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Month: March 2017

ComputerWorldIndependent
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UK follows U.S. ban of electronic devices in cabins on some flights

Credit to Author: Michael Kan| Date: Tue, 21 Mar 2017 11:20:00 -0700

The U.K. is joining the U.S. in its ban restricting passengers from bringing some electronic devices onto flights from the Middle East.

Phones, laptops, and tablets that are larger than 16 cm (6.3 inches) in length and wider than 9.3 cm will no longer be allowed in the cabin on select flights coming from several Middle Eastern countries, the U.K.’s department of transportation said on Tuesday. 

The U.K. said it was in “close contact” with the U.S. since the country announced its own ban on Monday.  However, the U.K. made no mention of any specific risk, only that it faces “evolving” terrorism threats. 

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IndependentKrebs
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Student Aid Tool Held Key for Tax Fraudsters

Credit to Author: BrianKrebs| Date: Tue, 21 Mar 2017 19:07:14 +0000

Citing concerns over criminal activity and fraud, the U.S. Internal Revenue Service (IRS) has disabled an automated tool on its Web site that was used to help students and their families apply for federal financial aid. The removal of the tool has created unexpected hurdles for many families hoping to qualify for financial aid, but the action also eliminated a key source of data that fraudsters could use to conduct tax refund fraud. Last week, the IRS and the Department of Education said in a joint statement that they were temporarily shutting down the IRS’s Data Retrieval Tool. The service was designed to make it easier to complete the Education Department’s Free Application for Federal Student Aid (FAFSA) — a lengthy form that serves as the starting point for students seeking federal financial assistance to pay for college or career school.

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ComputerWorldIndependent
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Flaws in Moodle CMS put thousands of e-learning websites at risk

Credit to Author: Lucian Constantin| Date: Tue, 21 Mar 2017 10:48:00 -0700

Organizations that use the popular Moodle learning management system should deploy the latest patches as soon as possible because they fix vulnerabilities that could allow attackers to take over web servers.

Moodle is an open source platform used by schools, universities, and other organizations to set up websites with interactive online courses. It’s used by more than 78,000 e-learning websites from 234 countries that together have more than 100 million users.

A week ago the Moodle developers released updates for the still supported branches of the platform: 3.2.2, 3.1.5, 3.0.9 and 2.7.19. The release notes mentioned that “a number of security related issues were resolved,” but didn’t provide any additional details about their nature or impact.

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FortinetSecurity
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FortiGuard Labs Discovers Multiple Vulnerabilities in Microsoft Word

Credit to Author: Tony Loi| Date: Tue, 21 Mar 2017 09:31:57 -0700

Over the last few months we discovered and reported multiple vulnerabilities found in different versions of Microsoft Word. These vulnerabilities were patched in the January (MS17-002) and March (MS17-014) security updates. These patches are rated as important, and as always, we suggest users update Microsoft Office as soon as possible.

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ComputerWorldIndependent
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Cisco issues critical warning after CIA WikiLeaks dump bares IOS security weakness

Credit to Author: Michael Cooney| Date: Tue, 21 Mar 2017 08:50:00 -0700

A vulnerability in Cisco’s widely deployed IOS software that was disclosed in the recent WikiLeaks dump of CIA exploits has triggered the company to release a critical warning for its Catalyst networking customers.

+More on Cisco Security on Network World: Cisco security advisory dump finds 20 warnings, 2 critical+

The vulnerability — which could let an attacker cause a reload of an affected device or remotely execute code and take over a device — affects more than 300 models of Cisco Catalyst switches from the model 2350-48TD-S Switch to the Cisco SM-X Layer 2/3 EtherSwitch Service Module.

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FortinetSecurity
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A Closer Look at the Rapid Evolution of EHR Security

Credit to Author: Susan Biddle| Date: Tue, 21 Mar 2017 08:21:27 -0700

More than any other database containing sensitive information for a large quantity of people, electronic health records (EHRs) are an especially attractive target for hackers. The patient data they hold can be used for financial gain, as recent reports show that stolen healthcare databases are being sold on the deep web for as much as US$500,000. But we’ve also seen a number of instances where large data breaches have occurred at the hands of state actors looking to collect data for espionage purposes. No matter the reasoning behind…

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