Items tagged with security
Apple recently posted a security bulletin alerting iCloud users to the presence of "intermittent organized network attacks using insecure certificates to obtain user information," and though the company didn't publicly point a finger at China, several reports suggested that's where they're coming from. In response to...
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In the wake of former NSA contractor Edward Snowden's big reveal on government spying, there's been a concerted effort by companies big and small to try and make our lives truly private. One seemingly promising solution was Anonabox, a little plug-and-play device that routes traffic through Tor to keep our online...
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Brace yourself, Patch Tuesday is coming. This time around, Microsoft released a total of eight security bulletins, three of which are rated Critical and the other five listed as Important. All combined, these eight security updates will patch up 24 Common Vulnerabilities and Exposures (CVEs) in Windows, Office, .NET...
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You may have read in the news that hackers infiltrated Dropbox, stole seven million usernames and passwords, and then posted a portion of those login credentials online. Those reports stem from an anonymous post on Pastebin.com containing what the author claims is a data dump of 400 Dropbox accounts, calling it the...
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Kmart is the latest major retailer to fall prey to a hacker attack resulting in the theft of customer data. The company's IT department discovered a data breach in Kmart's payment data systems and immediately launched a full-scale investigation. Based on initial findings, it's believed that the breach began in early...
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One of the downsides to the news cycle is that no matter how big or hot a story is, something else inevitably comes along. The advent of ISIS and Ebola, combined with the passing of time, have pushed national security concerns out of the limelight -- until, that is, someone at the NSA helps out by reminding us that...
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Microsoft isn't exactly short on cash to throw around, and it is reportedly throwing a bit of it in order to acquire a text analysis startup out of Israel. While the plans have yet to be made official, people familiar with inner talks have made clear that Equivio will soon be a part of Microsoft. The move does make sense on paper; Equivio...
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For the second time in less than a year, AT&T is left with egg on its face after discovering that one of its employees is responsible for a data breach. In this latest instance, an insider sidestepped AT&T's "strict privacy and security guidelines" and was able to view confidential information of around 1,600 AT&T customers.
AT&T sent a
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One of the original big features of Google's Glass was facial recognition, but after catching a ton of flack for it, the company decided last summer to purge the feature on its cutting-edge device. However, while that might be the case, the company is finding it impossible to distance itself from the fact that Glass...
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In the summer, we learned of a severe issue that plagues a countless number of USB devices, tying into an exploit later called "BadUSB". Thanks to the efforts of Karsten Nohl, chief scientist at SR Labs, it was exposed that the firmware on many USB devices could easily be reprogrammed; the level of security on them...
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Passwords, fingerprints, brain scanners, and drive encryption. All great things to have, and all are items that would keep prying eyes from digging too deep into whatever is on your laptop's hard drive. But what if those things weren't enough? What if you were extremely paranoid, and just couldn't think of owning a...
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Late last week, we reported on the FBI's latest beef with Apple, as the company is soon to make encryption standard on its customer's iPhones. Perhaps not surprisingly, it's not just the FBI that's upset, but law enforcement in general. Since the FBI spoke out, some Bay Area police officials have spoken out as well...
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Red Hat has announced that it has issued a complete set of patches to battle the 'Shellshock' Bash bug that it revealed to the world last week. You might notice that I said "patches", and that's because shortly after the initial CVE-2014-6271 was discovered and patched, more vulnerabilities came to the surface. These...
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It's being called a worse threat than Heartbleed, but unlike Heartbleed, "Shellshock" can affect home users just as well as servers. The bug is tied to the Bash Unix shell, one that's pretty much de facto in Linux, and can be found in all Mac OS X releases. While you'll be in a Bash environment whenever you open up a...
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Events of the past year or so have really highlighted the importance of both our security and privacy, but the sad fact of the matter is, the majority of people don't take simple precautions to vastly improve either of those things. Take two-step authentication, for example. It's widely available, but not widely used...
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Attention Home Depot shoppers, your credit and/or debit card information may be compromised. The hardware chain confirmed that a recent cyber attack is estimated to have put the payment card information of around 56 million unique credit and debit cards at risk due to malware that it suspects has been present between...
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Avast, makers of the self-titled free antivirus software (along with paid Internet security suites), has discovered that the "Tinba Banker" Trojan is back in circulation, and this time it's targeting more than two dozen financial institutions in the United States. There are some big names among them, including Bank of...
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Some Steam users are waking up to an unpleasant surprise after falling for a scam on Amazon's Twitch streaming service. According to the security gurus at F-Secure, there's an insidious piece of malware going around that involves a Twitch-bot bombarding the service's chat channels with invites to participate in a weekly raffle. The supposed...
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The Edward Snowden revelations have faded a bit from public view in light of other, more recent political activities, but a new report regarding the NSA and Yahoo has people talking about it once more. Reportedly, the United States government threatened to fine Yahoo a quarter of a million dollars <i>per...
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We reported a week ago today that Home Depot is the latest retailer to be struck by a security breach, and at the time, it seemed certain that the attack was similar to the one cast on Target last year. As it turns out, that happens to be the case, with the point-of-sale malware "BlackPOS" at the root of it all...
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It's seemingly impossible to go any real length of time without learning of some security breach, but more often than not, the number of affected people is arguably minimal. Today, news is breaking of a breach involving Home Depot that's not minimal, and it's not a mere matter of some credentials being leaked, but...
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If it hasn't been made clear enough in recent months that China would love nothing more than to cut down on its reliance to American technology companies, its just-announced decision to create its own operating system should remedy that. At first, this OS will target the desktop, but eventually, it'll make its way to...
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