If you read my previous post about Microsoft ending extended support for Windows Server 2003 (WS2003) on July 14, 2015, you’re familiar with what that means - Microsoft will not be providing further security patches, hot fixes, or software updates without a costly extended support agreement. “Many IT teams are very comfortable using Windows Server 2003 for a print or file server because it’s a...

A number of popular travel sites have alerted customers of fraudulent emails and SMS messages posing as the legitimate companies in an attempt to lure users into disclosing their personal information. According to reports, a similar notice was recently sent out to customers of online travel agencies Travelocity and Hotels.com , as well as their parent company, Expedia . The email notified users...

A survey recently published by Tripwire reveals that 86% of energy security professionals believe they can detect a breach in less than a week, leading some to wonder whether this confidence is misplaced. Conducted by Dimensional Research, the survey examined the views of over 400 energy executives and IT professionals in the energy, oil, gas and utility industries on cybersecurity and compliance...

What's the worst thing your hackers could steal from your organisation? Sure, no-one wants to have their passwords pinched - but at least you can change them later and clean-up any problems that the hackers have caused. How about having your customer database stolen? That's undoubtedly serious, and you might find it hard work recovering the trust of your customers after such a breach. But consider...

The Financial Services Information Sharing and Analysis Center (FS-ISAC) has issued an alert warning companies of a continued increase in wire transfer fraud due to business email compromise (BEC) scams. The product of a joint effort with the Federal Bureau of Investigation and the U.S. Secret Service, the alert discusses BEC attacks and provides businesses with recommendations on how to mitigate...

Tripwire is pleased to announce the release of its newest infographic, “ Where Are Your Cyberattacks Coming From? ” Created in response to the release of Verizon’s 2015 Data Breach Investigations Report (DBIR 2015) back in April, the infographic explains the five most common attack patterns behind today’s data breaches. In this article, I will review each of these methods, identify which...

Gift cards have caused quite a headache for retailers in the last month, exposing another way that fraudulent activity can eat into razor-thin profit margins. Gift card fraud can range from physical theft to cloning to exploiting programming errors on the merchant side. The methods of attack are very similar to what is seen with credit card fraud, but gift card fraud is less widely reported in the...

In the beginning, there were stack buffer overflows everywhere. Overflowing data on the stack made for a quick and easy way to subvert a program to run code provided by an attacker. Initially, this meant simply overwriting the saved return address on the stack with the location of shellcode typically on the stack and perhaps prefaced by a NOP sled, depending on how accurately the attacker could...

Most of us in the cybersecurity industry are familiar with a recent “tweet heard around the world.” Yes, I’m referring to the infamous tweet that caused Chris Roberts to be removed from a United Airlines flight. This incident has undoubtedly generated much criticism aimed at both Roberts and the airline industry. I am not writing this article to speculate about the why’s and why not’s regarding...

A security researcher has demonstrated a method of attack that allows malicious actors to steal laptop encryption keys using a gadget small enough to fit inside some pita bread. Developed by Daniel Genkin and his colleagues at Tel Aviv University, the attack makes use of radio signals given off by laptops when their CPUs are busy crunching data. Source: Tel Aviv University As reported by BBC News...

The issue of cybersecurity has finally gained the attention of top company decision-makers in light of the ongoing large-scale breaches that continue to jeopardize company assets and customers’ privacy. However, as executives and board members become more aware of the impact of cyber attacks on the business, is awareness enough to allow them to effectively manage these cybersecurity risks? A...

Windows Server 2003 (WS2003) is one of the most widely used server platforms in Microsoft’s history, with 27.8 million licenses sold worldwide between 2003 and 2013, and a conservative estimate of nearly 8 million licenses still in active use. When Microsoft ends support for this popular operating system on July 14, 2015, the stakes for enterprises are higher than when support ended for Windows XP...

eBay has patched three vulnerabilities found in its Magento shopping platform that could have allowed for hijacking sessions and man-in-the-middle (MitM) attacks. Hadji Samir, a penetration tester with Vulnerability Labs, released technical descriptions of a persistent input validation web vulnerabiility, a cross-site scripting (XSS) hole, and a cross-site request forgery (CSRF) bug in Magento on...

The type of coverage a vulnerability receives on social media often correlates to that threat’s level of risk, reveals a recent report. This is just one of the findings of the 2015 State of Vulnerability Risk Management , a study issued earlier this month by NopSec Labs , a data science and research company that specializes in analyzing malware, exploit, vulnerability and other cyber threat risk...

The Telegraph recently published an article profiling six hacker “tribes”: secret agents, voyeurs, hacktivists, white hats, glory hunters, and cyber thieves. The article made some broad assumptions about cybercriminals that were not well-received by industry experts. As cybersecurity becomes a part of our daily lives, how can we talk about it without relying on stereotypes? Listen to our latest...

There is good news today for many of the 600 million Samsung Galaxy users who have been put at risk by a security flaw in the pre-installed SwiftKey keyboard. Samsung is preparing a fix which will be rolled out as a security update. The problem was that Samsung Galaxy S phones, including the S4 Mini, S4, S5, and S6, failed to properly validate language pack updates for the special pre-installed...

I am pleased to present Part 2 of my recent interview with Graham Cluley , an award-winning security blogger on grahamcluley.com DB: How do you feel the security industry has changed since you first started in the 1990s? GC: The industry has grown up enormously. Originally, it was just a cottage industry made up of little – often one-person – companies that operated out of spare bedrooms and...

A website used by Microsoft to challenge the U.S. federal government's policies on matters of privacy and surveillance has allegedly been hacked. According to ZDNet , Digital Constitution appears to have been modified at 9:15 pm EDT on Wednesday, with casino-related text -- including keywords used to garner greater search engine hits, such as "casino," "blackjack," and "roulette" -- injected at...

This week, I had the pleasure of sitting down with Graham Cluley , an award-winning security blogger on grahamcluley.com , researcher and public speaker. He has been working in the computer security industry since the early 1990s, having been employed by companies such as Sophos, McAfee and Dr Solomon’s. Graham has given talks about computer security for some of the world's largest companies...

Several of Canada’s federal government websites were momentarily taken down Wednesday afternoon after reportedly being hit by a massive cyber attack. Canada's Treasury Board President Tony Clement later took to Twitter his confirmation that the government servers had experienced denial of service attacks, affecting Canada.ca, sencanada.ca, CSIS, and the Justice department’s website. Confirmed...