I have a love/hate affair with the term ‘Social Engineer.’ To me, this is the most professional and committed ‘job’ I have ever had. It has required training and endless education, and it has changed my life in nearly every aspect. But for some, the term is used for when a free warranty deal is obtained or a loved one is tricked into exposing a...

On Monday, online password manager LastPass announced it discovered “suspicious activity” on its network, leading to the compromise of users' email addresses, password reminders, server per user salts, and authentication hashes. The popular program alerted users in a blog post, stating that it had...

What more can be done about passwords? We tell users to choose unique, complicated passwords that contain a gallimaufry of bizarre characters - and they tell us they're impossible to remember, especially when they need to remember different passwords for the many different websites out there. We tell computer users to get help with remembering their...

Belgian's national privacy watchdog is suing Facebook for allegedly breaching both Belgian and European privacy laws for the way that it tracks the behavior of both members and non-members. According to EUobserver, this is the first time a European privacy commission has sued Facebook for its non-compliance with regards to privacy laws. Earlier this...

According to the 2015 Information Security Breaches Survey, a PwC study that I recently analyzed in an article for The State of Security, the number of denial of service (DoS) attacks has either dropped or remained stagnant for most UK corporations over the past year. Apparently, this decline has not stopped certain malicious actors from getting...

Germany has dropped an investigative probe into the alleged tapping of Angela Merkel's cellphone by the National Security Agency (NSA). According to BBC News, the office of federal prosecutor Harold Range said that not enough evidence had been obtained to justify legal action. Germany's decision to drop the probe marks the end of an incident that...

What happens when users or employees take it upon themselves to decide what tech they want to use and how they want to implement it? From my vantage point, InfoSec faces a constant challenge of trying to keep up with threats, let alone stay one step ahead. But as the Internet of Things proliferates, and human nature takes its course, we cannot out...

Today’s evolving online threat landscape is challenging enterprises to make changes that will enhance their security. The threat of a data breach, for instance, is leading many organizations to invest in measures that will help protect their data. Even so, what intelligence is guiding these decisions remains uncertain. It is therefore an opportune...

An independent reviewer in the United Kingdom has called for a new "comprehensive" law to help define security services' online surveillance powers. According to BBC News, David Anderson QC, an independent reviewer of terrorism legislation, stated that a "clean slate" is needed in the approach to surveillance powers used by security services to...

Speculation is rife. The OPM hack will become a fascinating story if we ever actually learn the details – how exactly did attackers penetrate and exfiltrate millions of federal employee records? What weaknesses did they exploit, and how did they escalate access? More to the point, what protections could have or should have prevented the penetration...

I would wager that most people who have an iPhone or iPad use the default Apple iOS Mail application, rather than a third-party app, to read their email. And if you're one of those people, you could be at risk from an unpatched vulnerability that could allow hackers to convincingly trick you into handing them your passwords. As The Register...

Yesterday, Europol’s European Cybercrime Centre (EC3) announced the success of a joint international operation, leading to the arrest of 49 suspects of a massive cybercrime ring. In collaboration with several European countries, the criminal group was suspected of committing financial fraud by...

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 expect to ship ASPL-618 on Wednesday, June 10th. MS15-056 Internet Explorer Information Disclosure Vulnerability CVE-2015-1765 Multiple Elevation of...

According to a report issued by Intel Security Group's McAfee Labs, ransomware has experienced a 165% increase in the first quarter of 2015. McAfee Labs Threats Report: May 2015 reveals that this increase has been fueled in part by the impression of underground criminals that victims in rich countries seem to be the most willing to make ransom...

A security firm has identified MalumPoS, a new type of point-of-sale (PoS) malware that is targeting businesses in the hospitality, food and beverage, and retail industries. According to a blog post published by global security software company Trend Micro, the authors of MalumPoS designed the malware to collect data from PoS systems running Oracle®...

With the advancements in technology, the networks today aren’t the same as I learned on nearly 20 years ago. We’ve evolved from wired only networks using hubs to the PC, to switched networks. Used mostly for Voice Over IP (VoIP) phones, the switched networks are still there, while our computers have now given up the wires to operate wirelessly. Yet,...

China has denied responsibility for a data breach at the U.S. federal government that is believed to have compromised the personal information of former and current employees. According to a statement released by the U.S. Office of Personnel Management (OPM), the federal agency that is responsible for screening and hiring workers as well as...

Ever looked at the messages in the Oracle listener logs generated by Tripwire IP360 scans and wondered what was going on? The most common one you see probably looks something like this: 01-JUN-2015 12:39:37 * (CONNECT_DATA=(COMMAND=VERSION)) * version * 1189 TNS-01189: The listener could not authenticate the user TNS-01169: The listener has not...

New York’s Superintendent of Financial Services Benjamin Lawsky announced on Wednesday a new set of rules and regulations for businesses accepting, selling or buying virtual currencies. Following nearly a two-year-long effort, Lawsky introduced the first-ever comprehensive framework – known as BitLicense – in a speech at the BITS Emerging Payments...

As news of information breaches and personal data theft become more prevalent and popular in the press, technologists are witnessing and taking part in the rapid evolution of the once neglected realm of cybersecurity. Hopefully, this process results in an integrated, enlightened solution to what is a very complicated puzzle. Moving Beyond a Fear...