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It has always been believed that Cisco routers being used in the enterprise environment could be hacked via installation of backdoor firmware, but it was always just a theory. Now, security researchers over at Mandiant, an American cyber security firm and a FireEye company, have confirmed that hacking of Cisco routers through backdoor firmware installations […]
The common perception is that a strong password is always a good password, but GCHQ thinks otherwise; urging people to use “simple passwords” to keep themselves protected from online threats. According to the new guidelines outlined in a report prepared by GCHQ in the password guidance report, it urges that passwords should be short and less confusing which […]
This Sunday, Intel announced the creation of the Automotive Security Review Board (ASRB) to help automakers secure cars and drivers in the face of the rising threat of car hacking. According to the official press release, this board will be focused on running various security audits, creating industry-wide best practices, and sharing advanced cyber-security products […]
Halfway down the southbound four-lane highway from Cancun to the ancient ruins in Tulum, traffic inexplicably slowed to a halt. There was some sort of checkpoint ahead by the Mexican Federal Police. I began to wonder whether it was a good idea to have brought along the ATM skimmer instead of leaving it in the hotel […]
Apple is traditionally mum on some details of its devices’ hardware, preferring to talk about how “B is X times faster than A” than raw numbers. It’s partly a smart marketing move, using more general but easily understood comparisons than cold, impersonal numbers. But it also relieves Apple from having to concede, much less reveal, […]
Answers on a postcard from Syria, please. GCHQ has declined to comment on a report in the Daily Telegraph this weekend, which claimed that UK cabinet ministers’ emails had been hacked, but that – bafflingly – no breach had occurred. Which is a bit like saying “nothing happened, but we’re going to write a story […]
A recent survey from Vormetric revealed that people in the United States are OK with the addition of backdoors in their devices/software. This startling revelation negated the general perception that Americans greatly value their privacy. The survey was conducted by Vormetric and Wakefield regarding the ongoing debate between tech firms and the US government regarding […]
Since Edward Snowden exposed the extent of online surveillance by the US government, there has been a surge of initiatives to protect users’ privacy. But it hasn’t taken long for one of these efforts—aproject to equip local libraries with technology supporting anonymous Internet surfing—to run up against opposition from law enforcement. In July, the Kilton Public […]
Windows 10 is here. Well… it’s sort of been here for some time, but it’s fully rolled out now and soon we will begin to see enterprise adoption. I, like I’m sure many others out there, have been playing with Windows 10 in a virtual environment the last few weeks. My motivation has primarily been […]
That padlock on your bag? Easy to open by anyone now. The integrity of more than 300 million travel locks has been compromised after 3D printing files for a range of master keys were posted online. In other words, if you have a luggage lock with a keyhole for the authorities to use (saving them […]
Researchers have peeled back the layers on a new campaign that spans multiple years and involves a new variant of the ubiquitous Gh0st remote access tool (RAT). The campaign, now believed to in its sixth year, is dubbed Musical Chairs, according to new research from Palo Alto Networks published Tuesday. The campaign drops Piano Gh0st, a new – and freely […]
Programming errors make 15.26 million accounts orders of magnitude faster to crack. When the Ashley Madison hackers leaked close to 100 gigabytes worth of sensitive documents belonging to the online dating service for people cheating on their romantic partners, there seemed to be one saving grace. User passwords were cryptographically protected using bcrypt, an algorithm […]
Poorly secured satellite-based Internet links are being abused by nation-state hackers, most notably by the Turla APT group, to hide command-and-control operations, researchers at Kaspersky Lab said today. Active for close to a decade, Turla’s activities were exposed last year; the Russian-speaking gang has carried out espionage campaigns against more than 500 victims in 45 […]
The L8NT could help law enforcement track and find Wi-Fi enabled gadgets. On Tuesday, local media reported that David Schwindt, a 14-year veteran from Iowa City, has designed software which can be used to recover Wi-Fi enabled products. The product, dubbed L8NT — short for “latent analysis of 802.11 network traffic” — will not necessarily […]
Potential Security Flaw In Obsolete CMS and Plugins Left Millions of Users Vulnerable To Ransomware. More than 142 million websites have been using outdated Content Management System (CMS) software and plugins that could be exploited by hackers to serve ransomware by injecting malicious scripts into those websites and then redirect the website visitors to the […]
A startling revelation made in GData study is that some of the Chinese smartphone units that are being shipped to Asia and European regions contain pre-installed malware. Manufacturer’s all over the world follow the rule of testing sample handsets of their upcoming smartphone and tablets comprehensively prior to their release in the market. This helps […]
“Microsoft is recording what you type and say,” says one random website vaguely reporting on Windows 10, written by an author who has likely never participated in the Windows Insider program simply to saturate the search engines for traffic purposes. “Microsoft is recording EVERYTHING you type,” another site you’ve probably never heard of emphatically proclaims. These so-called […]
Heimdal Security published an interesting post on the increase in malicious scripts that are being injected into legit websites in order to serve ransomware. Heimdal Security recently published an interesting blog post on the increase in malicious scripts that are being injected into legit websites in order to serve malware. The attackers compromise websites running […]
If you’ve ever needed to know how another piece of code works, or have been at the mercy of someone else’s bugs, you can always look at the source code… unless you don’t have it. In this talk, Conrad covers many concepts & tools that can used to reverse-engineer existing apps, as well as debug […]
The recent hack of fembot dating extramarital affairs website Ashley Madison, which resulted in data from millions of accounts being dumped online, has one more salutary yet familiar lesson to deliver: even very well encrypted stupid passwords are still stupid. While plenty of aspects of Ashley Madison’s business and operations have raised eyebrows, the firm did apparently use robust and respected encryption for its […]
Jonathan Petit, security researcher at Security Innovation, Inc., has revealed he can easily fool the LiDAR sensors on any self-driving car to slow down or abruptly stop by sending it a simple laser pulse. LiDAR stands for Light Detection and Ranging and is a sensing technology that can measure the distance of an object by […]