This report was prepared by The Institute for National Security Studies (INSS) and The Cyber Security Forum Initiative (CSFI) to create better cyber situational awareness (Cyber SA) of the nature and scope of threats and hazards to national security worldwide in the domains of cyberspace and open source intelligence. It is provided to Federal, State...

The United States and the UK have announced that they will be creating “cyber cells,” intelligence units which will share information and conduct simulated cyber attacks in an effort to enhance the security cooperation between the two countries. “We have got hugely capable cyber defences,” UK Prime Minister David Cameron said about the agreement. ...

Regularly in the news we hear about organisations having their Twitter or Facebook accounts compromised by cybercriminals - but they're not the only social media outlets which hackers and fraudsters have an interest in hijacking. Researchers at Symantec have warned this week of an increasing number of phishing emails being spammed out, claiming to...

In my last post, I talked about the basics of vulnerability scoring in vulnerability management and the disparity that can exist when you score the subjective elements of a vulnerability. We looked at the variance that can exist within CVSSv2 and how a properly developed score can show a clear difference between two unique issues. This time, I want...

A Birmingham hacker who is believed to be fighting for the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria, better known as ‘ISIS,’ is suspected of having orchestrated the defacement of U.S. CENTCOM social media accounts earlier this week. Investigators believe that 20-year-old Junaid Hussain helped administrate a Twitter account that operated under the pseudonym ...

At Tripwire, we have recently seen increasing interest from our customers in being able to match up file changes found by our products with threat intelligence that comes from a variety of external sources. We have run into a common issue here when we have gotten down to the implementation details, and so I write this post as a plea to all the new,...

Today’s VERT Alert addresses 8 new Microsoft Security Bulletins. VERT is actively working on coverage for these bulletins in order to meet our 24-hour SLA and expects to ship ASPL-597 on Wednesday, January 14th. MS15-001 Microsoft Application Compatibility Infrastructure Elevation of Privilege Vulnerability CVE-2015-0002 ...

Thousands of customer accounts of frequent American Airlines and United Airlines travelers have been compromised, with hackers going as far as booking themselves several free trips or upgrades. On Monday, American Airlines spokeswoman Martha Thomas told The Associated Press the airline had notified nearly 10,000 affected customers of the incident,...

Last year, we announced The Voice of the CISO, a new series in which we interview prominent individuals in the field to gain detailed insight into the mind of a CISO and to better understand their role within an organization. Our latest interview features Thom Langford, an information security professional who is the Director of Sapient’s Global...

‘Silk Road Reloaded,’ a new anonymous online drug market, draws upon a host of new anonymizing features, including I2P connectivity and the use of cryptocurrencies other than Bitcoin. By embracing I2P, the administrators of the new Silk Road iteration now welcome a service that, as opposed to Tor, is friendly to peer-to-peer connections and uses a...

It’s 2015—another year for law enforcement agencies to find and arrest some of the most dangerous hackers. With this optimism for the New Year at heart, we now focus in on the story of yet another notorious cyber criminal brought to justice: Albert Gonzalez. Gonzalez, who is known as “Segvec,” “Soupnazi” and “J4guar” among Internet circles, is an...

A hacker has defaced the websites of a number of French municipalities with a message in support of the Wednesday attacks against the satirical French magazine Charlie Hebdo, a massacre which killed 12 including two police officers. The front pages of the hacked sites were seen to display the “black flag of Islam,” which has become a symbol of the...

In December of 2011, Tripwire published a list of security’s top 25 influencers. More than three years later, we are pleased to announce a new list for 2015 -- The Infosec Avengers! For each influencer whom we have selected, we include their Twitter handle, blog URL and reasoning for selecting them. We also include their answer for what infosec...

Ever heard the phrase 'Loose lips sink ships?' If an attacker (or anyone else) wants to know what’s going on in an organization, all they need to do is go to lunch. Hitting the popular restaurants and cafes around the target location is a no-risk method for gathering data. If two or more coworkers are together for any length of time it’s almost...

I was just reading an article about an FBI investigation of whether US banks are attacking their cyber attackers in an attempt to fight back. Along similar lines, we recently saw reports of Sony taking an offensive position by DDOS-ing sites hosting its content. The question of whether it makes sense to attack your cyber attackers isn't new—this has...

There's little doubt that effectively remediating vulnerabilities is an important part of a comprehensive information security strategy. Vulnerabilities in desktops, servers, laptops and infrastructure are commonly involved in intrusions and incidents. For example, the Chthonic malware designed to steal banking details, exploits a known Microsoft...

On any given day, my inbox is a flurry of activity that would make a January snow squall in Canada feel like a light breeze with the occasional flake. Like a snowflake, each email is unique but many share common themes. One of these themes is my favourite discussion topic: vulnerability scoring. I was inspired to further discuss this issue after the...

The largest inflight Internet provider Gogo is under fire after a Google Chrome security engineer took to Twitter her discovery of the service issuing fake SSL certificates. During a recent flight, Adrienne Porter Felt (@__apf__) noted that while accessing Google sites, the SSL certificate was actually being issued by Gogo – an “unstrusted issuer “ ...

Only one percent of consumers believe using a third-party mobile payment provider, such as Apple Pay or Google Wallet, is a safe way to pay for in-store purchases, reveals Tripwire, Inc. This past holiday season, One Poll and Dimensional Research conducted a consumer survey of over 2,011 consumers in the United States and UK. The survey’s findings...

In anticipation of the New Year, Tripwire recently published an article that surveyed some of the better-known data breaches that occurred in 2014. We now present Part 2 of our two-part series, “2014: The Year of the Breach.” Home Depot (September) – On September 18th, Home Depot acknowledged that it had suffered a data breach. The attackers...