A researcher has spotted a "massive" spam advertising campaign that threatens to install backdoors and constantly reinfect WordPress sites. Denis Sinegubko, a senior malware researcher at Sucuri Security, explains in a post published on the company's blog how he and Sucuri's research teams recently detected the advertising campaign: "This past...

I’ve had a lot of conversations with high school students and students in their initial years of university who don’t particularly know what they want to be when they grow up. Heck, I’m still trying to figure that out! The advice you hear from most guidance councilors and others who mean well is generally to find something you like to do, something...

On Tuesday, a new law came into effect that will now require large Australian telecommunication companies to store customers' metadata for two years. Malcolm Turnbull, the current prime minister of Australia, first introduced the bill to the Australian parliament while he was communications minister in an effort to assist the government with...

If you are reading this article, you are probably aware that Security Incident and Event Management solutions, or SIEMs, are powerful systems that allow IT professionals to gather and analyze activity in a company’s infrastructure through the collection and correlation of logs. Though SIEM solutions have a significant amount of built-in content in...

According to the 2015 Information Security Breaches Survey, 44 percent of both large and small organizations increased their security expenditure in 2015 compared with 53 percent and 27 percent in 2014, respectively. Despite the increase in expenditure, however, 90 percent of large organizations and 74 percent of small organizations reported that...

What a whirlwind the past few months have been for data security, breaches and hacking events. From the Wyndham v. FTC ruling to yet another breach by a BCBS affiliate, there is increasing pressure across the information security industry to push organizations to perform those pesky security risk assessments touted by the National Institute of...

Today, a segment will air on Crime Watch Daily where Tripwire Senior Security Researcher Craig Young and I reveal on camera how vulnerable smart homes can be when not properly secured. We show firsthand that the key weaknesses in most smart homes are a combination of insecure networks and default configurations, including systems that installers may...

The one-month countdown is on and I figured it was time for a reminder that Tripwire VERT will be at SecTor in the Expo area running an IoT Hack Lab. If you aren’t considering attending SecTor, you really should be. Even if you don’t want to attend the full conference, there’s an Expo Only admission that is free on their website until the start of...

Databases containing 3.8 million adult dating and Naughty America users' web accounts are up for sale on a dark web marketplace. As reported by Infosecurity Magazine, a hacker is advertising several leaked databases on the underground web forum The Real Deal. Those databases are believed to contain 3.8 million users' information, which includes...

Last year, attackers used an email scam to defraud an unidentified American corporation out of $100 million, report U.S. authorities. According to Reuters, the American corporation was targeted by a business email compromise between August and September of 2015. A business email compromise (BEC) is a type of payment fraud where an attacker...

The risk of sophisticated malware, especially of ransomware, has grown exponentially over the years. This means we need to evolve our techniques for mitigation, detection and monitoring of malicious behavior on our assets. It's a wise move given the durability of this threat. Indeed, ransomware, which attempts to scare users and organizations into...

Millions of users are open to attacks that can quietly compromise machines by exploiting a weakness in some of Firefox's most popular browser extensions. On Thursday, Boston University PhD Ahmet Buyukkayhan and Northeastern University Professor William Robertson presented their research on the attacks at Black Hat Asia in Singapore. Black Hat Asia...

2016 is shaping up to be a pivotal year for ransomware. Just look at the attack campaigns we have witnessed thus far. Back in February, news first broke about Hollywood Presbyterian Medical Center, a hospital located in southern California that temporarily suspended its computer systems following a ransomware attack. The medical center ultimately paid...

In part one of this article, we reviewed how the Nigerian Prince scam is no longer the primary email scam in use, being replaced by more clever and devious methods. The article also examined some of the emotional and personal aspects of the second most popular Internet scam, known as the “urgent wire-transfer” scam, as reported by the FBI’s Internet...

Adobe has now settled claims for its 2013 data breach in which 38 million users had been affected. On August 13, 2015, it was reported that they have paid an undisclosed sum to users and faced $1.1 million in legal fees. The breach was first confirmed back in October 2013 when Adobe had been the victim of a long-term network breach that exposed...

Nine individuals have been charged by the United States Department of Justice (DOJ) with hacking into three separate newswires, stealing yet-to-be-published press releases, and passing this stolen information to approximately two dozen individuals who then traded on the bulletins before their public release. The Securities and Exchange Commission ...

Like more than a few others, I experienced the infosec outrage against Mary Ann Davidson, Oracle's Chief Security Officer, before I actually read the now-redacted blog post. After taking the time to read what she actually wrote (still available through Google's web cache), I think there’s more discussion to be had than I’ve seen so far. First, it...

Security researchers have found a cross-site scripting (XSS) vulnerability on the Salesforce website, that could be exploited by malicious hackers to conduct phishing attacks and hijack the accounts of users. The researchers at Elastica report that they uncovered the weakness on one of Salesforce's subdomains, admin.salesforce.com. Specifically, the...

I am not one for quotes and ‘Facebook philosophy’ memes but recently, I was reminded of my favourite quote on a certain social media platform: “The only true wisdom is in knowing you know nothing.” – Socrates The pursuit of education can convert a criminal into a solicitor; it can envelop minds and...

Back in December of 2014, The State of Security first reported on the story of Ercan "Segate" Findikoglu, a 33-year-old Turkish man who is accused of having stolen over $60 million as part of a number of card heists in the United States. At the time of our reporting, Germany had denied Findikoglu's extradition to the United States based upon...