Hacking

Is It Time to Trash Flash?

On Monday, Adobe Flash Player users were hit by a zero-day flaw for the third time in two weeks. The company issued a security advisory for the vulnerability, which it dubbed CVE-2015-0313. The flaw exists in Flash Player 16.0.0.296 and earlier versions on Windows and Macintosh platforms. Successful...

SPOTLIGHT ON SECURITY

POS Terminals Rich Vein for Gold-Digging Hackers

Hackers are like gold miners. Once they find a rich vein for their malware, they mine it until it's dry. Point-of-sale terminals are such a vein. Following the success of the Target breach in 2013, the hacker underground was quick to rush more POS malware to market. "Attackers have recognized that t...

SPOTLIGHT ON SECURITY

Businesses Waste Big Bucks Fighting Phantom Cyberattacks

Businesses spend an average of $1.27 million a year chasing cyberthreats that turn out to be dead ends. That is one of the findings in a report released last week on the cost of containing malware. In a typical week, an organization can receive nearly 17,000 malware alerts, although only 19 percent ...

The United States National Security Agency reportedly knew in advance that North Korea was about to hack into Sony's systems. The NSA apparently penetrated North Korea's network through several vectors, including Chinese networks used to connect with the rest of the world and hacker connections in M...

SPOTLIGHT ON SECURITY

Sony Sortie’s Smoking Gun Still Missing

Recent research from security firm Cloudmark has raised doubt about the purported connection between North Korea and last November's intrusion on Sony Pictures Entertainment's computer networks. The FBI last week continued to press its case that North Korea was behind the cyberattack, pointing to an...

FBI Director James Comey has "very high confidence" that North Korea was behind last November's cyberattack on Sony, he said at a cybersecurity forum held last week at Fordham University. The attack resulted in large amounts of intellectual property, confidential communications and employee data bei...

SPOTLIGHT ON SECURITY

Fingerprint Theft Just a Shutter Click Away

Ever since smartphone makers started incorporating fingerprint scanners as a means of unlocking mobile phones, the Chaos Computer Club has attacked the technology with vigor. Not long after Apple added Touch ID to its iPhones, the German hackers demonstrated how to lift prints from a surface and cre...

Hacker Jan Krissler, aka "Starbug," this weekend told attendees at the 31st Chaos Computer Club convention in Hamburg, Germany, that he had replicated the fingerprints of German Defense Minister Ursula von der Leven using a standard photo camera and commercially available software from VeriFinger. K...

Vulnerabilities in Signaling System 7, telephony signaling protocols used by carriers worldwide, allow third parties to listen to people's cellphone calls and intercept text messages despite encryption, The Washington Post reported last week. German cybersecurity researchers Tobias Engel of Sternrau...

OPINION

The Untold Stories of 2014

It is time to look back at 2014, so I'll focus here on a series of stories I thought were interesting but didn't seem to catch much or any real air. Some, like what is really behind Sony's decision to pull The Interview still might take off. Hadoop analytics is one of the most powerful platforms to ...

US Mulls Response to Sony Hack

Department of Homeland Security Secretary Jeh Johnson on Thursday said the United States "is actively considering a range of options" to take in response to the Sony hack. The hack is "very serious," Johnson said, though he refused to label it as a terrorist attack. Although there has been widesprea...

The now-notoriously controversial action comedy The Interview, which was expected to deliver profits of $90-$95 million for Sony, may have become a financial black hole. The movie's Thursday premiere in New York has been cancelled, and several movie theater chains have scrapped plans to screen it, f...

On behalf of Sony Pictures Entertainment, high-powered attorney David Boies sent a letter to several news outlets Sunday demanding that they refrain from publishing stories based on material hackers recently stole from the company and that they destroy any of the pilfered data in their possession. T...

SPOTLIGHT ON SECURITY

No Respite for Sony

Since the hacker group calling itself "Guardians of Peace" announced its attack on Sony Pictures Entertainment late last month, things have gone downhill for the company. After confidential documents were leaked to the Internet over several days, a denouement of sorts was reached last week, when a s...

The United States National Security Agency, which is known for monitoring landline, Web and cellphone communications worldwide, reportedly also targets wireless carriers. Documents released by whistle-blower Edward Snowden show the NSA has monitored more than 1,200 email accounts associated with maj...

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