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Harpoon Cannon Method: How Scammers Catch Bitcoin Whales

Bitcoin whales are considered to be people who have thousands of coins in their crypto-wallets. As it turned out, there are very few of them. Chainalysis studied the network of the first cryptocurrency and found that only 1600 addresses contain more than 1000 BTC. Probably, several of them belong to Satoshi Nakamoto, a man everyone knows about but...
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How Scammers Use Google for Business Email Compromise

Several companies have made online productivity solutions like G Suite from Google the preferred option for business computing. It’s incredibly convenient and usually inexpensive for anyone from solo operations through large enterprises to replace physical machines and all the maintenance that comes with the territory with options like Gmail and...
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WPA3: What You Need To Know

Earlier this month, the Wi-Fi Alliance issued a press release announcing the availability of WPA3. Built on top of several existing but not widely deployed technologies, WPA3 makes several vast improvements over the security provided by WPA2. Most notably, WPA3 should close the door on offline dictionary-based password cracking attempts by...
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Adidas Alerts Customers of Possible Data Security Incident

Multinational apparel design and manufacturing corporation Adidas alerted customers of an incident that possibly affected the security of their data. On 28 June, Adidas' headquarters located in Herzogenaurach, Germany posted a statement about the incident to its website. The notice revealed that Adidas first learned about the issue two days earlier...
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Restaurant Chain Struck by Payment Card Data Breach

An American restaurant chain revealed it suffered a data breach affecting customers' payment card details at most of its locations. On 22 June, PDQ issued a statement explaining that a malicious attacker obtained unauthorized access to its computer system and acquired the names, credit card numbers,...
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Hydroelectric Dams and ICS Security

A recent report from the office of the U.S. Department of the Interior’s Inspector General indicates that several hydropower dams are vulnerable to internal threats. Specifically, an evaluation was conducted of five hydropower dams operated by the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation (USBR) and categorized as “critical infrastructure.” The USBR is the second...
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Making Continuous HIPAA Compliance Easy with ExpertOps

Healthcare organizations continue to face relentless cyberattacks owing to the immense value placed on patient health information on the dark web. Patient records have almost everything the attacker needs to carry out sophisticated insurance fraud schemes, purchase medical supplies or drugs, or commit other types of fraud including outright identity...
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OAIC Told to Investigate HealthEngine's Sharing Client Data with Lawyers

The Office of the Australian Information Commissioner (OAIC) received instructions to investigate HealthEngine's practice of sharing clients' personal information with lawyers. According to the Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC), a spokesperson for Australia's health minister Gregory Andrew Hunt confirmed that that OAIC and the Australian...
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Securing the Build Environment: A 'Critical' Component of Container Security

As I noted in a previous article, the build environment is a key area on which organizations should focus their container security efforts. Companies don’t usually think of the build environment when it comes to securing their containers. But it’s critical that they do. Attackers can exploit development practices like Continuous Integration (CI) and...
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60,000 Android devices hit by battery-saving app attack

Computer security experts have discovered an unusual attack targeting users of Android devices. As researchers Yonathan Klijnsma and Aaron Inness explain on the RIskIQ blog, the attack starts with a relatively pedestrian fake warning message that popped-up on some Android users' devices as they browsed the web. The warning message is customized to...
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New SamSam Ransomware Version Involves Direct Attacker Involvement

A new variant of the SamSam ransomware family requires direct involvement from attackers in order to execute its malware payload. Uncovered by Malwarebytes, new versions of SamSam require attackers to execute a batch file that's responsible for loading up a .NET runner. They do so by manually entering a password as the file's command-line parameter...
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The FBI's 10 Most-Wanted Black-Hat Hackers – #2

The State of Security's countdown of the FBI’s 10 most-wanted black-hat hackers is nearly over. Just two criminals remain. At number two is Evgeniy Mikhailovich Bogachev, the leader of a cybercrime ring responsible for writing and promulgating Gameover Zeus. On 22 August 2012, a federal grand jury in Nebraska indicted Bogachev on several charges,...
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#TripwireBookClub – Serious Cryptography

Welcome to the second installment of #TripwireBookClub, where we look at Serious Cryptography, published by No Starch Press. This was a book I was interested in because I don’t spend a lot of time digging into crypto these days, and the book seemed like a good dive into the topic. Serious Cryptography: A Practical Introduction to Modern Encryption...
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South Korean Cryptocurrency Exchange Loses $32M in Heist

A South Korean cryptocurrency exchange suffered a heist in which thieves made off with approximately $32 million in stolen assets. On 20 June, Bithumb disclosed the hack in a statement published to its website: We noticed that between last night and today early morning, about 35,000,000,000 KRW worth cryptocurrencies have been stolen. However, this...
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Organizational Cybersecurity: At the Crossroads of Culture & GDPR

GDPR has been in effect since May 25th, 2018. The purpose of the regulation is twofold: to enhance the privacy of an EU citizen’s related information and to strengthen the powers of the data protection institutions and regulators to act against any organization breaches the new rules. But is GDPR alone the panacea for fighting cybercrime and data...
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Women in Information Security: Susan Ballestero

Last time, I had the opportunity of speaking with Avi. Avi’s not a woman, but they’re a badass hacker with a natural intuition for cybersecurity that has been put to excellent use. This time, I had the pleasure of speaking with Susan Ballestero. She has unique experience with working in a security operations center and being an information security...