In ages past, invading armies would poison the water source – usually a well – of a city in order to reduce the fighting capability of the enemy or to force the populace of a city under siege to surrender. This method was usually successful because an invader could have a devastating effect on a very large population with minimal yet targeted effort...

Plenty of people these days are prepared to augment their bodies with face furniture, piercings, rings and tattoos. But would you implant a chip in your hand to show how easy it is to exploit an Android phone? That's what former US navy petty officer Seth Wahle did, in an attempt to demonstrate how business networks could be compromised. Wahle took...

Continuous monitoring is poised to do for information security what cloud deployment did for global productivity. Continuous monitoring not only has a role to play in preventing large-scale data breaches but it can also help compliance-sensitive organizations save money by facilitating long-term compliance continuity and reducing annual audit...

Earlier this month, Lastline, a security firm that focuses on real-time analysis of advanced malware, issued a new report on the evolving landscape of evasive malware. Co-founder and chief scientist at Lastline Christopher Kruegel published the report as part of his presentation for RSA Conference 2015 entitled, “Evasive Malware Exposed and...

General Keith Alexander, the former head of the National Security Agency (NSA), is concerned that the United States’ energy infrastructure is vulnerable to targeted attacks launched by sophisticated actors. “The greatest risk is a catastrophic attack on the energy infrastructure. We are not prepared for that,” he said. According to General...

This might be hard to believe, but it is true: 59 percent of data breaches are happening not because of some smart hacker who wants to do harm to your company but because of your own employees. In order to stop these incidents, you have to focus on two things (other than investing in new technology): set your internal processes and procedures...

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...

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...

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. ...

It could be said that the proliferation of automation is the defining characteristic of the last 100 years. In almost every area of our lives, we’ve found a way to leverage technology to increase our efficiency, freeing us up for higher-order tasks… The things we like to do, the things that are hard, the things we’re good at. A great example of this...

Earlier this month, an explosion at a power station in Maryland caused outages at the White House, the Capital, and the State Department. The service interruption, which affected between 10,000 and 30,000 people, was caused by a 230-kilovolt transmission conductor that broke free from its support structure, according to NBC News. As a result, the...

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...

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...

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...

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 a...

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...

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...

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...

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....

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...