It’s not about whether you implement foundational controls but about how well you do it. Only when excellence in the essentials of security and compliance are achieved, will an organization be able to have confidence that it is able to mitigate most cyber threats. We as cyber-defenders have an embarrassing problem. We are routinely susceptible to...

The Security Exchange Commission (SEC) announced on Wednesday that its EDGAR database was compromised in 2016. This database stores non-public information on businesses, such as quarterly earnings, and statements on merger and acquisition dealings. According to the agency, the compromise was due to a software vulnerability being exploited on its...

A threat actor known as APT33 is actively targeting organizations in the aerospace and energy sectors with spear phishing campaigns. Between mid-2016 and early 2017, the suspected Iranian digital espionage group attacked a U.S. organization in the aerospace sector, a Saudi Arabian conglomerate with aviation holdings, and a South Korean company known...

In September 2017, I created a list of 10 essential bug bounty programs for 2017. Readers with a keen eye for detail might have noticed that nearly half of the companies included in that catalog host their vulnerability research programs, otherwise known as vulnerability disclosure programs and responsible disclosure programs, through HackerOne. A...

In my previous post about Tripwire's latest skills gap survey, I noted that over the past couple years, it has become more challenging to hire adequately skills cybersecurity professional. In this post, I'll share Tripwire's second set of findings. These results cover which technical skills are most needed and what organizations plan to do about...

While false detections should be eliminated as much as possible, these are an inherent part of any vulnerability assessment tool. Possible reasons for false detections include rapid changes in vendor-specific patches/updates, zero-day vulnerabilities, access restrictions, and network glitches. The goal is to have the fewest vulnerabilities detected...

New families of trojans continue to prosper on the Android platform as malicious hackers increasingly target mobile users in their attempt to steal login credentials and personal information. The most recent warning of Android malware relates to a new banking trojan called Red Alert 2.0 that has managed to infiltrate a number of third-party app...

The Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard (PCI DSS) was introduced to provide a minimum degree of security when it comes to handling customer card information. While the Standard has been around for over a decade, penetration testing has only recently been officially incorporated into the process. There’s a lot to cover in a PCI DSS...

Last time, I had an excellent discussion with Keirsten Brager, a security engineer for a utility company. This time, I had the pleasure of speaking with Candy Alexander. She got into cybersecurity at least partly because of Kevin Mitnick. Kim Crawley: Please tell me about what you do. Candy Alexander: I am currently working as a vice CISO and...

Researchers have discovered that certain versions of the popular CCleaner app were modified by hackers to deliver malware to millions of unsuspecting users. Created by Piriform and recently acquired by security firm Avast, the application allows users to perform routine maintenance on their systems, including the cleaning of temporary files and...

If you have read any of my posts or attended my webinars about security awareness, training, compliance, or other IT risk management items, you will notice a recurring theme: expecting technology to do all of the work in preventing a security or risk-related event is not the correct mindset. Rather, creating a culture of risk management is the key....

A new phishing campaign is targeting LinkedIn users, leveraging hacked accounts to send malicious links via the platform’s private messaging feature. According to security researchers at Malwarebytes, the campaign abuses Premium membership accounts, which can message other LinkedIn users – regardless of whether they’re connected or not. “The...

A malvertising campaign is distributing code that mines different cryptocurrencies inside an unsuspecting user's web browser. For the operation, computer criminals are targeting mainly visitors to video streaming and in-browser gaming sites based in Russia and Ukraine. They abuse an online advertising network to display ads containing custom...

UPDATED 19/9/17 to correct the fact that US Info Search never sold any data to Ngo Equifax made headlines on September 7, 2017, when it announced its discovery of a data breach earlier in the year. In the security incident, computer criminals leveraged a "U.S. website application vulnerability" to view some of the consumer credit reporting agency's...

As many as 200,000 websites may have been running a WordPress plugin that allowed third parties to publish any content they wished on victims' sites via a backdoor. The popular Display Widgets plugin was removed from the official WordPress.org plugin repository after it was found collecting information about website visitors and inserting content...

A new remote access trojan (RAT) known as Kedi phones home and transmits a victim's stolen data to attackers using Gmail. The malware relies on spear-phishing, one of the most common types of phishing attacks, for distribution. These attack emails spread a 32-bit Mono/.Net Windows executable, written in C#, that masquerades as a Citrix tool. It then...

Flexibility, on-demand computing resources, and speed are just some of the benefits that are driving information technology's shift to the cloud. In fact, market data shows that roughly a quarter of overall computing workloads already operate in public environments today. That figure is expected to grow to half over the next 10 years. At the same...

Insider threat relates to malicious activity from an organization’s internal employees, contractors, or ex-employees who abused access to the company’s internal systems and applications to compromise the confidentiality, integrity, or availability concerns to critical information systems or data with or without malicious intent. Insider threat...

Researchers have uncovered several zero-day flaws affecting billions of Bluetooth-enabled devices, including smartphones, TVs, laptops, watches, smart TVs and more. Dubbed “BlueBorne,” the attack vector enables malicious actors to leverage the short-range wireless protocol to take full control over targeted devices, access data and spread malware to...

A data breach might have exposed the personal information belonging to approximately one million users of the Canoe.ca portal. On 2 September, the news and entertainment gateway learned of a security incident that involved some of its databases containing records it collected between 1996 and 2008. The company, operated by MediaQMI Inc. and owned by...