Cyber Security

We have all read about the nonperishable nature of medical data. Whether our medical histories or intellectual property for the next wonder drug, when the bad guys have that data, it is not easy to recover. Why is medical data being stolen? Is it a target or simply collateral damage as part of a different […]

Watch out for what you’re watching on your iPhone!  Watching a short video on your iPhone can cause it to lock up and force a reset. The video, which is only five seconds long, is making its way around the internet.  Whether you finish watching the video or close it up, it starts a loop […]

The hacking group known as The Dark Overlord claims to have hacked Gorilla Glue, maker of a popular super-strong adhesive.  In a chat with the website Motherboard, The Dark Overlord claims to have “everything they ever created.” The hackers say they have over 500GB of data from the company.  This includes contracts, financials, presentations and […]

A recent study of companies that had been hit by ransomware attacks in the last year revealed some very interesting and frightening numbers. Ransomware gets through 95% of ransomware attacks bypassed firewalls. 77% bypassed email filtering. 52% bypassed anti-malware software. You’re not doing enough 81% of IT security workers surveyed were confident in backup solutions […]

Most people don’t give a second thought to leaving their computer alone for a bit, feeling secure that if it’s locked and password-protected, nobody’s going to be able to do anything with it.  A new device called PoisonTap can bypass a locked computer, and it only costs about $5. With PoisonTap, created by a hacker […]

Want to hack a Linux computer?  It’s takes just over a minute and it’s so simple a toddler could do it.  (Not that a toddler would know what to do once they’ve got access.) On many Linux boxes, including those using Debian andFedora, local or in the cloud, all you have to do is hold down […]

A DDoS (Domain Denial of Service) attack happens when a network is flooded with requests.  One common way to do this is for hackers to hijack a bunch of internet-enabled devices, from computers to routers to webcams, and send traffic to one place to overload it.  Now, however, you can accomplish a DDoS against your […]

There’s no question that a lot of people have been paying close attention to the presidential election this year.  Reports of Russian hackers and accusations of a a rigged election have put election security under more scrutiny than usual. The US government has several departments on high alert, including the FBI, the Justice Department and […]

You PC just froze.  An official-looking message that appears to be from Microsoft pops up and tells you to call a support number.  If this scene is familiar to you, you’ve been witness to a scam. A compromised ad injects malicious code that hogs up all of your CPU, making it impossible (or painfully slow, if you’re […]

A hospital in the United Kingdom was forced to divert trauma patients and cancel planned operations on Wednesday after a cyberattack left their systems crippled. The National Health Service’s Lincolnshire and Goole (NHS) trust posted a major incident alert on its website indicating they were forced to shut down after a virus infected their systems on October […]

As we get more and more accustomed to the convenience of our everyday objects having network capabilities in the Internet of Things so that we can control our lights, thermostats, baby monitors and countless other things from our phones, we sometimes forget the security risks that are associated with it. Unfortunately a security flaw was […]

According to a recent study conducted by the College of Healthcare Information Management Executives (CHIME) and the Association for Executives in Healthcare Information Security (AEHIS) the top security concern IT executives in the healthcare industry are ransomware and malware attacks. Additionally the survey pointed to social engineering, internal threats, and data theft as the top […]

A recent study of over 10,000 email servers has found that 82% were misconfigured. Servers that allow malicious emails that appear to come from within an organization or business to pass through leaves them open to various types of attacks. Known as email spoofing, this type of attack typically starts with an email that appears […]

Over the past week over 14 million emails have been sent out in a new campaign with the purpose of spread the Locky strain of ransomware. As we’ve reported many times, once Locky takes control it then encrypts a victim’s files and demands payment in Bitcoins to get a key to unlock them, typically around […]

You probably heard about the massive DDoS attack that took out swaths of the internet this weekend.  It happened because hackers were able to hijack unsecured surveillance systems and routers from around the world and put them to use overloading websites.  If you have any internet-enabled devices, they could be used in some nefarious hacker […]

As we all know, WikiLeaks has been publishing embarrassing emails from the inner circle of Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign, with the most recent coming from the personal email of John Podesta. The US government and security firms all believe it was the work of hackers acting on the orders of the Russian government, but the […]

Yahoo released their earnings statement on Tuesday, but took the unusual step of skipping out on a conference call to discuss the earnings. The way it usually works is that a company will release their earnings statement than get on a call with analysts, investors, reporters and various other interested parties for a Q&A session. […]

Recently there has been some particular insight and knowledge given to the fact that there are more that 5,761 online stores that are currently affected with card data stealing malware. In particular the number of online shops that are infected with malware has skyrocketed in the past year according to William de Groot in particular […]

Since the Chernobyl incident, everyone has known the dangers of a malfunctioning nuclear power plant.  With the rise of cyberattacks, experts have warned whoever would listen about potential vulnerabilities with nuke plants.  It turns out that such worries were well founded. The International Atomic Energy Agency announced that a nuclear power plant has already been […]

Everyone knows the law of supply and demand: when a resource is scarce, the price is high.  When the market is glutted, the price falls.  The internet black market is no different. It appears that cybercriminals have flooded the market with Electronic Health Records (EHR) and have forced their value down to the degree that […]