Triple your privacy with a Chromebook and two VPNs

Credit to Author: Michael Horowitz| Date: Fri, 31 Mar 2017 15:27:00 -0700

Now that Republicans in Congress have sold us out, everyone is writing about technical ways to prevent your Internet Service Provider (ISP) from watching your on-line activity. The FBI and the British Government complain about bad guys going dark, but now the rest of us have to do so too, if we want any shred of privacy.

The generic, knee-jerk reaction is to use either a VPN or Tor. Both offer encryption that stealths you to your ISP. I wrote about them back in September (A Defensive Computing term paper on privacy: VPNs, Tor and VPN routers) but here I’m taking things a bit further. 

To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Read more

Latest WikiLeaks dump exposes CIA methods to mask malware

Credit to Author: Michael Kan| Date: Fri, 31 Mar 2017 14:51:00 -0700

WikiLeaks may have dealt another blow to the CIA’s hacking operations by releasing files that allegedly show how the agency was masking its malware attacks.

On Friday, the site dumped the source code to the Marble Framework, a set of anti-forensic tools that WikiLeaks claims the CIA used last year.

The files do appear to show “obfuscation techniques” that can hide CIA-developed malicious coding from detection, said Jake Williams, a security researcher at Rendition InfoSec, who has been examining the files.

Every hacker, from the government-sponsored ones to amateurs, will use their own obfuscation techniques when developing malware, he said.

To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Read more

Channel Focus: Solving Security’s Growing Pains with Scalability

Credit to Author: Amy Thompson| Date: Fri, 31 Mar 2017 14:14:13 -0700

Going wireless with a customer’s network and cloud was once a leap. Now it’s simply the next step. According to Cisco’s latest Global Cloud Index, 92% of workloads will be processed in cloud data centers by 2020, and research from IDG shows worldwide spending on public cloud service will grow to more than $141B by 2019. As the use of the cloud grows, however, the potential attack surface becomes substantially larger and organizations are exposed to new risks. But that’s not all. While technology is evolving, so are customer…

Read more

Tech to help protect Final Four crowds

Credit to Author: Matt Hamblen| Date: Fri, 31 Mar 2017 13:06:00 -0700

At this weekend’s Final Four college basketball tournament, sophisticated technology is in place to help public safety officials monitor crowds, vehicles, social networks and unauthorized drones from a command center at an undisclosed location in downtown Phoenix.

An array of thousands of cameras and other sensors are already in place across public venues and roadways in the Phoenix area. The games will take take place Saturday night and Monday night at the University of Phoenix Stadium in suburban Glendale, Ariz., nine miles from downtown.

In the stadium alone, more than 700 video cameras are likely to be used to monitor vendors and crowds. Thousands more video cameras and motions sensors are ready to watch vehicles on highways and crowds at 20 Final Four special events, at the four hotels where college teams are lodging and in parking areas.

To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Read more

Google's Android hacking contest fails to attract exploits

Credit to Author: Lucian Constantin| Date: Fri, 31 Mar 2017 11:32:00 -0700

Six months ago, Google offered to pay $200,000 to any researcher who could remotely hack into an Android device by knowing only the victim’s phone number and email address. No one stepped up to the challenge.

While that might sound like good news and a testament to the mobile operating system’s strong security, that’s likely not the reason why the company’s Project Zero Prize contest attracted so little interest. From the start, people pointed out that $200,000 was too low a prize for a remote exploit chain that wouldn’t rely on user interaction.

“If one could do this, the exploit could be sold to other companies or entities for a much higher price,” one user responded to the original contest announcement in September.

To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Read more

Why I Always Tug on the ATM

Credit to Author: BrianKrebs| Date: Fri, 31 Mar 2017 16:33:24 +0000

Once you understand how easy and common it is for thieves to attach “skimming” devices to ATMs and other machines that accept debit and credit cards, it’s difficult not to closely inspect and even tug on the machines before using them. Several readers who are in the habit of doing just that recently shared images of skimmers they discovered after gently pulling on various parts of a cash machine they were about to use.

Read more