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Security for Life: Promoting the Development of a Security Professional

This week marks the fifth and final week of National Cyber Security Awareness Month (NCSAM) 2015. A program sponsored by the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) in cooperation with the National Cyber Security Alliance and the Multi-State Information Sharing and Analysis Center, NCSAM emphasizes our shared responsibility in strengthening the cyber...
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British Gas Urges Customers to Change Passwords Following Login Leak

British Gas has emailed approximately 2,200 customers urging them to change their passwords after their login credentials were posted online. According to The Guardian, the account details were posted to the online text-sharing service Pastebin and, if accessed, could have allowed an attacker to view the names, addresses, and previous energy bills...
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Point of Sale Cyber Crime: The Gift that Keeps on Giving

In spite of continuous efforts to improve the security of credit card transactions by both the financial services and retail industries, we see nearly endless headlines about new card data breaches. Banks want to improve security to avoid incurring the expenses associated with fraudulent purchases and investigations efforts. Consumers want, to...
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Home Network Analysis: DVRs and my Network Interact

My last on-topic post pontificated about the dangers and surprise of letting third parties into your house or codebase, where I discussed the addition of a TV DVR system to my home network. In this post, I'm going to go into some details about what I found on the network for the pure pleasure of it – no pontificating about anything, just the fun of...
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Ransomware Victims Should 'Just Pay the Ransom,' Says the FBI

A member of the Federal Bureau of Investigations (FBI) has recommended that ransomware victims "just pay the ransom" if no other option exists and if they need access to their encrypted data. Last Wednesday, during Cyber Security Summit 2015 at Boston's Back Bay Events Center, Joseph Bonavolonta, the Assistant Special Agent in Charge of the FBI’s...
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Joomla SQL Injection Flaw Exploited Hours After Disclosure

Malicious actors began exploiting a patched critical vulnerability found in Joomla—a popular open-source content management system—just four hours after its details were disclosed. Discovered by researchers at Trustwave, the SQL injection flaw (CVE-2015-7297, CVE-2015-7857 and CVE-2015-7858) found in versions 3.2 through 3.4.4 of Joomla could...
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Hacked Shopping Mall CCTV Cameras Are Launching DDoS Attacks

If you're running a CCTV surveillance camera in your office, high street store, or at home make sure that you are not unwittingly helping hackers launch denial-of-service attacks. That's the warning that has been issued by the security team at Incapsula, who discovered a botnet of 900 CCTV cameras spread across the globe, flooding targeted websites...
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Security Nightmare of Driverless Cars

The fear of malicious actors taking control of glaring flaws in smart cars is on the rise. This threat is therefore considered to be one of the major technical challenges confronting the automotive industry today. Car Manufacturers Initially, car manufacturers were not very familiar with the cyber security community. From a hacker’s perspective,...
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Security Mentorships and Future Proofing Resource Resilience

Everyone always talks about the shortage in cybersecurity talent or their limited cyber resources. However, what I haven’t seen too many folks focus on is the mentoring of the next generation workforce. I recently started volunteering with high school kids, who are mostly all minorities, such as me. I found them, or should I say their coach found me...
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TalkTalk Investigates Breach that Might Have Exposed 4M Customers' Info

TalkTalk, a UK telecommunications company, is an investigating a data breach that might have compromised the personal information of as many as four million customers. On Friday, Trista Harrison, Managing Director (Consumer) of TalkTalk, posted an update on the company's website about the incident: "We are very sorry to tell you that yesterday a...
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Launching an Efficient and Cost-Effective Bug Bounty Program

Over the last few years, you’ve probably heard a lot about companies launching their own bug bounty programs. Software giants, such as Google, Microsoft, Twitter and Yahoo, as well as hardware-centric companies, such as Tesla, Samsung and even United Airlines, run programs that pay out cash for finding vulnerabilities. As these programs gain...
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Takeaways From The 2016 PwC Global State of Information Security Survey

Now in its 18th year, The Global State of Information Security® Survey 2016 – a worldwide survey by CIO, CSO and PwC – observes a fundamental shift in the way business leaders are responding to today’s biggest security challenges. Recognizing the rising cyber risks, a growing number of boards and executives are taking action to improve their...
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Email Is Not a File System

On Monday, the news buzzed with a story about a high school student who had managed to break into the email accounts of CIA Director John Brennan and DHS Secretary Jeh Johnson. We've seen this scenario played out all too often. The teen used the standard social engineering techniques to find out enough information about the targets to force a...
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10-Second Hack Delivers First Ever Malware to Fitness Trackers

A security researcher has developed a method by which one can exploit a vulnerability in FitBit fitness trackers and subsequently deliver malware to the target device in 10 seconds. FitBit (Source: PCMag) Axelle Apvrille (@cryptax), a malware researcher at network security firm Fortinet, has found...
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Security Hygiene: Protecting Your Evolving Digital Life

This week marks Week 4 in National Cyber Security Awareness Month (NCSAM), a program sponsored by the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) in cooperation with the National Cyber Security Alliance and the Multi-State Information Sharing and Analysis Center. NCSAM emphasizes our shared responsibility in strengthening the cyber security posture of our...