Government Shutdown May Cause Issues With Web Security
Here’s a side-effect of the government’s continuing shutdown that many people had not anticipated: Expiring TLS Certificates used for web security. Most people clearly see the impacts of national parks closing and the like. It’s worth remembering that the government’s IT staffed as been classified as ‘non-essential’ too, which means they’re currently sitting at home […]
New Ransomware Encrypts Data And Steals Payment Info
There’s a new strain of ransomware being deployed with increasing frequency. Believe it or not, it’s even more dangerous than the strains we’ve seen in recent months. Unlike other types of ransomware, this one not only encrypts your files and demands payment (which is bad enough) but it also attempts to steal your credit card […]
Passport And Credit Card Numbers Stolen In Marriott Hack
Recently, Marriott Hotels informed the world that they had been the victims of a massive data breach. As it turns out, the breach was even more serious than was initially reported. As the company has learned more from the ongoing investigation into the matter, they’ve been doing an admirable job at keeping the public updated, […]
Page Caches May Be Vulnerable To Attack
There’s a new side channel attack to worry about. This one is after the target system’s OS page cache, where a variety of sensitive data that has been accessed by the device’s owner is stored for rapid retrieval. Perhaps the worst and most ominous aspect of this newly identified threat is the fact that it’s […]
High Quality Photos May Affect Facial Recognition On Some Phones
One of the exciting new features offered by the latest smartphones is facial recognition, which allows users to unlock their devices simply by looking at them. On paper, it’s a great feature and incredibly convenient, but there’s a problem. The issue was uncovered by a non-profit group called the Dutch Consumentenbond, which tested more than […]
Flaws In Several Adobe Products Could Let Attackers In
Two new critical flaws have been discovered in Adobe Acrobat and Reader that require your urgent attention. In fact, the flaws were rated as so severe that the company broke with its tradition of releasing security updates around the middle of the month in coordination with Microsoft’s “Patch Tuesday”. They released an update sooner this […]
Wannacry Ransomware Continues To Be A Problem For Some
It’s been the better part of two years since the outbreak of the Wannacry ransomware epidemic. Unfortunately, all this time later, some companies are still dealing with the fallout. According to the latest research, Wannacry is still infecting hundreds of thousands of computers around the globe. As grim as that sounds, it’s not all bad […]
New Internet Explorer Exploit Currently Being Used By Attackers
Are you still using Internet Explorer? Now you have a new reason to consider switching to a more up to date browser. As most people know, Microsoft essentially gave up on Explorer after it failed to gain ground against its major competitors in the browser ecosystem. They started fresh, with Microsoft Edge, designed as a […]
New Amazon Order Confirmation Emails Could Be Phishing Attempts
According to Alexa, Amazon is the 4th most visited website in the United States and ranks 8th worldwide. To say that it gets a lot of traffic every day would be an understatement, which is why a newly discovered phishing campaign pretending to come from Amazon is so disturbing. Although Amazon sees heavy traffic every […]
Chromebook To Get Additional USB Security
Google is taking additional steps to protect its Chromebook user base. Currently, if a hacker has physical access to your machine, he or she could insert a flash drive in the USB port and run malicious code from it. The company is adding a new feature called USBGuard, which blocks USB port access any time […]
Twitter May Have Been Hit By Another Data Breach
2018 hasn’t been a great year for social media, with all the major platforms suffering a number of significant data breaches at various points in the year. Twitter alone has seen several, including the biggest one in May when the company urged all of its 330 million users to reset their passwords. This was after […]
Virtualization Making It Safer To Open EXE Files On Windows
Microsoft recently announced an addition to Windows 10 that should make the lives of Enterprise and power users a whole lot easier. Running an unknown, untrusted .exe file on your machine can be an event that fills you with dread. The best case, of course, is that everything turns out fine. Worst case, the file […]