It’s a turbulent time in geopolitics today, and activity in the geopolitical landscape inevitably intertwines with increased cyber activity across borders. Reports of nation-state attacks are on the rise. Attacks on U.S. energy infrastructure, NotPetya, the Sony breach and the WannaCry global outbreak have all recently been attributed to nation...

This is now my third year of interviewing women in information security for Tripwire’s The State of Security. My experience has been amazing so far. I have learned so much from so many people – a few of whom were transgender and one nonbinary. In response to this diversity of viewpoints, I decided to rename my spring 2019 series to be more inclusive...

A data breach remains a common headline in the news cycle. A different company, website or social network reports a security issue almost daily. If it feels like using the internet has become a risky endeavor, the feeling is accurate. But what exactly classifies an event as a data breach? The world wide web is littered with different security gaps and...

An ongoing phishing campaign code-named "Bad Tidings" has been targeting several Kingdom of Saudi Arabia government agencies for years. Researchers at Anomali Labs first detected the Bad Tidings campaign back in November 2016. Since then, the operation has targeted four government agencies in Saudi Arabia: the Ministry of Labor and Social...

“The best defense is a good offense.” History credits Revolutionary War hero George Washington with being among the first to vocalize this concept, later famously echoed by heavyweight boxing champ Jack Dempsey and football god Vince Lombardi. And it’s easy to see what they mean. The idea is that being proactive—going on the offense instead of...

Understanding vulnerability scoring can be a daunting task, but a good starting point is first understanding risk and being able to distinguish risk from a vulnerability. Both have been used interchangeably throughout the years. A vulnerability is some aspect of a systems functioning, configuration or architecture that makes the resource a target of...

Your company has decided to adopt the Cloud – or maybe it was among the first ones that decided to rely on virtualized environments before it was even a thing. In either case, cloud security has to be managed. How do you go about that? Before checking out vendor marketing materials in search of the perfect technology solution, let’s step back and...

A variant of the STOP ransomware family is downloading the Azorult infostealer onto victim's machines as part of its infection process. Security researcher Michael Gillespie was the first to detect this malicious activity. While testing some of the crypto-malware family's newer variants, he noticed that some of them were creating traffic indicative...

Last time, I had the privilege of speaking with web security specialist Pam Armstrong. This time I got to chat with Alana Staszczyszyn, someone whom I’ve had the pleasure of meeting in person. She’s very active in Toronto’s cybersecurity scene. She’s currently a student, but she has so much to teach people in our industry about evolving cyber...

A malware outbreak was responsible for a network outage that affected a limited number of Recipe Unlimited restaurant locations. On 1 October, Recipe Unlimited announced a malware attack of which it learned at the end of September. The Canadian restaurant chain owner and food distributor said in a statement that it responded by taking certain...

An Australian teenager who hacked into Apple's network on multiple occasions over several months and stole sensitive files has been told that he will not be imprisoned. As Bloomberg reports, the unnamed hacker - who was 16 years old when the security breaches began - exploited a VPN designed for the use of authorized parties to access Apple's...

Tripwire's September 2018 Patch Priority Index (PPI) brings together the top vulnerabilities from Microsoft and Adobe. First on the patch priority list this month are patches for Microsoft's Internet Explorer, Edge and Scripting Engine. These patches resolve 18 vulnerabilities, including fixes for Elevation of Privilege, Information Disclosure,...

Due to popular demand, my women in information security interview series is back for autumn! This marks the second anniversary since I started. Some of my subjects in this round have been waiting since last spring, so getting to chat with them has been long overdue. Let’s start with Sharka, a penetration tester who is full of enthusiasm. She wants...

It is a common trend now to see most of the organizations opting for the cloud. Growing business demands, competition and the growth of Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) have helped propel this trend. While everything looks smart in the cloud, what about security? Does that look smart, too? Now that organizations use different kinds of cloud environments...

The Information Commissioner's Office (ICO) of the United Kingdom announced it will fine Equifax £500,000 for a data breach that occurred in 2017. In a monetary penalty notice filed on 19 September, the ICO revealed its decision to impose the maximum fine specified in section 55A of the Data...

MITRE has released an April 2019 update to its ATT&CK framework. It’s been a year since the last major update featuring a new tactic. There are a number of changes for this year: the most major being the addition of a 12th Tactic, Impact, which contains 14 new Techniques. There are also seven new Techniques under existing Tactics, as well as a...

Passwords may not be the favourite piece of your workday, however, I have a theory – if I could share with you the value of a password and the reality of how simple they can be to create; then passwords may not be the monster you avoid. When you get the "your password expires in 5 days" notice, instead of feeling anxious or aggravated, let’s...

A Washington federal court has received a $9.8 million settlement that would resolve a data breach class-action lawsuit filed against Eddie Bauer. Filed on 26 April, the proposed settlement is the product of two years of litigation between Eddie Bauer and Veridian Credit Union, a process which...

The League of Legends game and human psychology are two things we don’t often associate with cybersecurity – but as an avid gamer, I encountered and observed many parallels between the tactics used to win games like League of Legends and the mentality that guides human behavior in general. Thus, when I began teaching security awareness and being a...