Two weeks ago, while visiting the yearly security gathering at the RSA Conference in San Francisco’s Moscone center complex (and adjacent hotels – it’s growing like mad), I was walking across the North and South Expo halls to check out some vendors (several I had appointments with, some by curiosity, and a few that were really new kids on the block)...

In part 1 of this series about the proposed regulation promulgated by the New York State Department of Financial Services, the evolution of some of the administrative requirements were explored. The exemptions, appointment of a CISO and the utilization of cyber security personnel all changed from the originally proposed regulation. In this part,...

One of the key challenges with what we now call cyber is the shortage of relevant technical cyber skills. This is directly linked to what would seem to be an inability to recognise or accept the real scale of the cyber threat, which is, of course, playing into the hands of the criminals and hackers who are harvesting millions in revenue as a result of...

A new report reveals that 68 percent of oil and gas organizations have experienced at least one digital attack. In the Siemens-sponsored The State of Cybersecurity in the Oil & Gas Industry: United States (PDF), Ponemeon Institute surveyed 377 individuals based in the United States who are responsible for overseeing digital risk to their organization...

The annual RSA Conference is a lot of things to a lot of people (43,000 this year!). For me, it’s become an annual opportunity to step out of the stream and to look back at what has happened in the last year and peer forward at what’s to come. This year, I think we have reached an inflection point around the way we as a profession treat the “human...

The New York State Department of Financial Services has proposed a cyber security regulation that is unique in its breadth. The original proposed regulation underwent a 45-day review period, after which it was changed. It is currently under another 45-day review period pending further changes and should be published in the next few weeks. The...

Attackers have lots of ways of gaining access to a target's information. One of their preferred attack vectors is exploiting careless end user behavior. This is especially true when it comes to users who don't adequately protect their web accounts. For instance, bad actors targeted users of TeamViewer, software which allows IT professionals to gain...

UPDATE 2/24/17, 4:30 PM PST: Researcher Hanno Böck (@hanno) has confirmed that leaked CloudFlare data was not entirely purged from multiple search engine caches ahead of the public disclosure. In April 2014, the security community was shocked with the revelation that a poorly implemented TLS extension in OpenSSL could allow attackers to easily...

A lack of skilled information security professionals poses a threat to most organizations. In Tripwire's 2016 Security Challenge Survey – Skills Gap, 75 percent of IT security professionals said they don't have enough skilled personnel to detect and respond to a breach. Almost the same percentage (66 percent) of respondents reported a dearth of...

Nearly one million user accounts for the Coachella Valley Music and Arts Festival website have been found for sale on the underground marketplace. According to a recent report by Motherboard, the data available for purchase includes email addresses, usernames and hashed passwords. The data trader, who identifies as ‘Berkut,’ wrote on the Tochka...

In their ever-increasing aggressiveness to wring even more money out of victims, it's perhaps no surprise to see some online extortionists creating ransomware targeted against affluent Mac users. The latest example of Mac ransomware, OSX/Filecoder.E, has been discovered by malware analysts at ESET after it was distributed via BitTorrent distribution...

A malicious Google Chrome extension punishes users who search for certain keywords by redirecting them to a tech support scam. Attackers introduce users to the rogue extension via a malvertising campaign. Most of the time, malicious adverts redirect users to an exploit kit that installs ransomware or other baddies. In this case, the advertisement...

The revised – and still draft – version of the Trump Administration's first Executive Order (EO) on cybersecurity shows both continuity and positive change over the Obama Administration's policy pronouncements, addressing federal agency network protection, critical infrastructure cybersecurity, and national cyber defense priorities. Federal...

If the GDPR (General Data Protection Regulation), the EU's data protection harmonisation project, was to become Hollywood movie, its genre would most likely be horror. Focus on the regulation over the past twelve months has been mostly aimed toward its penalties, with scare stories in no short supply. The GDPR has been called many things; visionary,...

BSides is known for its collaborative and welcoming environment – something that truly sets it apart from the many other security conferences that are held these days. Today, the conference series has spread all across the world, yet its mission remains the same: to provide an open forum for infosec discussion and debate. Tony Martin-Vegue, a...

Police have charged Gordon Ramsay's father-in-law and three of his family members with hacking the celebrity chef's emails. On 21 February, the Metropolitan Police announced charges against Chris Hutcherson, 68, along with Adam Hutcheson, Orlanda Butland, and Chris Hutcheson, 37. The four individuals are accused of having violated the Criminal Law...

Large hacks and cyber-attacks aimed at exploiting information, affecting everyone from major company databases to politician’s email accounts, have now become a common occurrence in our ever-connected world. This hacked information – and the act of accessing it – has rapidly become a sought-after product and service on dark web marketplaces. Coupled...

What is GDPR, when is it coming, and what steps should you take to comply?If you’ve been following the information security news or Twitter feeds, then you’ve no doubt seen the increase in traffic around the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR). And there’s a good chance you’ve been ignoring it, as well. It’s time to pay attention, for GDPR is...

Scammers want nothing more than to steal our personal and/or financial information. Towards that end, they've come up numerous ways of tricking us into giving them our details. One particularly persistent method is the Grandma scam. Unlike email-based ploys, the Grandma scam centers around a fraudster who rings up an older individual. They pose as...

A Ukraine citizen will spend close to four years in prison for administering a fraud forum in addition to perpetrating other computer criminal activities. As reported by Brian Krebs, 29-year-old Sergey Vovnenko received a sentence of 41 months in prison on 16 February for wire fraud conspiracy and aggravated identity theft. ...