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Drones, OSINT, NLP and Sherlock Holmes

15 January 2017 was yet another treat for me. I watched the most excellent Benedict Cumberbatch playing the part of the brilliant yet crazed Sherlock Holmes. Granted, this is an imaginative and fictitious portrayal of the character created by Arthur Conan Doyle. But I am wondering, if you also watched it, did you note the crossover from fiction to...
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No, CVE Details Did Not Just Prove Android Security Stinks!

It’s January again, and as usual, various media outlets are busy reporting on vulnerability statistics from the previous year. As usual, the CVE Details folks have worked up a lot of hype based on CVE counts, and once again, the media has taken the bait with sensational headlines about Google’s Android being the most vulnerable product of 2016. For...
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Dutch Website Builder Used Secret Script to Hack 20,000 Users

A Dutch website builder leveraged a secret script to steal 20,000 users' login credentials, hack their accounts, and commit payment fraud. On 17 January, police in the northern Netherlands announced they're contacting 20,000 users with the advice that they change their passwords as soon as possible. This move comes several months after the world...
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"123456" STILL the Most Common Password among Users

Another year has gone by...but "123456" still remains the most common password employed by users to protect their web accounts. On 13 January, password manager and digital vault developer Keeper Security broke the somber news in a blog post: "Looking at the list of 2016’s most common passwords, we couldn’t stop shaking our heads. Nearly 17 percent...
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Whitelist Relationships as a Path to Better Security

Implicit deny and explicit allow were two core fundamentals from the start of the information security discipline. However, as the scale and complexity of infrastructures grew, it became evident the list of things we should allow is exponentially smaller than the list of things we should deny. Say "no" to everything unless it is known to be good....
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Shadow Brokers' Swan Song: A Sale of Hacking Tools for Windows

The digital world is riddled with threat actors of which we know very little. Some of these mysterious agents launch one or two modest attacks and peter out soon after crawling their way into existence. Others last a bit longer, raising hubbub and gaining notoriety in the process. Not a lot of actors make it into the latter category without the...
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Email Campaign Uses Fake Silverlight Update to Install Keylogger

A targeted email campaign used a fake Microsoft Silverlight update to trick users into installing a keylogger onto their computers. Overall, the attack campaign consisted of only a few malicious emails sent to employees at a major financial services provider. Each email bore a Microsoft Office document as an attachment--an attack vector seen in...
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Amazon Scammers Using Fake Payment Sites to Steal Buyers' Money

Scammers are using fake Amazon payment sites to steal money from customers lured in by unbeatable deals. Comparitech, a website which offers consumer advice on topics relating to technology and information security, recently investigated one such fraudster. The fake seller goes by the name Sc-Elegance. They have a reputation for selling expensive...
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Alexa, Are You Keeping My Information Private?

"By sitting in the alcove, and keeping well back, Winston was able to remain outside the range of the telescreen, so far as sight went. He could be heard, of course, but so long as he stayed in his present position he could not be seen." The above quote is a snippet from George Orwell’s dystopian-themed novel 1984, where Big Brother is constantly...
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Spora Ransomware Equipped with Sophisticated Encryption, Payment Site

A new ransomware family called Spora comes outfitted with a sophisticated encryption scheme and a professionally designed payment portal. Spora, which is Russian for the word "spore," relies on fake invoice emails for distribution. The emails bear ZIP files containing HTML Application (HTA) files as attachments. But users might not realize it. That...
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The Top 13 Information Security Conferences of 2017

** UPDATED 2018 Blog Here: The Top 17 Information Security Conferences of 2018 ** 2017 is finally here. You know what that means: another information security conference season is upon us. We couldn't be more excited! Just like we did last year, we at The State of Security have assembled a list of the top 13 conferences in information security...
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VERT Threat Alert: January 2017 Patch Tuesday Analysis

Today’s VERT Alert addresses 4 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-706 on Wednesday, January 11th. Ease of Use (published exploits) to Risk Table Automated Exploit Easy ...
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Ransomware Attack Leads LA School to Fork Over $28K in Ransom

A school located in Los Angeles County, California has paid computer criminals 28,000 USD after it suffered a ransomware attack. Officials at Los Angeles Valley College (LAVC) came to the decision after a ransomware infection left them with no way to recover their organization's encrypted data. As the school explains in an update (PDF): "In...
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Email Slip-Up Exposes 60,000 Bank Customers' Account Details

A large Australian bank exposed 60,000 of its customers' account details after it inadvertently sent an email to the wrong recipient. National Australia Bank (NAB), which was one of the targets of sophisticated Android malware in March 2016, disclosed the data leak in December. It appears a former NAB employee sent confirmation emails to 60,000 new...