enough.Authentication must be fast, easy to use Multifactor authentication strategies are growing in popularity, but the tradeoff of usability and security is a constant balancing act. If authentication solutions are not simple, quick and easy, users will find ways around them. And if they are not secure, hackers will quickly exploit weaknesses. Sophisticated smart authentication strategies are coming to market that are less visible and easier to use than messaging-based two-factor authentication approaches or biometrics. Approaches such as behavioral biometrics and adaptive authentication are leveraging data and sophisticated algorithms to create more secure and easier-to-use experiences.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here | |||
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2017-03-16 10:18:14 | Adobe Reader, Edge, Safari, and Ubuntu fall during first day at Pwn2Own (lien direct) | Bug hunters have gathered again to test their skills against some of the most popular and mature software programs during the Pwn2Own hacking contest. During the first day, they successfully demonstrated exploits against Microsoft Edge, Apple's Safari, Adobe Reader, and Ubuntu Desktop.The Pwn2Own contest runs every year during the CanSecWest security conference in Vancouver, Canada. It's organized and sponsored by the Zero Day Initiative (ZDI), an exploit acquisition program operated by Trend Micro after its acquisition of TippingPoint.This year the contest has a prize pool of US$1 million for exploits in five categories: virtual machines (VMware Workstation and Microsoft Hyper-V); web browser and plugins (Microsoft Edge, Google Chrome, Mozilla Firefox, Apple Safari, and Flash Player running in Edge); local escalation of privilege (Windows, macOS, and Ubuntu Desktop); enterprise applications (Adobe Reader, Word, Excel, and PowerPoint) and server side (Apache Web Server on Ubuntu Server).To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here | |||
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2017-03-16 09:03:00 | DARPA plan would reinvent not-so-clever machine learning systems (lien direct) | Machine learning systems maybe be smart but they have a lot to discover.Innovative researchers with DARPA hope to achieve superior machine learning systems with a new program called Lifelong Learning Machines (L2M) which has as its primary goal to develop next-generation machine learning technologies that can learn from new situations and apply that learning to become better and more reliable than current constrained systems.+More on Network World: DARPA fortifies early warning system for power-grid cyber assault+To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here |
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