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The Startup Problem

Last month, Michal Nemcok blogged about the lack of security in the Progressive Insurance diagnostic monitoring dongle. By hacking the monitoring device, someone may be able to gain access to and change the behavior of the car, itself. Now, this is serious stuff – vulnerabilities that might impact the operation of the thing that carries your body...
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A "Cyber" Study of the U.S. National Security Strategy Reports

In early February, the White House released its 2015 National Security Strategy (NSS). Each NSS report is symbolic to the extent that it reveals the security issues the acting U.S. president intends to focus on for the coming months and years. While not constituting “hard,” actionable strategies, these documents help to articulate the future...
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Advanced Threat Actor Linked to NSA Uses Spyware to Infect the Disk Drive Firmware of Foreign Targets

A security firm has released a report in which it discusses how an advanced threat actor has been lodging malicious software into foreign target computers’ firmware for more than a decade. According to the report published by Kaspersky Labs, the threat actor, known as “The Equation Group,” uses multiple malware platforms on par with Regin, Stuxnet,...
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Three Keys to a Successful Cybersecurity Defense Program

I’ve been a finance professional for more than 25 years and spent the last 15 years in senior finance roles, mostly as a CFO of both public and private companies. Like many of you, I am often invited by business groups and professional service providers to attend thinly veiled networking events to get the attention of “C” suite officers of both...
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iOS 8 Custom Keyboards – A Hacker’s Best Friend?

I’ve been an iPhone user for quite a while... starting with the iPhone 4, I upgraded to the 4S, the 5, and, now, the 6. With the iPhone 6, I’ve spent a good deal of time investigating the features of iOS 8, something I didn’t do when I upgraded my iPhone 5 because it was already setup and ready to go. One of the features I discovered allows for...
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Haskell Confirms Security Breach in Debian Builds

Haskell, an advanced purely functional programming language, has confirmed a security breach in its Debian Builds component. According to an advisory recently posted to Haskell’s blog, “`deb.haskell.org` is currently offline due to [its] hosting provider suspecting malicious activity.” The project’s security teams stated on February 14th that they...
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10 Notorious Cyber Criminals Brought to Justice – No. 3

Last week, we investigated the story of Vladmir Drinkman, a Russian hacker who assisted Albert Gonzalez, another notorious hacker, in breaching a number of American retailers and using customers’ stolen payment card credentials to unlawfully withdraw money from ATM machines around the world. With only three hackers remaining, Tripwire now continues...
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Report: 16 Million Mobile Devices Infected by Malware at the End of 2014

A new report indicates that the current malware infection rate for mobile devices is 0.68 percent, leading researchers to believe that at least 16 million devices were infected with malware at the end of 2014. Published by the Motive Security Labs division of the French telecommunications equipment company Alcatel-Lucent, the report found that...
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Why Hackers Are After The Healthcare Industry

It's not your identity they want, or even your credit card number. Those numbers are hard to exploit for quick cash. Banks and card companies have systems that quickly detect fraud. So, why go after an insurance company? Because it’s easy, and they can get away with really good stuff. What the Anthem hackers are after is your medical provider...
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Improving Cyber Security Literacy in Boards & Executives

The recent Anthem hack that may have compromised 80 million people’s personal health information reveals just how mainstream data breaches have become in recent years. In response to this rapidly evolving threat landscape, Boards of Directors (BoDs) and executives are now more aware of today’s cyber threats and how they might adversely affect...
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VERT Vuln School: Stack Overflow 101

I still remember my first time reading AlephOne’s ‘Smashing the Stack for Fun and Profit’ – despite not having the proper knowledge to understand it at the time, it put the security bug in my head. It was truly a consciousness raising experience to get that first glimpse of my computer’s inner workings. One thing I did understand from it, loud and...
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Unconventional Security Conventions

In the face of the current wave of cyber threats, the U.S. government announced this week in Washington DC that as part of the Homeland Security initiative the current administration is creating a new agency called the Cyber Threat Intelligence Integration Centre (CTIIP) to monitor cybersecurity threats by acquiring, pooling and analysing any...
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Facebook Introduces Social Sharing Platform for Cybersecurity Threats

Facebook announced on Wednesday the launch of a new platform for companies to easily exchange information regarding cybersecurity threats, such as malware and phishing attacks that could be impacting users. The world’s largest social network introduced the program, called ThreatExchange, as “an API-based clearinghouse for security threat information...
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DDoS Attack Brings Down Dutch National Government Websites

A distributed denial of service (DDoS) attack brought down the Dutch national government’s websites yesterday, officials confirm. “The Public and Communications office, part of the Ministry of General Affairs, in conjunction with Centric/Prolocation and the National Cyber Security Center (NCSC), are evaluating the attack,” the government said in a...
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VERT Threat Alert: February 2015 Patch Tuesday Analysis

Today’s VERT Alert addresses 9 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-601 on Wednesday, February 11. MS15-009 Multiple Memory Corruption Vulnerabilities in Internet Explorer MULTIPLE Multiple Elevation of Privilege...
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Microsoft Patches Dangerous Group Policy Vulnerability

In February’s Patch Tuesday, Microsoft issued an update to fix a privately reported critical vulnerability in Group Policy that could allow potential attackers to achieve remote code execution (RCE) in domain networks. If successfully exploited, an attacker could gain complete control of a vulnerable system, install programs, view data and even...