Archive for the ‘Cyber Security’ Category

North Carolina Patient Information Exposed

Monday, March 6th, 2017

The information of almost 13,000 North Carolina Medicaid patients was exposed in an unencrypted email last year. The email, which was sent by the North Carolina Department of Health and Human Services on November 30, contained the information of 12,731 Medicaid patients who are in assisted living homes.  The information included names, locations and Medicaid […]

What the Top Ten Most Popular Passwords of 2016 Say About Us

Monday, March 6th, 2017

We have all been there before. You’re in a hurry and need to pull an attachment from an email. You log on to a computer and go to your email provider, but the password you put in doesn’t work. You try a few different variations, but still nothing. You try to reset your password out […]

Did Obama Hand Russia a Parting Gift?

Thursday, March 2nd, 2017

When Donald Trump took office on January 20th, Barack Obama’s presidency was officially over and the country moved on, in very different direction. Will Obama’s legacy be defined by the Affordable Care Act? The Iran nuclear deal? The new openness between Cuba and America? If you asked most Americans right now they might tell you […]

Linux Kernel Bug

Wednesday, March 1st, 2017

After a smaller one was discovered in January, security researcher Andrey Konovalov recently uncovered an even larger privilege-escalation Linux Kernel bug that dates back to over a decade ago in the Datagram Congestion Control Protocol (DCCP) by applying Syzkaller which is a Google kernel fuzzing tool. This use-after-free bug (CVE-2017-6074) impacts such major Linux OS […]

That’s Not a Font, That’s a Virus!

Wednesday, March 1st, 2017

NeoSmart Technologies, an internet security firm, recently identified a new and very effective cyber scam that has been targeting Google Chrome users by prompting them to update their Chrome Font Pack, but… HoeflerText is not a real font – It’s actually malware in font clothing. Hackers have apparently encoded JavaScript into a poorly secured WordPress […]

Regulation Ripples from Across the Pond

Monday, February 27th, 2017

The Ripples Are Moving Across the Pond. Will You Be Ready for Regulations? When you think of American money, where do you think of? A mattress stuffed full of dollar bills? Your local bank? Fort Knox? Of course not. When people think of American money they think of New York City. From the billions of […]

Employees: Cybersecurity Assets, Not Liabilities

Friday, February 24th, 2017

Businesses are often needlessly victimized by cybercriminals, due to small yet costly employee mistakes that could have been avoided with just a little bit of education and training. Below is information employees should know in order to make them assets to your cybersecurity team, as opposed to liabilities. Cybercrime Awareness It is crucial that employees […]

Deadly Ransomware

Friday, February 24th, 2017

Ransomware has become a household name over the last two years by victimizing not only PC users, but small businesses, as well – most notably financial and medical institutions – by holding data and files hostage in order to blackmail their marks into paying millions of dollars in ransoms. If you are not, however, familiar […]

Israeli Soldiers Hacked by Fake Social Media Profiles

Tuesday, February 21st, 2017

Are you an Israeli Defense Force (IDF) soldier that has met an extremely attractive Western woman over social media who seems too good to be true?   If so, you’ve probably been hacked. Lookout and Kaspersky have released a report suggesting that a group of sophisticated hackers has been stealing sensitive data from some 100 […]

Microsoft Vulnerability Left to Chance

Tuesday, February 21st, 2017

Google’s Project Zero team has one main goal: to find software vulnerabilities before the black hatters do, and they are very good at their job.  Once a vulnerability is found, the team then gives the company 90 days to patch the vulnerability before releasing it to the public. On June 9, 2016, Project Zero member […]

President Trump Hacked

Monday, February 20th, 2017

The DNC is not the only political party with computer security issues. An official Trump campaign fundraising website, secure2.donaldjtrump.com, was hacked just in time for Presidents’ Day by hackers known only as “Pro_Mast3r” who are apparently based out of Iraq.  The website was “defaced” by the unknown hackers, who displayed a shadowy figure in a […]

Work Email More Dangerous than Personal Email

Monday, February 20th, 2017

An analysis over more than a billion emails yielded some interesting stats when comparing work email versus personal email. The numbers, compiled and reported by Google Research, show that work email is much more prone to hacking attempts, which makes sense.  A compromised work email account can yield a lot more money than a personal […]

Why Hackers Always Have the Upper Hand

Monday, February 20th, 2017

No matter what you do, when you fight hackers you’re at a disadvantage. Do your backups, setup network infrastructure, even get cybercrime insurance. No matter what you do you will be at a disadvantage once you’re attacked because hackers not only have the element of surprise but they also don’t have to deal with the […]

Latest Yahoo Hack Bypasses Passwords

Thursday, February 16th, 2017

Poor Yahoo.  They were already involved in a data breach that compromised over a billion user accounts.  Now there’s been another, new hack that they kinda sorta quietly let people know about two months ago. The latest attack was disclosed in a statement Yahoo released in December, but it was mostly overlooked because it was […]

How Your House Could Become a Hacker’s Best Friend

Thursday, February 16th, 2017

How was your Christmas? Get anything good? This may not surprise you, but Amazon had a pretty good Christmas this year. According to an Amazon press release, they sold 9x more echo devices than last year and millions of Alexa devices. That means millions of households just connected to the internet with personal assistant devices, […]

Cybercrime = Death?

Thursday, February 16th, 2017

Cybercrime and death have more in common than you think. No one has died from being hacked yet, but if you keep reading you’ll see why you should fear hackers the same way you fear dying. The Reczone password manager seems like a perfect way to keep your login credentials safe. It is an air-gapped […]

Brute Force Attacks Spreading Ransomware at Alarming Rate

Wednesday, February 15th, 2017

A hacker group has been using brute force attacks to gain access to small business networks, mostly in Australia and New Zealand, to spread Crysis ransomware since September.  The number of attacks doubled in January and spread to larger businesses in more countries, particularly American healthcare organizations. The hackers gain access to networks through RPD […]

Update Your WordPress ASAP

Tuesday, February 14th, 2017

Though it started out as a simple blogging platform, WordPress has grown to become one of the most popular content management system used in building all kinds of websites, powering over 74.6 million sites.  Recently, however, nearly two million sites have been hacked. The attack, which replaces the content of the website with a message […]

Word Macro Malware Makes its Way to Mac

Friday, February 10th, 2017

With Windows-based PCs being much more widely used, hackers have focused their efforts on them much more than they have on Apple Mac computers.  That, however, is starting to change. One example of this is that Word macro malware has recently been discovered on Macs.  If you’re not familiar with what that is, a macro is […]

Nearly Invisible Fileless Malware

Thursday, February 9th, 2017

Fileless malware, which doesn’t need to copy files or folders to a hard drive to be executed, was first detected in 2014, it hasn’t hit the mainstream until now.  And hit it has, having infected more than 140 financial institutions across the world. Fileless malware is injected into and run from the RAM of processes […]