One cannot underestimate the effect that the ongoing skills gap is having on organizations’ digital security strategies. Gartner estimates that the global number of unfilled digital security positions is expected to grow to 1.5 million by 2020. Reflecting this trend, more than 70 percent of organizations feel that hiring skilled infosec personnel...

How many times has a vendor released a critical cybersecurity patch for an operating system that is in “end of life” (EOL), or the lifecycle period where the vendor no longer issues patches for bug fixes, operational improvements and cybersecurity fixes free of charge? So if a vendor takes the time and resources to break this freeze and issue a patch...

Today’s VERT Alert addresses Microsoft’s November 2019 Security Updates. VERT is actively working on coverage for these vulnerabilities and expects to ship ASPL-859 on Wednesday, November 13th. In-The-Wild & Disclosed CVEs CVE-2019-1429 A vulnerability in the scripting engine in Internet Explorer can lead to code execution. The attacker could...

Executive Order 13636, “Improving Critical Infrastructure Cybersecurity," directed the development of the voluntary Cybersecurity Framework that provides a prioritized, flexible, repeatable, performance-based and cost-effective approach to manage cybersecurity risk for those processes, information and systems directly involved in the delivery of...

Helping to define and examine the top perceived cloud security threats of the day, the ‘Egregious Eleven’ is the most recent iteration in an evolving set of summary reports published by the Cloud Security Alliance (CSA). It follows on from the ‘Treacherous Twelve,’ which they defined for us in 2016, and the ‘Notorious Nine,’ which they presented in...

The Case for Privacy Risk Management Over the past few years, there has been a massive cultural and legal shift in the way consumers view and secure their personal data online that's in line with the rise of advanced technologies like artificial intelligence. Concerned by an increasing rate of incidents that range from the 2017 Equifax hack to the...

Two hackers face up to five years in prison after pleading guilty to their involvement in a scheme which saw them attempt to extort money from Uber and LinkedIn in exchange for the deletion of stolen data. Twenty-six-year-old Brandon Charles Glover and Vasile Meacre, 23, entered guilty pleas this week at a federal court in San Jose, California in...

Tripwire's October 2019 Patch Priority Index (PPI) brings together important vulnerabilities from Microsoft, Oracle, Linux Kernel and Adobe. Exploit Alert: Metasploit First on the patch priority list this month are vulnerabilities that have been recently add to Metasploit. CVE-2019-13272 is a Linux kernel vulnerability; proof-of-concept code...

One of the greatest misconceptions about online safety is that home networks are somehow private. Unfortunately, this hasn’t been true since around the turn of the century when we started filling our home networks with Internet-connected boxes serving local web pages. The problem is that web browsers typically make little distinction between web...

Trend analysis is an important topic within threat intelligence. It lets us forecast where things are headed; whether they’re getting better, worse or different; and where we should be focusing our precious budgets. The UK’s National Cyber Security Centre (NCSC) recently released the Incident trends report (October 2018 – April 2019). This highlights...

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....

To protect the integrity and safety of their business-critical assets, cybersecurity must be a top priority for the oil and gas industry. Although they operate some of the nation’s most critical systems, securing these complex infrastructures can be a huge challenge. In recent years, the oil and gas industry has undergone a complete digital overhaul...

Over the course of the past 10 years, traditional application development methodology (waterfall) has given way in favor of the more agile DevOps-centric methodologies focused on continuous delivery and continuous deployment. This trend was turbocharged in 2013 when Docker containers came onto the scene and ushered in the proverbial crossing of the...

Researchers discovered a new cryptojacking worm called "Graboid" that has spread to more than 2,000 unsecured Docker hosts. In its research, Palo Alto Networks' Unit 42 team noted that it's the first time it's discovered a cryptojacking worm specifically using containers in the Docker Engine for distribution. (It's not the first time that...

Most organizations with industrial control systems (ICS) fall into one of two categories: regulated and non-regulated. For those subject to government imposed regulatory requirements, the selection of a cybersecurity framework is obviously compelling. Such is the case with the nuclear energy industry and NEI 08-09. The nuclear energy industry is one...

The time at ML:0 can be eye-opening form many organizations. There are generally a lot of assets discovered that are new or had been forgotten about. Almost every organization discovers their own Methuselah; this is the system that has been around forever and performs some important tasks but has not...

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,...

Today’s VERT Alert addresses Microsoft’s October 2019 Security Updates. VERT is actively working on coverage for these vulnerabilities and expects to ship ASPL-853 on Wednesday, October 9th. In-The-Wild & Disclosed CVEs There are no in-the-wild or disclosed CVEs this month. CVE Breakdown by Tag While historical Microsoft Security Bulletin...

October is National Cyber Security Awareness Month (NCSAM). NCSAM is a great initiative to help educate and inform our friends and family on the importance of taking your digital security seriously. To help continue to support this initiative, we asked a range of industry experts to share some of their tips to help us stay safe online. Angus...

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...