Ah, the wonders of technology. In the innovation-rich Information Age, we are the beneficiaries of a nonstop wave of new advancements, each offering the ability to execute vital tasks faster and more efficiently than ever before. However, along with each breakthrough comes potential security vulnerabilities. Such is the case with containerization....

Researchers spotted a malspam campaign that targeted German organizations with samples of the Buran crypto-ransomware family. In early October, Bromium observed a malspam campaign whose emails impersonated online fax service eFax. The emails contained hyperlinks to a PHP page that served up malicious Word documents. This technique helped the Word...

Researchers have detected a new phishing campaign that uses some clever tricks in order to steal users' Stripe credentials. Cofense discovered the campaign when it came across an attack email that pretended to originate from "Stripe Support." The message informed recipients that their account contained invalid details and that it was therefore...

In my previous post, I spoke about all of the different DEFCON villages where attendees can learn about and purchase all sorts of fun hacking/counter hacking tools. Even so, I covered only a small fraction of the activities at the conference. For example, attendees have the opportunity to participate in a lot of contests run over the weekend,...

If I asked you what security products you had in place to manage your risk within your IT organisation 10 years ago, you’d probably have been able to list a half dozen different tools and confidently note that most of your infrastructure was covered by a common set of key products such as antivirus, DLP, firewalls, etc. But in a world with IaaS,...

Tripwire's September 2019 Patch Priority Index (PPI) brings together important vulnerabilities from Microsoft and Adobe. Exploit Framework Alert A Metasploit Exploit module that targets Windows Remote Desktop Services has been recently released. This exploit module targets CVE-2019-0708 for the so-called “BlueKeep” vulnerability. This...

Mobile telecommunications company T-Mobile disclosed a data security incident that might have exposed the account information of some of its customers. T-Mobile's Cybersecurity team learned of the incident when it discovered an attack against its email vendor. The team responded by shutting down the...

An Israeli marketing company exposed more than 140GB of data by mishandling the credentials for an Elasticsearch database. A San Diego-based DevOps engineer who uses the Twitter handle 0m3n detected the disclosure after they grew tired of receiving text messages from "random phone numbers with similar messages containing links to gibberish domains."...

Not all attackers are trying to exfiltrate data. In security, we’re all familiar with CIA triad—confidentiality, availability, and integrity. While Exfiltration describes adversarial behavior with the goal of violating confidentiality, attackers may look to manipulate, interrupt, or destroy your systems and data. The Impact tactic describes techniques...

For the majority of people in the information security world, the act of offensive hacking is something they are tasked with protecting against but have little ability to do themselves. That is like asking a professional boxer to enter the ring without knowing how to throw a punch. Sure, you may be able to get in and last a few rounds, but...

In 2011, I was in the middle of sitting down when I suddenly felt prickling sensations start from my toes, spread up my legs, and make their way into my arms. I was gasping for air. As the sensation traveled up my spine, it overwhelmed my head, and my heart struggled to keep up. Desperate for air and covered in tears, I started praying. I was scared...

RSA Conference USA is one of the most anticipated digital security events of the year. Last year, its 31 keynote presentations, more than 621 speaker sessions, 700 presenting companies on the exposition floor attracted over 42,000 attendees. Given such popularity, how could the State of Security not include this event in its list of the top...

How Is YARA used? Historically, common detection methods have used file hashes (MD5, SHA1, and SHA256)—unique signatures based on the entire contents of the file—to identify malware. Modern threat actors have increased in sophistication to a point where every instance of a given malware will have a different hash, and that hash will vary from...

Cyber security assessment initiatives and frameworks abound in the US government, the most important being the Federal Information Systems Management Act (FISMA) passed in 2002. The law’s broad scope included a mandate to the US National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), charging it to create methods and standards to assess and optimize...

Last week I spoke with Trica Howard about social engineering attacks and user education. Considering how social engineering and poorly trained users are two of the most significant cybersecurity problems ever, it was a great conversation. This week I spoke with another security communications specialist, tech writer Stacey Holleran. We both write...

For the second time in a year, Baltimore city government computers have been infected by ransomware. Malicious hackers are demanding that a ransom is paid for the safe recovery of encrypted files on affected computers and servers. On Tuesday, Mayor Bernard C. “Jack” Young tweeted how the city had "shut down the majority of its servers" out of "an...

Verizon Enterprise has once again released its annual Data Breach Investigations Report (DBIR). The publication doesn’t disappoint in providing crucial insight into today’s digital threats. On the one hand, Verizon’s 2019 report captures how many forces in the threat landscape have remained the same since its previous report. The study observed how...

Modern digital and cloud technology underpins the shift that enables businesses to implement new processes, scale quickly and serve customers in a whole new way. Historically, organisations would invest in their own IT infrastructure to support their business objectives, and the IT department's role would be focused on keeping the "lights on." To...

By now, many organizations have turned to DevOps as part of their ongoing digital transformations. This process has not been the same for any two companies. Indeed, organizations have embraced DevOps at their own place, and they’ve invested varying levels of time and budget into their nascent deployments. Such variety has helped shape organizations’...

Companies are moving to incorporate the cloud into their computing infrastructure at a phenomenal rate. This is, without question, a very positive move. It permits companies to scale processing resources up and down in response to changing demands, giving companies the operational equivalent of unlimited resources while paying only for the resources...