Part of Ukraine's capital, Kiev, lost power on December 17-18, 2016, due to a digital attack. The operation, which occurred nearly one year after BlackEnergy targeted western Ukrainian power company Prykarpattyaoblenergo with KillDisk malware, pushed networks and Supervisory Control and Data Acquisition (SCADA) systems at utility Ukrenergo "outside...

Southern Oregon University has announced that it is the latest organization to fall victim to a business email compromise (BEC) attack after fraudsters tricked the educational establishment into transferring money into a bank account under their control. According to media reports, the university fell for the scam in late April when it wired $1.9...

I saw yet another security talent shortage article this weekend and thought: it’s just another sad cyb song wrecking my brain. New college graduates and people in career transitions who are struggling to land an entry-level role email me almost daily asking some variation of this question: If there is such a shortage, why are companies refusing to...

As a woman who works in cybersecurity, I think it's very important to encourage more women and non-males to enter our field. I've had the pleasure of speaking to many female and non-male information security professionals. Last time, I spoke to Jennifer Sunshine Steffens, the CEO of IOActive. This time, I speak to Heather Butler. She works in a key...

The recent WannaCry ransomware attack left thousands of businesses in more than 150 countries worldwide reeling, with countless Internet users coerced into paying a Bitcoin ransom in the hope they'd regain access to their critical files. For all the advances that have been made by IT security providers to halt such malicious online activity, the...

Just as GDPR will bring more focus (we hope) to cybersecurity at organizations around the world, the emphasis on protecting personal private information (PII) of EU/UK citizens – no matter where the company resides – will make this information more valuable to cybercriminals. One of the first rules of cybercriminals is they will not miss an...

Businesses now have less than a year to achieve compliance with the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR). As part of their efforts, organizations must look to Article 32 of the Regulation. This section affirms the data controller's and processor's responsibility to leverage "the pseudonymisation and encryption of personal data" to protect...

It doesn't matter if you're a regular computer user, the chairman of Hillary Clinton's presidential campaign , or a notoriously short-fused celebrity chef, we all need to harden the defences of our email accounts. Tabloid readers should know that all too well, having seen plenty of stories over the years of intimate photos stolen from Hollywood...

Attackers are using a copycat version of WannaCry ransomware dubbed "WannaLocker" to target Android users living in China. WannaLocker has been targeting Chinese gaming forms disguised as a plugin for King of Glory, a popular Chinese game. Upon installation of this fake add-on, the threat conceals its icon from the Android app drawer and changes the...

A digital security strategy embodies every organization's efforts to protect its industrial control systems (ICS) against intentional and accidental security threats. Lots of different factors shape this plan. As I discussed in a previous article, organizations should conduct regular industrial digital security assessments to identify what...

The Turla threat actor group is using comments posted on Instagram to obtain command and control (C&C) servers for its watering hole campaigns. For years, Turla has been targeting government officials and diplomats with watering hole techniques. Such attacks involve compromising websites its targets are likely to visit and redirecting them to its C...

Back in June, Robert Hansen posted an interesting write-up[1] on his Smartphone Exec blog about outsourced web development that was returned with multiple embedded PHP backdoors. While this betrayal of trust by a freelance web developer shouldn’t have been surprising, it was, and it prompted Tripwire’s Vulnerability and Exposure Research Team (VERT)...

Japanese authorities arrested a 14-year-old teen on Monday for allegedly creating and spreading ransomware. According to reports, the third-year junior high school student is suspected of combining free encryption programs to create the malicious software. The teenager admitted to creating the malware on Jan. 6 and uploading it to a foreign website,...

With the British election this June, cryptography on the internet is a hot topic. This past March, British Home Secretary Amber Rudd criticized WhatsApp's implementation of encryption in the wake of a terrorist attack: "It is completely unacceptable. There should be no place for terrorists to hide. We need to make sure that organisations like...

May 2017 shaped up to be the busiest ransomware month to date. The bare statistics speak for themselves: a total of 79 new strains came out and 38 existing ones received updates. Extortion-based cybercrime is obviously more prolific and ubiquitous than ever. Last month, the world confronted the unprecedented WannaCry ransomware epidemic employing...

Two Bitcoin mining companies have received orders to each pay a $10 million penalty for conducting a Ponzi scheme orchestrated by their principal. On 2 June 2017, the U.S. District Court for the District of Connecticut issued its judgment against two Connecticut-based companies, GAW Miners, LLC and ZenMiner, LLC, that cooperated with their principal...

“Cyber talent crunch challenges CIOs,” says one headline. “Businesses vulnerable due to talent shortage,” screams another. Intel even published a report revealing, among other things, that 82% of IT professionals confirm there is a shortfall in information security talent. And yet, at every information security conference I attend, I find no...

When a layperson imagines someone who works in cybersecurity, or any area of tech, they probably picture a man. But I'm a female information security professional, and I've had a great time speaking to other women in my industry. Last time, I spoke to Sarah Aoun, who educates journalists and political activists on how to keep their data secure. This...

One of the most exciting aspects of working in technology is change, and security, in particular, requires an agile mind. People who are capable of rapidly acquiring knowledge and developing new skills – the proverbial 'quick studies' – fare best in this landscape. So, what's the best way to learn and grow? Successful on-the-job learning is highly...

In recent posts, The State of Security has interviewed teachers who are helping to bring cyber security education to Canada's schools. We would be remiss, however, if we didn't recognize others' efforts to bring these types of training programs online and to institutions located elsewhere around the world. To cover this broader trend, we'll now...