What is the Windows Store? The Windows Store is a digital platform that allows for the distribution of applications. This platform offers both free and paid. Users use the Window Store to install applications that are of interest to them. Can you disable the Windows Store? Windows Store can be disabled via group policy to prevent users from...

Hackers are once again finding unsecured MongoDB databases carelessly left exposed on the internet, wiping their contents, and leaving a ransom note demanding a cryptocurrency payment for the data's safe return. As ZDNet reports, ransom notes have been left on almost 23,000 MongoDB databases that were let unprotected on the public internet without a...

Security researchers spotted Trickbot malware checking the screen resolution as a means of evading analysis on a virtual machine (VM). Digital security firm MalwareLab came across a sample of the trojan that checked to see whether a computer's screen resolution was either 800x600 or 1024x768. It then terminated if it found that the screen resolution...

Organizations cannot afford to neglect their PCI compliance obligations. According to its website, PCI could punish offending organizations with a monetary penalty ranging in value from $5,000 to $100,000 per month. These fines could spell the end for a small business. Acknowledging those consequences, organizations need to make sure they’re PCI...

What are the brakes on a car designed to do? I have asked this question many times when speaking to customers or organizations who were dipping their toes into the audit space. Invariably, their answer was, “To stop the car.” At this point, I would then ask, “Then how do you get where you want to go?” What Is the Purpose of Controls and a...

Security researchers detected a new ransomware strain that leveraged piracy as a means of distributing itself to Mac users. On June 29, a Twitter user reached out to Malwarebytes about a malicious Little Snitch installer that was available for download on a Russian forum known for sharing torrent links. A close look at the installer revealed that it...

Building the Case for IoT Security Framework The Internet of Things (IoT) is growing in technical, social, and economic significance. ENISA defines the increasingly complex IoT systems as “cyber-physical ecosystem[s] of interconnected sensors and actuators, which enables intelligent decision making.” These technologies collect, exchange and process...

Numerous data leaks appeared on the dark web in the second quarter of 2020. At the end of May, for instance, Cyble found a government database containing the personal information of more than 20 million Taiwanese citizens for sale on an underground web marketplace. That was less than two weeks before The Economic Times reported on a dark web data...

The European GDPR (General Data Protection Regulation) is one of the most influential consumer privacy laws that has affected 500,000 companies throughout the world. This law has played a crucial role in formulating another substantial privacy law known as the California Consumer Privacy Act that came into effect on January 1, 2020. Similar to the...

A Vancouver man received a federal prison sentence for his involvement in developing several distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) botnets. On June 25, the U.S. Attorney's Office for the District of Alaska announced that Chief U.S. District Judge Timothy M. Burgess had sentenced Kenneth Currin...

Let’s begin with a short story. Imagine that we have two large organizations in the public sector. These entities are very similar. Both are on the receiving end of cyber threats. Both adhere to multiple compliance standards. And both need to ensure that their IT systems are functioning and working as planned. But they’re not entirely the same. Take...

Do you think you have found a vulnerability in the Sony PlayStation 4 or the PlayStation Network? If so, you could be heading towards a sizeable sum of money. That's because Sony announced details of a new bug bounty program that it is running in co-ordination with vulnerability-reporting platform HackerOne. Sony is inviting security researchers,...

New malware called "Lucifer" came with numerous exploits for conducting cryptomining functionality and performing distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attacks on infected Windows machines. Palo Alto Networks' Unit 42 research team identified two versions of Lucifer in their research. (Both variants bore the name "Satan DDoS," but for the sake of not...

Reliability is essential to the functionality of an electric power grid. This principle guarantees that a constant qualitative and quantitative supply of electric power is flowing from a provider to businesses, homes and more. It’s what enables electric power to drive life forward in modern society. As a result, there’s reason to be concerned about...

Tripwire's June 2020 Patch Priority Index (PPI) brings together important vulnerabilities from Microsoft, BIND and Oracle. Up first on the Patch Priority Index this month are patches for Microsoft, BIND and Oracle for vulnerabilities that have been integrated into various Exploits. Metasploit has recently added exploits for BIND (CVE-2020-8617),...

Security researchers came across a new ransomware family called "CryCryptor" that masqueraded as a Canadian COVID-19 tracing app. CryCryptor emerged just days after the Canadian government announced it would support the development of a national, voluntary tracing app for COVID-19 called "COVID Alert." That official app had not yet entered its...

Organizations protect critical assets and sensitive information from the outside world by continually updating their security controls and policies. However, the origin of a breach is not always outside of the organization, and recently, insider breaches have gained attention amid an increase in the flexibility of tools for information sharing....

Several attack campaigns waited two weeks after achieving a successful Trickbot infection before they deployed Ryuk ransomware as their final payload. SentinelOne came across the attacks as the result of monitoring an attack server employed by Trickbot's handlers. In the process, they discovered data for three separate attacks that occurred in the...

Not everything that tastes good is healthy, and not everything healthy tastes good. I think of exams as the latter. They are one way to test knowledge, and that attitude is a big part of how I survived getting certified. After taking all kinds of exams, one thing hasn't changed – I don't like them. I get anxious when faced with tests. I dislike the...