This is the third part of a series of three blogposts (parts 1 and 2 available here and here, respectively) related to the many Windows Server 2003 (WS2003) systems that may not be migrated to a new OS platform by the July 14, 2015 “end of extended support” deadline by Microsoft. ASSESSING THE BUSINESS RISK Clearly, with days to go, you’ve...

Looking for a great Information Security podcast? There are plenty to choose from! Here's a roundup of currently active Information Security podcasts. The list is split into two categories: podcasts run by people representing themselves (meaning they are not speaking for a company) and podcasts produced under the name of a company. I made the...

Last week, a private investigator was sentenced for having hired "hacking services" to gain unauthorized access to victims' email accounts on the behalf of his clients. According to a statement released by the FBI New York Field Office, Eric Saldarriaga, 41, of Queens, NY operated a company that offered private investigation services to the public...

A security firm has spotted a new spam campaign that seeks to trick email users into downloading Dridex banking malware. According to research conducted by Heimdal Security, the spam campaign’s email messages are delivered with a .doc attachment that contains macros, which attempt to download Dridex. The contents of each spam message reads as...

With the advent of the recent failure of RBS banking systems, there is a question on the lips of many security professionals, not to mention the aware members of the public, asking: “Are today's banking systems and the applied management fit for purpose?” The initiator of this particular article was born out of the recent debacle of the failing of...

Commercial Virtual Private Network (VPN) services, claiming to provide users enhanced privacy and anonymity, may not be as secure as users think. A group of researchers from Queen Mary University of London and the University of Rome disclosed their findings today, revealing that many of the most widely used VPN services are susceptible to DNS...

The Office of Personnel Management (OPM) has taken offline a web-based platform used to complete background investigations due to the discovery of a security vulnerability. According to a statement posted on the OPM's website, the move to temporarily suspend the portal, known as E-QIP, follows a comprehensive review of the government agency's IT...

Updated: July 10, 2015 - 9:00 AM PST The United States Office of Personnel Management (OPM) has recently been in the news for two separate breaches that may have compromised the information of as many as 18 million former, current and prospective federal employees. Significantly, the story of these two intrusions stretches back to as early as spring...

I was recently quoted in eCampus News regarding the recent cyber attack against Penn State, which triggered a number of conversations with CISO's at various academic institutions. One of these conversations was with Helen Patton, the Chief Information Security Officer for Ohio State University. I had a very interesting dialogue with her via email,...

The Magnitude exploit kit (EK) is leveraging a recently patched zero-day vulnerability found in Adobe Flash Player to drop CryptoWall ransomware. Early last week, Adobe released a security update for the critical vulnerability CVE-2015-3113, which affects Windows, Macintosh, and Linux. If unpatched, the flaw allows for an attacker to take control of...

On my way to a client site, I was listening with interest to a report on Radio 4 discussing a news article covering the rise of offences against women, including offences associated with the cowardly utilisation of the Internet to target, stalk, and to impose mental anguish and misery on the intended target of abuse. However, to maintain the correct...

First, it was cloud computing that sparked the imaginations of businesses in terms of all the benefits they could receive. Then, came the division of public and private clouds; some companies wanted to keep their cloud on-premise, while others looked to cloud providers. Now, the next step in the cloud revolution has come—the gradual adoption of the...

Cisco has released patches for SSH keys vulnerabilities affecting several of its virtual appliances. The vulnerabilities were discovered during internal security testing and have been found to affect Cisco Web Security Virtual Appliance (WSAv), Cisco Email Security Virtual Appliance (ESAv), and Cisco Security Management Virtual Appliance (SMAv). ...

If you read my previous post about Microsoft ending extended support for Windows Server 2003 (WS2003) on July 14, 2015, you’re familiar with what that means - Microsoft will not be providing further security patches, hot fixes, or software updates without a costly extended support agreement. “Many IT teams are very comfortable using Windows Server...

A number of popular travel sites have alerted customers of fraudulent emails and SMS messages posing as the legitimate companies in an attempt to lure users into disclosing their personal information. According to reports, a similar notice was recently sent out to customers of online travel agencies Travelocity and Hotels.com, as well as their...

A survey recently published by Tripwire reveals that 86% of energy security professionals believe they can detect a breach in less than a week, leading some to wonder whether this confidence is misplaced. Conducted by Dimensional Research, the survey examined the views of over 400 energy executives and IT professionals in the energy, oil, gas and...

What's the worst thing your hackers could steal from your organisation? Sure, no-one wants to have their passwords pinched - but at least you can change them later and clean-up any problems that the hackers have caused. How about having your customer database stolen? That's undoubtedly serious, and you might find it hard work recovering the trust of...

The Financial Services Information Sharing and Analysis Center (FS-ISAC) has issued an alert warning companies of a continued increase in wire transfer fraud due to business email compromise (BEC) scams. The product of a joint effort with the Federal Bureau of Investigation and the U.S. Secret Service, the alert discusses BEC attacks and provides...

Tripwire is pleased to announce the release of its newest infographic, “Where Are Your Cyberattacks Coming From?” Created in response to the release of Verizon’s 2015 Data Breach Investigations Report (DBIR 2015) back in April, the infographic explains the five most common attack patterns behind today’s data breaches. In this article, I will review...

Gift cards have caused quite a headache for retailers in the last month, exposing another way that fraudulent activity can eat into razor-thin profit margins. Gift card fraud can range from physical theft to cloning to exploiting programming errors on the merchant side. The methods of attack are very similar to what is seen with credit card fraud,...