Originally envisaged as a convenient way to store web data, cookies emerged as a powerful marketing tool in the 2000s. For many years, digital marketers relied on cookies for data collection. However, in recent history, new privacy laws, browser features, and plug-ins have changed the landscape of data collection. Marketers have had to develop...

Have you ever confused your acronyms? Perhaps you have laughed when someone has had to explain some of the acronyms used in text messages. Business, and especially technology acronyms are almost as plentiful as text acronyms. There are few things as embarrassing as being in a business meeting, and mistaking one acronym for another. This happened...

All of us at Tripwire’s Vulnerability Exposure and Research Team (VERT) are constantly looking out for interesting stories and developments in the infosec world. Here’s what cybersecurity news stood out to us during the week of March 21, 2022. I’ve also included some comments on these stories. Misconfigured Firebase Databases Exposing Data In...

Security isn’t a simple matter of caring or spending time reading manuals or being told what you can or can’t do. Security is understanding how to view the world from a different perspective: instead of functional does it work, viewing it as how can I break it. In our personal lives, it's how can someone misuse this? Be it our social media pictures,...

Cloud computing has emerged as the go-to organizational workload choice because of its innate scalability and flexibility. However, cloud computing still comes with some security risks. Examining cloud security is an important part of adopting this new technology. Presently, cloud-native security is experiencing changes and innovations that help...

Many UK business and technology executives aren’t hopeful about their digital security going into 2022. In a survey of 3,600 business and technology executives, of which 257 were from the UK, PwC learned that a majority (61%) of respondents expected to see an increase in reportable ransomware attacks next year. An even greater proportion (64%) of UK...

What is this AvosLocker thing I’ve heard about? AvosLocker is a ransomware-as-a-service (RaaS) gang that first appeared in mid-2021. It has since become notorious for its attacks targeting critical infrastructure in the United States, including the sectors of financial services, critical manufacturing, and government facilities. In March 2022, the...

What is EDoS? Economic Denial of Sustainability (EDoS) is a cybersecurity threat targeting cloud environments. EDoS attacks exploit the elasticity of clouds, particularly auto-scaling capabilities, to inflate the billing of a cloud user until the account reaches bankruptcy or large-scale service withdrawal. EDoS attacks exploit the cloud’s...

Requirements for reporting cybersecurity incidents to some regulatory or government authority are not new, but there has always been a large amount of inconsistency, globally, in exactly what the requirements are. More recently, there’s been a growing trend across government and regulatory bodies in the United States towards shorter timeframes for...

All of us at Tripwire’s Vulnerability Exposure and Research Team (VERT) are constantly looking out for interesting stories and developments in the infosec world. Here’s what cybersecurity news stood out to us during the week of March 14, 2022. I’ve also included some comments on these stories. Most Orgs Would Take Security Bugs Over Ethical Hacking...

One of the main challenges of OT security is the problem of compatibility. OT components often differ significantly from each other in terms of age and sophistication as well as software and communication protocols. This complicates asset discovery and makes it difficult to establish a consistent cybersecurity governance approach. Combating asset...

Endpoint devices played a big part in malware and ransomware attacks in 2021. According to a study covered by Help Net Security, security researchers detected more malware and ransomware endpoint infections in the first nine months of the year than they did for all of 2020. Attack scripts leveraging PowerSploit, PowerWare, and other tools were...

With just a few weeks until the April 15 deadline for US individuals and businesses to file their tax returns, scammers are as busy as ever. Security researchers at Cofsense have warned that they have seen a number of malicious email campaigns which pose as communications from the Internal Revenue Service (IRS). The emails which purport to come...

How often have you heard someone say "Cybersecurity is complicated!"? If you're a practitioner in the cybersecurity industry you'll have heard these words often, probably along with "…and it's really boring too!" Complex, not complicated Let's start with the first statement. In truth, cybersecurity is a complex topic, but that doesn't mean it...

In this episode, Kai Roer, Chief Research Officer at KnowBe4, explains how human factors will always play a role in how secure our technology is. https://open.spotify.com/episode/0wNJy48LLit2uBxnITrIJ5?si=01c96da356644301 Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/5UDKiGLlzxhiGnd6FtvEnm Stitcher: https://www.stitcher.com/podcast/the-tripwire...

The past few years have emphasized just how important cybersecurity is. As cybercrime reached record heights and more companies went digital, industries realized their current security efforts fell short. Healthcare is a prime example. The medical sector has had the second highest number of data breaches of any industry for more than five years....

Like many organizations, K-12 schools adapted to COVID-19 by accelerating their digital transformation journeys. And like everyone else who followed this path, they invited unwanted attention from digital criminals in the process. In December 2020, for instance, the U.S. Cybersecurity & Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) issued a joint alert...

What is this Ragnar Locker thing I’ve heard about? Ragnar Locker is a family of ransomware, which first came to prominence in early 2020 when it became notorious for hitting large organisations, attempting to extort large amounts of cryptocurrency from its victims. So just your bunch of cybercriminals then? Yes, although on their underground...

There has been a lot of talk about cyber weapons and the cyber dimension of global politics after the NotPetya and WannaCry attacks of 2017 and the Stuxnet worm, first discovered in 2010, when it was used to attack the control mechanisms of Iran’s uranium enriching centrifuges. Professor Ciaran Martin CB, former CEO of the UK National Cyber...

Today’s VERT Alert addresses Microsoft’s March 2022 Security Updates. VERT is actively working on coverage for these vulnerabilities and expects to ship ASPL-989 on Wednesday, March 9th. In-The-Wild & Disclosed CVEs CVE-2022-21990 CVE-2022-21990 describes a code execution vulnerability within Remote Desktop Client. The vulnerability requires that...