Recently, I introduced a three-part series on how to build a successful vulnerability management program. The first installment examined Stage 1, the vulnerability scanning process. My next article investigates Stages 2 (asset discovery and inventory) and 3 (vulnerability detection), which occur primarily using the organization’s technology of...

Following an investigation launched after discovering malware on its payment processing systems, Hyatt Hotels has revealed the breach affected 250 hotels in more than 50 countries. The Chicago-based hospitality company announced it identified signs of unauthorized access to payment card data from...

Netflix has announced its intention to counter the use of proxies among members who wish to view content outside of their immediate geographic territory. David Fullagar, Vice President of Content Delivery Architecture at Netflix, broke the news in a blog post on Thursday: "[I]n coming weeks, those using proxies and unblockers will only be able to...

I don’t know if you have noticed, but when it comes to incident response, the methodology applied by organisations can vary from the downright chaotic, to a well-disciplined, well-oiled machine. However, from what I have observed over the preceding five years of my professional life, the general approach seems to be ad-hoc and has suffered from a...

Last September, CloudFlare detected a large-scale browser-based L7 flood. Over the course of the distributed denial of service (DDoS) attack, 650,000 IP addresses sent out a total of 4.5 billion HTTP requests, with the campaign peaking at 250,000 requests per second. After investigating the incident, the security company concluded that the attack...

European data center services provider Interxion recently announced it had suffered a security data breach, potentially exposing the personal information of more than 23,000 existing and prospective customers. The company notified affected customers via email this weekend, saying it had become aware...

Normally when you see a headline referring to intelligence agencies and phone accounts being hacked, you expect in this day and age that it's law enforcement that is doing the hacking. But not in this case. Director of National Intelligence James R. Clapper appears to have become the latest to fall foul of hackers, after a teenage hacker called ...

Computer crime is on the rise around the world. Every day, nefarious actors develop increasingly more sophisticated forms of malware for their attacks. Additionally, as reported by the United Kingdom's National Crime Agency (NCA) back in December, the average age of online criminals has dropped to 17 years old, suggesting that teenagers are more...

Today’s VERT Alert addresses 9 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-652 on Wednesday, January 13th. Ease of Use (published exploits) to Risk Table Automated Exploit Easy ...

eBay has patched a cross-site scripting (XSS) vulnerability that attackers could have exploited in order to steal users' passwords. A researcher who goes by the name MLT explains in a blog post how he was able to exploit a "fairly basic" XSS vulnerability without needing to resort to any additional measures, such as bypassing the WAF, in order to...

Is using ad blocking software stealing or is it a sound security practice? On one hand, many websites and content creators make money from advertising. They certainly deserve to be compensated for their time and effort. On the other hand, advertising – at best – can be annoying, and at worst, can serve up malware, suck up bandwidth and redirect...

Online fraudsters recently broke into a number of Fitbit customer accounts using leaked usernames and passwords from third-party websites. According to a report by BuzzFeed, at least two dozen cases were discovered in December. Fitbit did not disclose how many users were affected but told the...

An enterprise vulnerability management program can reach its full potential when it is built on well-established foundational goals that address the information needs of all stakeholders, its output is tied back to the goals of the enterprise, and there is a reduction in the overall risk of the organization. Such vulnerability management technology...

Time Warner Cable (TWC) is planning to notify 320,000 of its customers whose account information might have been compromised. The American cable telecommunications company first learned of the issue after the Federal Bureau of Investigations (FBI) reached out and alerted them to the fact that some of their customers' email addresses and passwords...

Seven months ago I began an odyssey through our medical system that ended in December with my last visit to my surgeon's office. Throughout the entire experience, I couldn't help but make mental notes about the security practices I encountered. I want to be clear from the beginning – nothing I saw was egregious or malicious, just caring people...

A group of researchers has made public a database, dubbed "SCADAPASS," containing default credentials for more than 100 industrial control system (ICS) products belonging to various top vendors. The research team—known as SCADA StrangeLove—published the list on GitHub, which includes the product and vendor names; device type; default username and...

Fancy earning $100,000? Of course, you do. Well, now there's an opportunity to earn a huge reward if you can demonstrate how Adobe Flash can be exploited. Sounds good right? Well, here's the bad news for the rest of us: it's not Adobe offering the money in the form of a bug bounty. Less than a month ago, Adobe proudly announced a series of security...

As cyber threats grow in scope and potential impact, the complexity of enterprise digital data protection grows to astonishing proportions. Last year, a Fortune 500 survey revealed that cyber security is the second biggest concern for CEOs, who keep looking for new solutions to keep their data safe and their clients happy. The enterprise data is...

UPDATED 01/07/2016 to include RSA Conference USA. (Please see below.) In Part II of our 2015 Infosec Wishlist series, a number of security experts expressed their desire for the security community to renew its focus on collaboration, communication and unity in the New Year. To accomplish this goal, folks in information security will need to...

Researchers have confirmed that a variant of the BlackEnergy malware was behind a power outage that occurred around Christmas Eve last year. Reuters reports that the Western Ukrainian power company Prykarpattyaoblenergo reported on outage on December 23rd that affected an area including the regional capital Ivano-Frankivsk. A subsequent...