Those in the IT world are always looking to develop the right skill sets that will help them get noticed above their competition. Considering how quickly technology changes, possessing a highly-desired set of skills can lead to better jobs and higher wages. Trends, of course, come and go, and keeping up with what is currently the most in-demand...

I’m happy to report that the first ever Tripwire VERT capture the flag contest was a huge success. With competitors registered from across the globe, our vulnerable application saw thousands of connections coming from dozens of unique addresses along with a non-stop flood of flags, questions,and...

Over the years, I have written multiple articles on the subject of digital or cyber forensics and the importance it serves in supporting the modern world with regards to corporate and government incident response, first responder engagements, and more general aspects of scene-of-crime management in the digital age. Before we get into the detail,...

Earlier this month, several media outlets ran a story claiming that a new type of malware could be used to destroy victims’ computers. These stories might have fared well in views, but their fear, uncertainty, and doubt (FUD) have proven useful to no one. Fortunately, a number of security experts including Graham Cluley were quick to correct the...

The Internal Revenue Service has confirmed a data breach of 100,000 taxpayers' account information. According to a statement posted on the IRS website, criminals allegedly used sensitive information stolen from non-IRS sources to gain unauthorized access to taxpayers' accounts. To access the site, the criminals made use of stolen Social Security...

It's been almost a year since what some analysts consider the first successful major threat to mobile banking, known as Svpeng, hit the United States. Spreading via a text message campaign, the Svpeng malware went after Android phones. While Svpeng didn’t steal mobile banking credentials, it did detect the presence of certain mobile banking apps and...

A security firm has revealed that upwards of 2.8 million users have downloaded scareware masquerading as legitimate Minecraft apps off of Google Play Store. According to a blog post written by Lukas Stefanko, a Malware Researcher for ESET, 30 malicious applications pretending to be cheats for the popular computer game wereuploaded to Google Play...

For some reason, Europe’s ‘The Final Countdown’ was playing in my head as I sat and pondered this write-up. I suppose that’s fitting given that we are about to cross the 60-day mark until Windows Server 2003 goes End-of-Life. The concept of product EOL can be confusing, especially given the frequent cross-contamination that exists within Microsoft...

Last week, we explored the story of Randall Charles Tucker, a serial distributed denial of service (DDoS) attacker who targeted the websites of government authorities whom he felt were guilty of unjust behavior. We now report on the story of Brandon Bourret and Athanasios Andrianakis, two men who developed an app that searches through Photobucket...

Thousands of patients have been alerted that their medical records were potentially stolen in a data breach that affected at least three hospitals located in Bergen County, New Jersey. According to officials, an employee of Medical Management LLC, a healthcare billing company located in North Carolina, allegedly stole the names, Social Security...

While we're all collectively struggling with how to internalize Logjam, a high-profile vulnerability that doesn't have a catchy logo, I'd like to take those who are interested aside for a moment to consider how we might talk about the threat this vulnerability poses. I'll start with some basics, but if you want more technical details, the Tripwire...

We at Tripwire would like to encourage everyone to vote for their favorite security blogs in the third annual EU Security Blogger Awards 2015! Tripwire is especially proud to have been named a finalist for five categories in this year's awards among numerous other respected publications and professionals. The State of Security is in the running for...

A security researcher has made a ransomware removal kit available online with the hope that it will help security professionals and system administrators alike in responding to instances of ransomware infection. Researcher Jada Cyrus has published the kit on Atlassian Bitbucket. The kit itself consists of removal tools for common ransomware variants...

It's the kind of bad news that every organisation hopes it will never have to find itself sharing with its customers - hackers have breached computer systems, and accessed a database containing sensitive personal information. On this occasion, the corporate victim warning 1.1 million customers that an attack has occurred is CareFirst, a major health...

During my career, I have built and managed hundreds of production-level client and server systems, and nothing can be more worrisome than when it comes time to apply patches and upgrades to software. Why? Because things can, and often times, do go wrong during patch and upgrade cycles. According to a few reports, it is possible that system...

Telstra's Pacnet has begun contacting its customers following the discovery of a data breach that compromised its corporate IT servers on which customer data is stored. Several high-profile Pacnet customers, including the Australian Federal Police and other government agencies, were exposed by the breach. It is unclear at this time whether the...

A new potentially high-impact vulnerability called LogJam has been revealed by researchers, which has similarities to the FREAK (CVE-2015-0204) vulnerability disclosed a few months ago, whereby a man-in-the-middle attack can be implemented to weaken the encryption between client and server. Like FREAK, the LogJam vulnerability takes advantage of...

Last week, we published a list of the top 10 conferences in information security. In our article, we strove to include some of the biggest events in the industry. But realizing that we likely missed a few, we invited you – our readers – to write in and let us know of the conferences you feel should have made the list. Thank you to those who provided...

Protecting enterprise networks is a constant game of cat and mouse between information security professionals and malicious actors targeting their assets. Attackers are constantly changing their tactics for both establishing their foothold in the network, as well as methods on how to exfiltrate data back to systems they control. With the rise of...

According to a recent report, analysts discovered a record-breaking 4.1 million new malware threats in the second half of 2014. Researchers at German antivirus firm G DATA revealed that the 77 percent spike from 2013 resulted in nearly six million new malware strains identified last year alone. ...