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Computer Criminals Brought to Justice – Austin Alcala

Last time, we explored the story of Timothy Lance Lai, at one time a private tutor who was arrested for providing his former students with a keylogger, which they in turn used to change their grades. We now report on the story of Austin Alcala, a teenage hacker who infiltrated various American corporations and the United States military as a member...
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Lessons Learned from RSA Conference 2015

After an action-packed week at RSA, we’re happy to say this year’s show didn’t disappoint, as it encouraged the information security community to “challenge today’s security thinking.” We saw consistent themes across many presentation topics, as well as vendors’ messaging, including one of the biggest issues seen in the recently released Verizon...
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Tesla's DNS Hacked Leading to Website and Twitter Hijacks

On Saturday, the website and Twitter account of electric vehicle maker Tesla was compromised briefly, as well as CEO Elon Musk's Twitter account. The website was defaced after the DNS for TeslaMotors.com was redirected to another server hosting an image with various messages and faces of a few people. ...
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Facebook Stores “Non-Posts” and Sends Unpublished Text to Its Servers

According to a tech consultant, Facebook collects all writing that is entered into a text box and sends it to its servers regardless of whether a user chooses to publish it. In a post published on his blog, Príomh Ó hÚigínn explains that Facebook sends an HTML post request containing the text a user writes. He observed this network traffic using...
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How to crash any iPhone or iPad within WiFi range

Security researchers presenting at this week's RSA Conference in San Francisco, have uncovered a whole new compelling reason to switch off your phone. Skycure's Yair Amit and Adi Sharabani have demonstrated a startling vulnerability in iOS that can allow malicious hackers to crash any iOS device within range of a WiFi hotspot. And it doesn't even...
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Sony Hackers Used Phishing Emails to Breach Company Networks

A security researcher has found that hackers used phishing emails to penetrate Sony Picture Entertainment’s computer networks last fall. Stuart McClure, CEO of computer security firm Cylance, says he analyzed a downloaded database of Sony emails and in the process discovered a pattern of phishing attempts. “We started to realize that there was...
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Tripwire VERT’s CTF - Level 1

Last month, I participated in the Tripwire VERT cybersecurity Capture the Flag contest organized for infosec students with some awesome prizes: BSides Las Vegas & DEF CON 23 travel packages and more… I’m in! Even though I didn’t get that far, it was a great learning experience! The CTF started on March 27 when I got an email from the organizers with...
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Interview with Steven Fox: Privacy and Its Challenges for the Future

We at Tripwire are very excited that RSA Conference 2015 is finally upon us. Not only are we looking forward to all of the attendees who will join us at Booth 3301 over the course of RSA, but we are also eager to hear all of the keynote speakers. Acknowledging this excitement, we decided to sit down with Steven Fox, one of the conference’s keynote...
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U.S. Federal Cyber Security Workforce Is Inadequate, Says Report

A report published by the Partnership for Public Service and Booz Allen Hamilton reveals that an insufficient cyber security workforce is hampering the United States’ efforts to properly defend its networks. According to the report, non-competitive pay and strict hiring practices are aggravated by a lack of pipelines that value computer security...
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How to Protect Yourself From Caller ID Spoofing

Have you ever received unwanted calls from auto-dialers and telemarketers at a time when you did not want to be called? Has an auto-dialer or telemarketer ever tried to scam you? Have you noticed that the numbers of certain incoming calls don’t seem accurate? If you have answered yes to any of these questions, you might have seen a spoofed caller ID...
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Here's What You Missed At BSidesSF 2015 - Day 1

It’s that time of year, again, when the brightest minds in the business gather to talk all things cyber in the city of San Francisco. To start off the busy week ahead, BSidesSF kicked off day one with some great speakers and intriguing presentations. For those of you that didn’t make it out, here’s a short and sweet recap of some of today’s talks....
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The Internet of Things: Why Security Needs to Be the Future of IoT

The Internet of Things (IoT) is a buzzword that many use to describe a not-so-distant reality in which devices and machines talk to one another. To some, however, the potential of IoT extends well beyond the mere notion of a “smart,” interconnected world. Included in this group of observers is Jeremy Rifkin, an author, political advisor and social...
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Killing the Kill Chain: Disrupting the Cyber Attack Progression

If, on Tuesday, you find yourself in San Francisco, with access to RSA, then I know how you should spend your time from 1PM PST. Alex Cox, Ken Westin, and I will be introducing our panel: Killing the Kill Chain: Disrupting the Cyber Attack Progression. Instead of talking about how you can preemptively stop an attack, we plan to show you. With Ken...
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Zero Day Dark Web Market 'TheRealDeal' Selling MS15-034 Exploit

A new dark web market has appeared, focused on the selling of 0-day exploit code. The market is called "TheRealDeal Market," and although still in its infancy, there are already a few exploits listed. One exploit claims to target the recent MS15-034 Microsoft IIS Remote Code Execution vulnerability and comes with reverse shell and research...
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Federating the AWS CLI

Modern organizations that depend on SaaS have been increasingly adopting Identity Providers or single sign-ons (SSOs) in order to federate authentication back to home directory services. Most SSOs support SAML or OAuth, and a growing number of SaaS companies are jumping on board to eliminate the liability of storing customer password hashes....