A typical information security conference can cost $5,000 plus plane and hotel costs and, although it might seem to be an exorbitant sum of money, many of us could easily defend the value and necessity of the training to bolster one’s technical capabilities. But when was the last time you invested even just a few hours of your time to working on developing your information security career in truly...

Last week, Tripwire published an article analyzing the ways in which the United States’ International Strategy for Cyberspace (ISC 2011) has informed the ideas outlined in the recently released 2015 National Security Strategy (U.S. NSS 2015). In my analysis, I compared both documents’ usage of the term “cyber” and found that while they vary somewhat in their approach, both documents support the...

Despite retailers’ continuous improvement in compliance with the Payment Card Industry (PCI) security standards, four out of five companies are still failing at interim assessments, according to Verizon’s latest report . The report highlights that the overall state of compliance grew significantly in 2014, with 20 percent of organizations achieving full compliance – up from 11 percent in 2013, and...

Today’s VERT Alert addresses 14 new Microsoft Security Bulletins. VERT is actively working on coverage for these bulletins in order to meet our 24-hour SLA and expects to ship ASPL-605 on Wednesday, March 11. MS15-018 Multiple Memory Corruption Vulnerabilities in Internet Explorer MULTIPLE VBScript Memory Corruption Vulnerability CVE-2015-0032 Internet Explorer Elevation of Privilege Vulnerability...

In VERT Vuln School: Stack Overflow 101 we reviewed a contrived example of a simple stack-based buffer overflow vulnerability in a binary wrapper for the nMap scanning tool. With this example, I showed how crafted command line parameters could be trigger an overflow of user-controlled data onto the stack. The synscan binary performed no checking on the length of a user-supplied buffer before...

Join us for a live webcast Thursday, March 26, 2015 - 11:00 AM Pacific / 2:00 PM Eastern "Caught in the Crossfire: The Business Impact Of Cyberwar & High Tech Espionage " with Shane Harris, author of @War: The Rise of the Military-Internet Complex The Intercept ¹ is reporting a secret program targeting Apple devices and software as part of a CIA sponsored event called "Jamboree," where groups of...

With technology, we are constantly looking to improve security. We moved from HTTP to HTTPS to help secure online transactions and mitigate man-in-the-middle attacks. With DNS, we have started to implement DNSSEC. Why are we not looking backward at the cornerstone of modern communication, the device that still ties everyone together? The telephone. There have been minor updates to user experience...

Earlier this month, Tripwire published its final installment of 10 Notorious Cyber Criminals Brought to Justice , a series that sought to demonstrate how law enforcement frequently catches up with individuals who use cyberspace for malicious purposes. Although our series has concluded, we as information security professionals realize that law enforcement will always be working to counter the...

Cyber insurance is a hot topic of many debates today. It is believed to be the long-awaited cure for high-impact security risks, especially in light of constantly evolving privacy legislation and disclosure obligations – but what actually is it? Simply put, cyber insurance is a tool intended to mitigate the loss from information security incidents. The decision to use it, however, should be based...

According to a fellow at Columbia University, companies are not investing significantly more in information security partly because of the influence of moral hazards, or the act of one entity taking risks because others bear the burden of those actions. Benjamin Dean , a staff associate and fellow in cyber-security and internet governance at the Columbia School of International and Public Affairs...

There's bad news for any Windows users who were thinking that the recently-announced FREAK vulnerability wasn't something they had to particularly worry about. When first announced, it was thought that the newly-discovered flaw in SSL/TLS was limited to Apple's Safari and Google's Android web browsers, opening the possibility of hackers and intelligence agencies intercepting HTTPS-protected...

An interesting dialogue came up in my security circles that I believe outlines a fundamental disconnect within organizations developing software products. We have all heard that communication is key, but are the conversations happening at the proper levels to expose a product’s security requirements? The conversation went something like this: (Sales employee): “Developers are not thinking about...

On March 4, the series premiere for the new crime drama CSI: Cyber aired on CBS. The show stars Patricia Arquette, who recently won an Oscar for Best Supporting Actress in a Supporting Role, as Avery Ryan, a behavioral analyst who solves crimes under the FBI Cyber Division. Peter MacNiol, Charley Koontz, Hayley Kiyoko, James Van Der Beek,and Shad Moss co-star as members of Ryan’s team. The first...

Last week, we used the United States’ 2015 National Security Strategy (NSS) as a reference point to analyze “A Strong Britain in an Age of Uncertainty: The National Security Strategy,” the United Kingdom’s 2010 National Security Strategy. Though limited in scope, this comparative analysis revealed a number of important findings, including the UK’s recognition of benefits and challenges of...

Historically, access control has been based on the identity of a user requesting execution of a capability to perform an operation (e.g., read) on an object (e.g., a file). This was done directly either as in Discretionary Access Control or Mandatory Access Control or through predefined attribute types, such as roles or groups assigned to that user as in Role Based Access Control or RBAC. While...

A report explains how Google Play Book publishers that are offering cracked and modded Android APK files as part of fake game guides are exposing users to malware and phishing scams. In a post published on its website, Android Police notes how it has identified at least a dozen sellers of these fake guides, though it concedes that the actual number is likely much greater than that. Some of the...

The term APT ( Advanced Persistent Threat) , like many other acronyms in the world of IT/Information/Cyber Security entered our vocabulary some years ago, along with other partnering phrases, such as Advanced Evasion Techniques (AET), which at the time took the headlines as something new . Whilst these new outlined logical dangers do serve up a very real threat to the modern era of high-dependency...

Tripwire has been getting more involved in connecting its products to threat intelligence services lately. I described the reasons why we care about threat intelligence, particularly STIX and TAXII, in my article last month: Why We Should Care About STIX & TAXII . My colleagues also talked in more specifics about some of the partners Tripwire is working with in the post Threat Intelligence: Reduce...

A security firm has identified a new type of malware that spams a mobile device’s contact list with SMS text messages touting fake Amazon gift card offers. According to an article posted on its blog , AdaptiveMobile states that the malware, dubbed ‘Gazon,’ is quickly becoming “one of the ‘spammiest’ mobile malware outbreaks seen yet.” Gazon employs a shortened link that advertises free Amazon gift...

It was revealed this evening that Hillary Clinton was using a personal email account while serving as the secretary of state. This has raised a number of issues with regards to both compliance and security. Apparently, Clinton chose not to use a government-issued email address despite the Federal Records Act, which only applies to official email accounts created by the government, and are...