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Rasputin Hacker Uses SQLi to Hack 60 Universities and Government Agencies

A hacker known as Rasputin used SQL injection (SQLi) to breach the databases of over 60 universities and government agencies. The threat actor, a Russian-speaking computer criminal who gained notoriety back in December 2016 for hacking the U.S. Election Assistance Commission (EAC), is targeting universities and government facilities based in the...
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More Yahoo users warned of malicious account access via forged cookies

Yahoo is warning more of its users that their accounts might have been accessed by unauthorised parties. Yahoo believes that hackers managed to break into its internal systems, and used the proprietary code they accessed to forge cookies that would allow attackers to access accounts without needing a password. It goes without saying that the ability...
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Cyber Insurance Coverage Concerns

The perceived silver bullet of cyber insurance has existed since the 1990s, but companies were forced to consider coverage limitations when a New York Court ruled in February 2014 that Sony’s general liability policy would not cover the $2 billion in costs the company had incurred from the huge data breach in 2011 involving the online network for...
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New Research Highlights Top Cyber-Attack Concerns for 2017

With such a lively 2016 ­for infosec – mega-breaches, new malware strains, inventive phishing techniques, and big debates between security and privacy – there’s plenty of reason to pause and consider what the security community should be most concerned about for 2017 and what they can do to prepare. http://www.slideshare.net/Tripwire/tripwire-survey...
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4 Tips for a Successful OT & IT Security Marriage

Securing critical infrastructure is becoming a priority for the public and private sectors. Cyber professionals everywhere are rejoicing about the increasing investments in protecting the networks and systems that keep us safe at night. The Oval Office has even signaled its intentions to make security a priority. We welcome the new administration’s...
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Check that Czech Post Email! It Could be a Smishing Scam

Phishing scams are a persistent threat to users' inboxes. But that's not all they target. Fraudsters have other ways of delivering their ploys to unsuspecting users. One of the more common techniques is known as smishing. It's when a scammer sends a phishing ploy containing a suspicious link via SMS text message to a user's phone. Despite this...
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New Proof-of-Concept Ransomware Can Target PLCs at Industrial Sites

A new proof-of-concept ransomware is capable of targeting the programmable logic controllers (PLCs) that help manage critical infrastructure. Researchers at Georgia Institute of Technology designed a cross-vendor ransomware worm known as LogicLocker to specifically seek out vulnerable PLC computers that are exposed online. At they write in their...
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Hacker Mindset: The Future of Encryption

In my ongoing blog series “Hacker Mindset,” I explore an attacker’s assumptions, methods, and theories, including how information security professionals can apply this knowledge to increase cybervigilance on the systems and networks they steward. In this article, I explore the intense debate surrounding encryption and what it means for policy makers...
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The Ransomware Decryption Deception: How Various Scammers Trick Ransomware Victims Into Paying More

Ever since the first large-scale ransomware attacks started targeting individual users, companies, and government institutions, we have witnessed that the primary malicious actor is usually a hacker or a hacker collective. More and more victims are now browsing the web looking for a way to get rid of the threat by not paying the ransom sum, a trend...
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One Researcher's Plan to Broadside Known Windows Tech Support Scammers

2016 saw a lot of different types of scams prey on unsuspecting users. Some achieved greater prevalence than others. One of those was the tech support scam, a ruse where a fraudster calls a victim while impersonating a customer support representative from a well-known technology company. They tell the victim their computer is infected with malware...
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Arby's Confirms Payment Card Breach at Corporate Restaurant Locations

Arby's Restaurant Group, Inc., has confirmed that a breach affected payment systems at its corporate restaurant locations. Information security investigative journalist Brian Krebs first learned something was up when several banks and credit unions reached out to him inquiring if he had heard of an incident involving Arby's. He subsequently reached...
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French man sues Uber after privacy bug led wife to suspect adultery

Modern technology has probably done more than its fair share to ignite illicit relationships, but it can also lead to a romantic affair's unravelling. But if your wife or husband becomes aware of an adulterous entanglement through a buggy app, do you blame yourself for having the affair in the first place, or do you blame the software that couldn't...
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January 2017: The Month in Ransomware

The year of 2017 isn’t shaping up to be a game changer in combatting ransomware so far. On the contrary, crypto infections are becoming increasingly toxic in terms of their impact and attack surface. Online extortionists keep hitting police departments, healthcare organizations, public libraries, schools, hotels, and unprotected servers around the...
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What's on Tap for Tripwire at RSA Conference 2017

Every year, the RSA Conference attracts the industry's most respected thought leaders, seasoned security experts and aficionados from around the globe. In 2016, it saw a record of over 40,000 attendees – all hungry to discuss and debate pressing cybersecurity issues. As one of Tripwire's top information security conferences for 2017, we have no...
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Security and the ‘Weaponization’ of Misinformation

New media, it would appear, now outpaces the old. More data is consumed and processed than at any time before in human history. But as we hasten into a world where the immediate is often favoured over the verified, the attention-grabbing over the considered, and the assumed over the researched in terms of how we both receive and disseminate...
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Autofill FUD

Last week, while browsing various news feeds and websites, I took a scroll through Facebook and saw this video posted from our local morning show, Breakfast Television. They were talking about a Lifehacker post that referenced a github repository belonging to Viljami Kousmanen. The doom and gloom statements of the video are pretty clear evidence of...
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Foreign Intelligence Agency Targeted Norway's Labour Party, Report Police

National police have notified Norway's Labour Party parliamentary group that a foreign intelligence agency targeted its members. On 2 February, the Norwegian Police Security Service (PST) notified the Labour Party that hackers had targeted the group in autumn 2016. Labor, which is the biggest party in Norway's Parliament, subsequently sent out a...
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The Evolution of Phishing

If you've got an email account or social media profile, it's likely you've come across phishing of some kind before. In a sentence, phishing is the fraudulent attempt to steal personal information by social engineering: the act of criminal deception. Verizon's latest Data Breach Investigations Report notes that "social engineering remains worryingly...