Recently, Tripwire reported on the launch of ‘ Silk Road Reloaded ,’ the newest iteration of the Silk Road underground market where users can purchase drugs and fake IDs. The fact that Silk Road has returned is a testament to users’ ongoing ability to purchase illegal goods online, not to mention merchants’ ability to sell these products. After all, as noted in a recent CNBC news article by Ken...

This report was prepared by The Institute for National Security Studies (INSS) and The Cyber Security Forum Initiative (CSFI) to create better cyber situational awareness (Cyber SA) of the nature and scope of threats and hazards to national security worldwide in the domains of cyberspace and open source intelligence. It is provided to Federal, State, Local, Tribal, Territorial and private sector...

The United States and the UK have announced that they will be creating “cyber cells,” intelligence units which will share information and conduct simulated cyber attacks in an effort to enhance the security cooperation between the two countries. “We have got hugely capable cyber defences,” UK Prime Minister David Cameron said about the agreement. “We have got the expertise, and that is why we...

Regularly in the news we hear about organisations having their Twitter or Facebook accounts compromised by cybercriminals - but they're not the only social media outlets which hackers and fraudsters have an interest in hijacking. Researchers at Symantec have warned this week of an increasing number of phishing emails being spammed out, claiming to come from LinkedIn's support team. Due to...

In my last post , I talked about the basics of vulnerability scoring in vulnerability management and the disparity that can exist when you score the subjective elements of a vulnerability. We looked at the variance that can exist within CVSSv2 and how a properly developed score can show a clear difference between two unique issues. This time, I want to talk about vulnerability versus risk. This is...

A Birmingham hacker who is believed to be fighting for the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria, better known as ‘ISIS,’ is suspected of having orchestrated the defacement of U.S. CENTCOM social media accounts earlier this week. Investigators believe that 20-year-old Junaid Hussain helped administrate a Twitter account that operated under the pseudonym “Abu Hussain al Britani,” which was linked to the...

At Tripwire , we have recently seen increasing interest from our customers in being able to match up file changes found by our products with threat intelligence that comes from a variety of external sources. We have run into a common issue here when we have gotten down to the implementation details, and so I write this post as a plea to all the new, emerging and growing providers of threat...

Today’s VERT Alert addresses 8 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-597 on Wednesday, January 14th. MS15-001 Microsoft Application Compatibility Infrastructure Elevation of Privilege Vulnerability CVE-2015-0002 MS15-002 Windows Telnet Service Buffer Overflow Vulnerability CVE-2015-0014...

Thousands of customer accounts of frequent American Airlines and United Airlines travelers have been compromised, with hackers going as far as booking themselves several free trips or upgrades. On Monday, American Airlines spokeswoman Martha Thomas told The Associated Press the airline had notified nearly 10,000 affected customers of the incident, which occurred late December. As a result, certain...

Last year, we announced The Voice of the CISO, a new series in which we interview prominent individuals in the field to gain detailed insight into the mind of a CISO and to better understand their role within an organization. Our latest interview features Thom Langford, an information security professional who i s the Director of Sapient’s Global Security Office. In that capacity, he is...

‘Silk Road Reloaded,’ a new anonymous online drug market, draws upon a host of new anonymizing features, including I2P connectivity and the use of cryptocurrencies other than Bitcoin. By embracing I2P, the administrators of the new Silk Road iteration now welcome a service that, as opposed to Tor, is friendly to peer-to-peer connections and uses a design that is optimized for hidden services...

It’s 2015—another year for law enforcement agencies to find and arrest some of the most dangerous hackers. With this optimism for the New Year at heart, we now focus in on the story of yet another notorious cyber criminal brought to justice: Albert Gonzalez. Gonzalez, who is known as “Segvec,” “Soupnazi” and “J4guar” among Internet circles, is an experienced hacker who first came into contact with...

A hacker has defaced the websites of a number of French municipalities with a message in support of the Wednesday attacks against the satirical French magazine Charlie Hebdo , a massacre which killed 12 including two police officers. The front pages of the hacked sites were seen to display the “black flag of Islam,” which has become a symbol of the militant Islamic group ISIS, as well as the...

In December of 2011, Tripwire published a list of security’s top 25 influencers . More than three years later, we are pleased to announce a new list for 2015 -- The Infosec Avengers! For each influencer whom we have selected, we include their Twitter handle, blog URL and reasoning for selecting them. We also include their answer for what infosec-related superpower they would choose to have. This...

Ever heard the phrase 'Loose lips sink ships?' If an attacker (or anyone else) wants to know what’s going on in an organization, all they need to do is go to lunch. Hitting the popular restaurants and cafes around the target location is a no-risk method for gathering data. If two or more coworkers are together for any length of time it’s almost inevitable that they will “talk shop.” The larger the...

I was just reading an article about an FBI investigation of whether US banks are attacking their cyber attackers in an attempt to fight back. Along similar lines, we recently saw reports of Sony taking an offensive position by DDOS-ing sites hosting its content . The question of whether it makes sense to attack your cyber attackers isn't new — this has been a debate in the infosec community for...

There's little doubt that effectively remediating vulnerabilities is an important part of a comprehensive information security strategy. Vulnerabilities in desktops, servers, laptops and infrastructure are commonly involved in intrusions and incidents. For example, the Chthonic malware designed to steal banking details, exploits a known Microsoft Office vulnerability (CVE-2014-1761). While there's...

On any given day, my inbox is a flurry of activity that would make a January snow squall in Canada feel like a light breeze with the occasional flake. Like a snowflake, each email is unique but many share common themes. One of these themes is my favourite discussion topic: vulnerability scoring. I was inspired to further discuss this issue after the POODLE vulnerability (CVE-2014-3566), which has...

The largest inflight Internet provider Gogo is under fire after a Google Chrome security engineer took to Twitter her discovery of the service issuing fake SSL certificates. During a recent flight, Adrienne Porter Felt ( @__apf__ ) noted that while accessing Google sites, the SSL certificate was actually being issued by Gogo – an “unstrusted issuer “ – instead of Google. hey @Gogo , why are you...

Only one percent of consumers believe using a third-party mobile payment provider, such as Apple Pay or Google Wallet, is a safe way to pay for in-store purchases, reveals Tripwire, Inc . This past holiday season, One Poll and Dimensional Research conducted a consumer survey of over 2,011 consumers in the United States and UK. The survey’s findings include the following: Over a quarter (26 percent...