Cyber Monday Thieves

December 2nd, 2016

Cyber Monday has become one of the biggest shopping days of the year with this year’s sales topping expectations by reaching a record $3.39 billion. More than 85% of online shoppers do at least some of their buying on a smartphone and consequently, thieves are exploiting those devices to steal people’s personal information. One way […]

Zero Day Firefox Exploit Discovered

December 2nd, 2016

A recently discovered vulnerability in Firefox and Tor browsers that de-anonymizes users has been fixed in a newly published patch by Mozilla. While the bug appears to only be actively exploited on Windows based systems, anyone running OS X or Linux should immediately patch their systems, because it can affect them as well. Mozilla was […]

GStreamer Linux Exploit

November 29th, 2016

A newly discovered exploit has the possibility to open up Linux users running Fedora and possibly other Linux versions to backdoors, key loggers and other drive-by types of malware by attacking a vulnerability in GStreamer decoder for the FLIC file format. Chris Evans, the security researcher behind the exploit, was able to go after the […]

Hackers Sending Malware with MailChimp

November 29th, 2016

The MailChimp email newsletter service was recently attacked by hackers who infiltrated their subscriber database and sent out emails containing malicious links to users. The emails appeared to be from companies that used MailChimp to outsource their newsletter distribution. The phony emails originate from an administrator account, alleging to be invoices utilizing Quickbooks. Clicking the […]

UMass HIPAA Fine

November 29th, 2016

As part of their crackdown, federal regulators have issued their 13th major HIPAA enforcement this year. The University of Massachusetts Amherst were given a $650,000 fine and a corrective action plan to fix the issues found by the US Department of Health and Human Services Office for Civil Rights. The agency went out of their […]

The Cost of Cyberwarfare

November 28th, 2016

For the most part, experts agree that the cost of maintaining a cyber warfare operation will go down as time goes on. Where they begin to disagree is in whether these costs will drop to a degree that would allow non-state actors like ISIS to get in on the act. With that said there are […]

Navy Hacked

November 28th, 2016

It appears that the personal data of at least 130,000 US Navy Sailors has been accessed by an unknown hacker. The data accessed includes the Social Security numbers of 134,386 both former and active-duty US sailors. On October 27, Hewlett-Packard notified the Navy that a laptop used by one of their employees working under a […]

Ransomware Hits San Francisco

November 28th, 2016

Riders using San Francisco’s Municipal Railway (MUNI) got an unexpected Thanksgiving gift on Black Friday, when they discovered “Out of Service” and “Metro Free” signs posted on ticket machines that afternoon and Saturday. It appears that MUNI’s computerized fare system was the victim of a ransomware attack that ultimately forced it to shut down. Like most ransomware, […]

Cyberattacks Targeting Healthcare

November 23rd, 2016

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 […]

Be Careful of Video on iPhones

November 23rd, 2016

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 […]

Gorilla Glue Hacked

November 18th, 2016

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 […]

95% of Ransomware Bypasses Your Security

November 17th, 2016

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 […]

$5 Devices Grants Access to Locked Computers

November 16th, 2016

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 […]

How to Hack a Linux Machine in 70 Seconds

November 16th, 2016

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 […]

Stage Your Own DDoS Attack

November 14th, 2016

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 […]

Protecting from Election Hacking

November 8th, 2016

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 […]

Don’t Call that Support Number

November 7th, 2016

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 […]

Hospital Hampered by Hackers

November 3rd, 2016

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 […]

Stealing with the Internet of Things

November 3rd, 2016

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 […]

Ransomware and Malware Top Healthcare IT Concerns

November 1st, 2016

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 […]