The main challenge for industrial control systems is that the processes that control those systems are connected to critical infrastructure such as power, water, gas, and transport. This means they require high availability, and it is not easy to interrupt those systems to apply security updates. Effects of any downtime means that it can affect...

With 2017 coming to a close, we wanted to give our readers an overview of some of the most interesting, educational, and standout blogs from the year to help fill the time between Christmas and the New Year. My favourite State of Security blogs from 2017 Pentest Toolbox Additions 2017 It´s becoming a yearly tradition, but one our readers and I...

Canada has proposed to pay $17.5 million to settle a privacy breach involving hundreds of thousands of individuals who applied for student loans. Under the proposed settlement, Canada would pay $60 to Canada Student Loan borrowers affected by the breach. The federal government could reduce that individual payment, however, in the event the total...

Ransomware is a problem on the rise, a simple threat with some very large business implications. Statistics show it has reached new levels of menace, and it's growing at a remarkable rate: 6000% in 2016, an IBM study found, and a triple-digit increase into 2018. Although a very real and present danger (as shown by some very high profile infections...

As organizations' IT environments become increasingly more complex, so too does the software they install on their systems. Software developers and managers have embraced microservices written in node.js and Spring Boot, for example. These new types of dynamic applications challenge organizations to establish appropriate trust chains and secure old...

Last time, I spoke with Stephanie Vanroelen. She's an OWASP contributor who specializes in web penetration testing. She also organizes BruCON, Belgium's largest cybersecurity convention, and volunteers at CyberSKool, an information security camp for kids. This time, I have the pleasure of speaking with Tiffany Gerstmar. Working with the US Navy...

We all know what a great year distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attacks had in 2016. In the last four months, the web registered two significant DDoS campaigns. The first targeted Brian Krebs at a peak size of 620 Gbps. The second struck Dyn and, in so doing, took down Twitter, Amazon, Spotify and other clients of the DNS provider's critical...

If you still haven't properly secured your Twitter account with two-factor authentication then you have one less excuse today. Twitter has announced that you can now use third-party apps (such as Google Authenticator, Authy, or 1Password) to verify yourself at login. https://twitter.com/TwitterSafety/status/943542421698125824 Which is great news,...

Modern-day encryption is surprisingly effective. Take the gold standard: AES 256-bit encryption. It’s military-grade, trusted by governments and top security professionals worldwide. The encryption keys use so many number combinations that it’s virtually brute-force proof. In theory, someone might be able to crack it if they invented a supercomputer...

In our previous article, we started to lay out some important social engineering terms, such as phishing, spear-phishing and pretexting. We even introduced to you what we call “Potentially Unwanted Leaks” (PUL) as tidbits of information that, when out in the wild, become valuable nuggets to be used against you in a social engineering attack. This...

The damage done to a business's reputation and the long-term financial consequences of a data breach are never a concern that should be treated lightly. While extending an existing database into the cloud can allow users to access sensitive files and information with far greater ease, failing to address potential security concerns or underlying...

"123456" has once again topped an annual list of the worst passwords created by users in North America and Western Europe. On 19 December, password management provider SplashData released the 2017 edition of its "Worst Passwords of the Year" list. The dataset comprises five million leaked passwords exposed by data security incidents over the course...

It was late Friday afternoon when the email arrived saying he’d won a free cruise. Philip quickly opened the email and clicked the link for more information, but there was nothing there. What he didn’t know is that this cruise offer actually came from a hacker and not Cruise Giveaways of America. This was no ordinary link, either. That link...

A Bitcoin exchange has announced it has filed for bankruptcy and will cease all operations after suffering its second hacking attack this year. On 19 December, South Korean exchange Youbit announced at 04:35 local time that bad actors had hacked its website and stolen 17 percent of its assets in the process. BBC News reports that the hackers didn't...

Last time, I spoke with Jelena Milosevic. She's a nurse who discovered a huge security problem in her hospital and is now on a mission to educate people about improving medical cybersecurity. This time, I spoke with Stephanie Vanroelen. Not only is she an OWASP contributing web security specialist, but she also volunteers at a camp that teaches...

It seems like everyday you see a new report about a massive data leak caused by someone accidentally exposing files stored in AWS S3 Buckets to everyone on the Internet. Many may remember Verizon’s infamous snafu that leaked data records for six million of their customers due to a misconfiguration in their S3 buckets. Since then, there have also been...

An oil transportation company discovered someone had installed Monero-mining software on its systems without its authorization. On 14 December, Vladimir Rushailo, vice president of the Russian state-owned transport monopoly Transneft, revealed that the company had found that one of its computers had automatically downloaded software designed to mine...

We want more of the CIA Triad. No, this has nothing to do with the US government agency. It stands for “confidentiality, integrity, and availability.” What it alludes to is the idea of protecting access to privileged information (confidentiality), asserting that the information hasn’t been tampered with (integrity), and that the information can be...

A new attack framework known as "Triton" is targeting industrial control systems (ICS) in an attempt to cause operational disruption and/or physical consequences. FireEye recently detected an incident at a critical infrastructure organization in which an attacker gained access to a Distributed Control System (DCS) that allows human operators to...

The media has been filled with news of identity theft, hacks, and other security woes as of late. In recent months, Uber was hacked, people had their financial information stolen by credit card skimmers, and one woman lost $59,000 to a fake police website. Such incidents cause people’s stomachs to churn. They wonder how to keep their data secure and...