By any measurement, 2015 was another bad year for the world in terms of cyber security. Despite record spending of more than $75 billion USD, losses were still estimated to be around $400 billion, with some firms predicting losses will grow to over $2 trillion by the end of 2020. But 2016 doesn’t have to be another losing year for cyber security...

The author of the Radamant ransomware kit has insulted the researcher responsible for creating a decryption tool in some of the malware's new embedded strings. Shortly before Christmas Eve, Fabian Wosar of EmsiSoft published the decrypting tool on his company's website after discovering a weakness in Radamant's encryption algorithm, reports...

2015 was an eventful year for cyber security. Major vulnerabilities, including Superfish, "No iOS Zone" and CVE-2015-2502 made waves in the infosec community, as did a variety of criminal collectives – including Lizard Squad, Phantom Squad and DD4BC – that use distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attack campaigns to get what they want. Let's also...

Security researchers recently uncovered a new type of malware—known as ProxyBack—designed to turn the infected systems of unsuspecting victims into Internet proxies. According to researchers at security firm Palo Alto Networks, the family of malware contains more than 20 versions, and may have been used to infect systems as far back as March 2014....

Adobe has released an out-of-band security update that fixes 19 'critical' vulnerabilities found in Flash Player. On Monday, the United States Computer Emergency Readiness Team (US-CERT) issued an alert advising users and administrators alike to refer to Adobe Security Bulletin APSB16-01. In that bulletin, Adobe provides some context on the...

Organizations have a deep interest in detecting and preventing threats within their environments. From firewalls to file integrity monitors, there are many opportunities to catch and stop attackers in their tracks. A basic workflow for IT security revolves around prevention, detection and remediation. As a researcher in Tripwire’s Security and...

A new system called GOTPass could offer a alternative to multi-factor authentication by replacing passwords with images and patterns. Endgadget reports that the system, which was developed by researchers at the University of Plymouth, requires a two-step one-time setup. First, users are asked to draw a pattern on a 4x4 grid, a method of...

For years, computer criminals have been targeting unsuspecting web users with post office email scams. This particular method of attack consists of a fake email in which a recognizable postal service notifies the recipient that it has failed to deliver a package to their address. The email subsequently asks that the recipient pick up the package...

In the Internet of Things (IoT) era that we have entered, it is becoming apparent to me that nothing follows a linear progression anymore. The abstract models created by start ups, which can and often do disrupt the industry, promote new ways of engaging in business that are not common sense. To illustrate this, I’ve made a list of examples that...

Hyatt Hotels has launched an investigation after discovering malicious activity on its payment processing systems. Stephanie Sheppard, a spokeswoman for Hyatt, announced the investigation in an email to Hyatt guests on Wednesday:"Hyatt Hotels Corporation (NYSE: H) today announced that it recently identified malware on computers that operate the...

Almost every week, we hear about a new data breach in the news that reports about a major company losing millions of usernames, passwords, credit card numbers, banking transactions after falling victims to a cyber attack. As per a recent report released by Imperva on Web Application attacks, SQL Injection (SQLi) saw the biggest rise compared to last...

A hacker has been charged with unlawfully accessing a number of celebrities' email accounts and stealing copyrighted information from both TV and film companies. On Tuesday, federal prosecutors in the Southern District of New York charged (PDF) Alonzo Knowles, 23, of the Bahamas, with copyright infringement and identity theft for a scheme that...

This is the second part of a two part blog post on the factors that can help you decide whether an agent or agentless solution will be the best fit for your organization. Part 1 provided advice from a security perspective. In part 2, I offer advice that considers the implementation and ongoing operations management. Let’s look at operational...

In the spring of 2014, the Federal Bureau of Investigations sent out a private notice to healthcare providers warning them that as a result of lax security controls in their field, the healthcare industry as a whole was more prone to "cyber intrusions" than the financial and retail sectors. Unfortunately, this threat has not changed in the past year...

Earlier this year, the FBI stated that the second most prominent scam on the internet is the wire fraud scam, whereby a CFO is sent a phishing message that is supposed to appear to come from the CEO, requesting an urgent transfer of funds. These attacks that are targeted toward the “big fish” in a company, usually the Chief Financial Officer, are...

Truth be told, it's not been the best of weeks for Martin Shkreli. The former hedge fund manager made himself and his firm Turing Pharmaceuticals notorious earlier this year by raising the price of an AIDS treatment drug from $13.50 to $750 per tablet. That particular stunt resulted in Shkreli being dubbed "the internet's most hated man", and you...

The hacker group Phantom Squad has recently claimed responsibility for an alleged attack that caused problems for Xbox Live users. Earlier this month, Phantom Squad announced that they intended to take down Sony's PlayStation Network and Microsoft's Xbox Live gaming platforms for one week beginning on Christmas Day. “We are going to shut down Xbox...

Circa 3000 BCE – The Sumerian language is dead. Why? Because as it’s often said, a language is just a dialect with an army, and the army had long vanished. A thousand or so years earlier, however, Sumerian was the first language to have a written form, and Sumerians wasted no time in developing tools – elaborately carved cylinder seals – to...

A recent article by The Financial Times argues that boards should be looking to employ younger directors to tackle the cyber security “problem." Meanwhile, the EU has unveiled the proposed Network and Information Security Directive. Think about the psychology here, really… The more we raise the bar and levels of expectations, given the volume of...

Optus, the second largest telecommunications provider in Australia, is investigating a data breach after customer data was leaked onto Freelancer.com. Australian news site Crikey reports that the breach occurred when an employee of the debt collection firm Arc Mercantile posted a spreadsheet...