Today’s VERT Alert addresses the Microsoft August 2017 Security Updates. VERT is actively working on coverage for these vulnerabilities and expects to ship ASPL-737 on Wednesday, August 9th. In-The-Wild & Disclosed CVEs CVE-2017-8627 The first publicly disclosed vulnerability this month is a denial of service in the Windows Subsystem for Linux....

In 490 B.C. an important battle was fought between the Athenians and the powerful and seemingly unconquerable Persians: The Battle of Marathon. Going it alone, without the help of the Spartans, the Athenian army of about 10,000 men defeated King Darius’ army of about 35,000. Knowledge of the local geography, technological advantage and tactical...

July was relatively slow in terms of ransomware. Some crooks must have been on vacation spending ill-gotten money at deluxe resorts. Well, why not? They sure can afford it. The rest were busy releasing small shoddy strains and reanimating old ones. Here’s what the month looked like in the numbers: 42 new samples went live, 33 existing ones were fine...

The UK government has published a series of new guidelines designed to protect smart cars against hackers and data thieves. The Department for Transport and the Centre for Protection of National Infrastructure (CPNI) created the recommendations so that organizations can use them to build safer, more secure cars as smart technology continues to...

DEF CON 22 was my third DEF CON and the first time ever for the IoT Village and related "SOHOpelessly Broken" contests. That year, I easily won both tracks of the competition with only a handful of hours spent analyzing and hacking routers. As anyone who’s ever attended DEF CON can tell you, there are roughly one billion options for how to spend the...

The developers of Cerber ransomware have equipped their creation with the ability to steal victims' Bitcoin wallet files. Security researchers first discovered Cerber in early 2016. Since then, the crypto-malware family has gone through at least six iterations. It's also sparked a ransomware-as-a-service (RaaS) platform that's raked in upwards of a...

Adventure (ad•ven•ture) / ad-ven-cher / noun: an undertaking usually involving danger and unknown risks; an exciting or remarkable experience; and enterprise involving financial risk. Origin: Old French aventure (noun), based on Latin adventurus ‘about to happen.’ There are many people who have the privilege of saying that they get paid to be...

"Web Developer" is a popular extension that adds various web developer tools to a variety of browsers. Unfortunately, the fact that the Chrome edition of the Web Developer extension has over one million users has also made its author - San Francisco-based Chris Pederick - a target for attack. Yesterday, Pederick had some bad news for his Chrome...

A new trojan leverages a fileless infection chain in that it never saves a file to the machine, thereby making analysis via a sandbox more difficult. It's unclear how the malware, detected by Trend Micro as JS_POWMET, initially arrives on a computer. Users could unknowingly download it from malicious websites. Alternatively, other malware could drop...

The internet is full of personal and business-sensitive information if you know where to look. In a previous post, we detailed our method of collecting Open Source Intelligence (OSINT) by “scraping” the content posted to public websites where stolen information is regularly released by hackers. That post focused on email and password combinations ...

With Black Hat 2017 and DEFCON rapidly receding into the desert sunset, I am left with a couple of thoughts after several days on the show floor talking to customers: 1. Wow! So many fidget spinners – cheap ones, expensive ones, plastic, metal, ones that lit up, ones that didn’t, and ones that were supposed to, but didn’t. The go-to schwag for...

I have been in this business for over 10 years, specifically in the business of trying to ensure our critical infrastructure remains in a safe, reliable and secure state. After all, if our critical infrastructure were to fail, the implications could be huge. Since 2011, I think the real threat of large-scale attacks against critical infrastructure...

It's widely recognized that online advertisers know a lot about web users. The most "sophisticated" of these companies gather data on potential customers by tracking their behavior around the web. Specifically, they analyze what sites users visit and what links they click. They then compile that identifying information into a database, build upon it...

They say you should never meet your heroes—often they will just disappoint you. But thankfully, there are also exceptions to this rule. In this five-part series, I will be introducing you to five of my key cyber security/infosec heroes. These individuals inspire me to continuously strive for more, with one even motivating me to move across the pond....

Health insurance plan provider Anthem says a third-party breach might have exposed 18,500 customers' personal and medical data. In a statement (PDF), Anthem media contact Gene Rodriguez reveals how the security incident links back to LaunchPoint Ventures LLC, a firm which provides insurance coordination services to Anthem: "On April 12, 2017,...

For a cybersecurity program to succeed, it must identify the assets it aims to protect. Without a clear understanding of its assets, no organization can truly understand the value of its resources, assess the risks they face, or understand how much to spend to secure its infrastructure. Unfortunately, the process of identification is not getting any...

We’re all fairly knowledgeable about how to deal with security issues for email. We don’t open emails that come from someone we don’t know, for example, and if we do, we’re certainly wary about clicking on links. These same malicious tools can be used with social media posts to infect people’s computers and smart devices. But for some reason, people...

Phishers hacked an extension for Google Chrome and abused their ill-gotten access to push out spam to unsuspecting users. The security incident befell Copyfish, a type of software which allows users to extract text from images, video, and/or PDF documents. Only the program's Chrome extension suffered as a result of the attack. It's Firefox...

DevOps is revolutionizing the way enterprises deliver apps to the market. It blends software development and information technology operations, or the processes and services used by IT staff, as well as their internal and external clients to fulfill their business duties. Such a convergence creates an assembly line for the cloud, as Tim Erlin wrote...

Virgin America has alerted thousands of employees that the company’s systems were breached, leading to the compromise of their personal data. The American airline, which was acquired by Alaska Air in 2016, notified workers via letter, stating that the incident occurred earlier this year. “On March 13, 2017, during security monitoring activities, our...