Today’s VERT Alert addresses 18 new Microsoft Security Bulletins. VERT is actively working on coverage for these bulletins and expects to ship ASPL-716 on Wednesday, March 15th. Ease of Use (published exploits) to Risk Table Automated Exploit Easy ...

I was lucky enough to be at the event at which Sean McBride initially spoke about potatoes. Who doesn’t love a good potato? It was actually a succinct outline of a process in agriculture that takes place every day, outlining pinch points of a potato harvester that could illicit physical harm to the workers performing their everyday jobs. It was a...

Over the past few weeks I have been seeing quite a few news articles around fileless malware infecting companies around the world. The article from Ars Technica specifically states that the goal of fileless malware is to reside in memory in order to remain nearly invisible. Besides residing in memory, the second aspect of fileless malware is the...

Digital attackers have many different strategies for infiltrating a target organization. That even goes for companies with robust perimeter defenses. Bad actors simply need to find a soft target they can exploit. Oftentimes, they find what they're looking for along a target's supply chain. We can best understand the supply chain as a network of...

In a recent survey by tech giant Mozilla, an overwhelming majority of Internet users admitted they are not informed about how to protect themselves online. The survey polled over 30,000 participants from around the globe – including France, Germany, Australia, Canada, the US and the UK – in an effort to learn more about users’ views on privacy,...

For the first time, the Office of Civil Rights (“OCR”) penalized a covered entity for failure to implement audit procedures to review, modify, and/or terminate users’ right of access. In the scope of the investigation, it was discovered that more than 100,000 individuals had their electronic Protected Heath Information (“ePhi”) records impermissibly...

When hard disk drives contain super sensitive data, cybersecurity professionals like myself will usually recommend that they shouldn't be placed in any computers that have an operational TCP/IP stack. There are various ways that internet-connected computers can secure themselves against attack, such as firewalls, IPS devices, antivirus software, and...

A university has expelled a student for hacking the email accounts of several professors in an attempt to improve their grades. Technion Institute of Technology, a public research institute based in Haifa, Israel, revealed the disciplinary actions it took against the student to Ynetnews: “We are taking this case very seriously, as it is very...

The Internet of Things (IoT) embodies great promise and risk. On the one hand, ordinary users view IoT as a means of streamlining their activities across billions of "smart" devices. They hope such connectivity will ultimately translate into better and easier lives. On the other hand, IoT devices aren't always designed with security in mind. This...

CAPTCHAs – these things: A human creation built to foil robots. However, as is ever so common these days, the robots are winning. But! it doesn’t have to be that way. The first CAPTCHAs were created in 2000, and most every CAPTCHA since has remained virtually the same. This becomes problematic...

We all can agree that security training is critical, but have you ever wondered why your organization does not share your same level of excitement when it comes training time? The majority of organizations struggle with getting employees motivated and enthusiastic about training. Many employees look at training as a quarterly or yearly checkbox with...

One of the unpleasant realities of having a ubiquitous and very public online profile through social media is the risk of attracting an unwanted “follower” or “friend” who turns into an online-troll or stalker. Over the past few weeks, I’ve been contacted by a number of folks on “what to do” when bad things start happening online. Whether you...

No matter how well-designed it is, a security program will never prevent every digital attack. But an assault need not escalate into a data breach. Organizations can reduce the likelihood of a major incident by investing in key security controls. One such fundamental security component is FIM. Short for "file integrity monitoring," FIM helps...

A new survey revealed that only one in four utility companies (28 percent) have plans to execute a major security project in the next two years. BRIDGE Energy Group released the findings of its 2017 BRIDGE Index Grid Operations survey, which polled over 20,000 utility employees across North America, uncovering alarming statistics that suggest...

Google's CAPTCHA service now allows human users to pass through and access a website without seeing the "I'm not a robot" checkbox. The CAPTCHA provider, known as No CAPTCHA reCAPTCHA, uses an "advanced risk analysis engine" to separate users from bots. The service has developed numerous challenges since it first launched. But it all started with a...

“If you know the enemy and know yourself, you need not fear the result of a hundred battles. If you know yourself but not the enemy, for every victory gained you will also suffer a defeat. If you know neither the enemy nor yourself and, you will succumb in every battle.” –Sun Tzu, “Attack by Stratagem” #18 Art of War Cybersecurity media is awash...

Payment solutions provider Verifone is reportedly investigating a breach of its internal computer networks dating back to mid-2016 that may have affected a number of businesses running its point-of-sale (POS) terminals. According to a report by investigative journalist Brian Krebs, the payments giant said the extent of the breach is limited to its...

Do you own an internet-connected DVR, CCTV or IP camera? You may want to check who manufactured it, as proof-of-concept code has been released capable of automating attacks against devices made by Dahua Technology. The firm has issued a security bulletin after a vulnerability researcher claimed that he had uncovered what he believed to be a backdoor...

An ongoing spear-phishing campaign is using malicious Microsoft Word documents to install two PowerShell backdoors on victims' machines. FireEye as a Service (FaaS) first detected the operation in February 2017. The campaign appears to be targeting individuals who've played a part in submitting financial statements and other documents to the U.S....

The shortest month of 2017 was relatively slow in terms of ransomware activity, but it gave rise to several disconcerting tendencies in the cybercrime ecosystem. Crypto infections that steal sensitive information along the way, top-notch Android ransomware utilizing dropper techniques, low-cost Ransomware-as-a-Service platforms – all of these took...