A bank's linked services went offline after a loud noise during a fire extinguishing test caused damage to hard drives stored at its main data center. On 10 September, ING Bank conducted a drill to evaluate the fire suppression system at its main data center in Bucharest, Romania. The fire...

Signing up with a social media site is fun, but it's not without its risks. Scammers prowl about LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook and other social networking platforms looking for ways to trick users into doing something they wouldn't ordinarily do. Usually, these fraudsters are after their targets' profiles, money, or computer files. But some want...

Firewalls are staples of network security, and for years, they’ve played a part in keeping networks safe by restricting both incoming and outgoing network traffic. Along with antivirus software, they are among the oldest and most widely used cybersecurity tools. But what role should firewalls play in 2016 and beyond? One thing is clear: even though...

The Philadelphia ransomware enables attackers to offer "mercy" to their victims by choosing to decrypt their files for free. Attackers are likely distributing Philadelphia, which is a new version of Stampado, via the use of phishing emails disguised as payment notices from Brazil's Ministério da Fazenda or the Ministry of Finance. ...

“Should we fear hackers? Intention is at the heart of this discussion.” – Kevin Mitnick In cybercrime, truth is in the eye of the beholder. And if in any other research or business field it is somehow easy to define cause and consequence, in cybercrime it is not. Perhaps it is due to its complexity and multi-layered character that cybercrime has...

When we traditionally think of the benefits of 'automation,' we think of 'improved quality and efficiency; and savings in time, cost and energy.' One often overlooked benefit that can be achieved from this is the mitigation of risk and the enhanced security. According to a recent study by AlgoSec (State of Automation in Security, Spring 2016), over...

The French underground has posted a job ad for a dark web content "cleaner" who will be paid for their efforts in stolen goods. Trend Micro threat researcher Cedric Pernet came across the posting (which is written in French) after making other discoveries in a series of French underground marketplaces. According to the ad, the dark web marketplace...

A Congressional investigation into the devastating hack of the US government's Office of Personnel Management (OPM) has detailed shortcomings in the organisation's security and made recommendations for other federal departments to prevent the same from happening to them. The hefty 227-page report doesn't pull its punches about the seriousness of the...

Seven online scammers will soon begin serving out prison sentences for their involvement in an international fraud conspiracy. On 7 September, Funso Hassan, 27, of Ibadan, Nigeria, and Anthony Shane Jeffers, 44, of Maryville, Tennessee received orders to serve out 10 years of jail time. Their prison...

We all know that cybercrime is increasing and likely to jump from a $75 billion problem last year to a $170 billion problem in 2020. Most will argue that this out of control spiral is unavoidable. It’s just the nature of the game. We will always be one step behind – that much is true. At the rate we are traveling, though, we are slipping behind by...

I remember when I first learned about some of the powerful spy satellites orbiting the earth. Some of the rumors stated the cameras on these machines were so accurate that they could read a car license plate from space. The idea that such technology existed back then was amazing. Now, some of the newer satellites are putting those early spy rumors...

Hutton Hotel became the latest hospitality company to warn customers of a data breach that may have compromised their payment card details. The Nashville, Tenn.-based upscale hotel announced the security incident on Friday, stating it was notified of the potential breach by its payment processor. Subsequently, the company said it began an...

Crowd-sourced review service Yelp says it will award researchers up to 15,000 USD for reporting exploits as part of its newly public bug bounty program. The company successfully ran a private bug-bounty program for the past two years, during which it worked with private researchers and bug bounty hunters to fix as many as 100 vulnerabilities. But to...

Recently, I had a meeting with a potential customer who was looking to invest in Tripwire's portfolio. We got to talking about various aspects of information security—in particular, when companies discover, react to and investigate potential security breaches. The conversation took me back to when I worked in information security as a technical...

Russian e-mail service provider Rambler.ru suffered a mega breach when someone leaked close to 100 million of its users' login credentials online. Data breach monitoring service LeakedSource said the 98,167,935 leaked credentials are real, information which someone allegedly stole in a hack against the "Russian version of Yahoo" during a security...

On 21 August, 2016, the International Olympic Committee (IOC) held the closing ceremony for the 2016 Summer Olympics at the Maracanã Stadium in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. Hopefully, the celebration symbolized the close of a memorable fortnight during which athletes and spectators alike didn't get hacked and evaded the traps of computer criminals....

Going back to school, especially college, is a fun time of year. One of the best experiences, by far, is living with other people in a dorm or private shared housing. You can make awesome friends, have amazing parties, and make excellent memories. It's important to note in these shared living situations that hygiene is incredibly important. You don...

Apple issued critical updates for OS X Yosemite and El Capitan on Thursday to patch security vulnerabilities resembling those discovered on iOS 9.3.5 earlier this week. Dubbed Trident, the three zero-day vulnerabilities (CVE-2016-4655, CVE-2016-4656 and CVE-2016-4657) could allow an attacker to silently jailbreak an iOS device and spy on victims,...

A federal court has sentenced the man behind the 'Guccifer' moniker to four years in prison for hacking a number of high-profile targets. On 1 September, U.S. District Judge James C. Cacheris handed down a sentence of 52 months in prison to Marcel Lehel Lazar, 44, of Arad, Romania. According to a statement released by the U.S. Department of Justice,...

Ransomware is having quite the year. According to the FBI, crypto-malware authors extorted more than 200 million USD from users in the first three months of 2016. They're well on their way to raking in over one billion dollars by the end of the year. Part of the reason ransomware developers are doing so well, the FBI explains in a letter, is because...