Independent – Page 166 – Computer Security Articles

Credit to Author: Lucas Mearian| Date: Thu, 25 Oct 2018 14:09:00 -0700

Apple has apparently been able to permanently block de-encryption technology from a mysterious Atlanta-based company whose blackbox device was embraced by government agencies to bypass iPhone passcodes.

Atlanta-based Grayshift is one of two companies that claimed it could thwart Apple iPhone passcode security through brute-force attacks.

The blackbox technology purportedly worked, as Grayshift’s technology was snapped up by regional law enforcement and won contracts with Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and the U.S. Secret Service.

Another vendor, Israel-based Cellebrite, also discovered a way to unlock encrypted iPhones running iOS 11 and marketed its product to law enforcement and private forensics firms around the world. According to a police warrant obtained by Forbes, the U.S. Department of Homeland Security tested the technology.

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ComputerWorld Independent

October 25, 2018 admin

Win10 1803 big bug bash KB 4462933 joins earlier versions, a week late to the party

Credit to Author: Woody Leonhard| Date: Thu, 25 Oct 2018 06:45:00 -0700

Back on Oct. 18, a “C Week” Thursday, Microsoft released hefty rounds of bug fixes for Win10 1607, 1703 and 1709. At the time, I wondered out loud why the latest (unyanked) version of Win10, version 1803, didn’t get a similar dose. Now, on a “D Week” Wednesday, it looks like we’ve seen the deluge.

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ComputerWorld Independent

October 24, 2018 admin

Complete transcript, video of Apple CEO Tim Cook's EU privacy speech

Credit to Author: Jonny Evans| Date: Wed, 24 Oct 2018 03:27:00 -0700

Apple CEO, Tim Cook spoke up for privacy at a conference of European privacy commissioners in Brussels this morning.

‘AI must respect human values’

The themes of this year’s conference is “Debating Ethics: Dignity and Respect in Data Driven Life”, Cook is the first tech CEO to serve as the keynote speaker for the conference and was invited to speak.

He talked about data, put in a bid for a bill of U.S. digital rights, slammed competitors for profiting while unleashing powerfully negative forces, and spoke up for a GDPR-style privacy protection in the U.S.

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Independent Krebs

October 22, 2018 admin

Who Is Agent Tesla?

Credit to Author: BrianKrebs| Date: Mon, 22 Oct 2018 19:55:32 +0000

A powerful, easy-to-use password stealing program known as Agent Tesla has been infecting computers since 2014, but recently this malware strain has seen a surge in popularity — attracting more than 6,300 customers who pay monthly fees to license the software. Although Agent Tesla includes a multitude of features designed to help it remain undetected on host computers, the malware’s apparent creator seems to have done little to hide his real-life identity.

ComputerWorld Independent

October 22, 2018 admin

Wonder if they'll ever tell HIM what's going on…

Credit to Author: Sharky| Date: Mon, 22 Oct 2018 03:00:00 -0700

This IT pilot fish has been supporting a customer remotely through a VPN that’s usually pretty solid — but definitely not always.

“Every now and then it disconnected me randomly,” says fish. “Then it continued disconnecting me repeatedly every 30 to 60 seconds.

“I went through the usual litany of rebooting, trying a different computer, trying a different network, etc. Every time I got the help desk involved, they pulled a bunch of different logs that basically just said ‘disconnected’ without any cause given.

“After several rounds of changes that miraculously fixed it, then suddenly stopped working again, the issue got escalated to a high-enough tier that an answer was forthcoming.

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ComputerWorld Independent

October 22, 2018 admin

How secure are electronic voting machines? | Salted Hash Ep 48

With the midterm elections looming, electronic voting machines are getting increased scrutiny. J.M. Porup, senior writer at CSO, sits in the hosts chair this episode, breaking down the security risk with content producer Juliet Beauchamp.

ComputerWorld Independent

October 19, 2018 admin

Policies and paper trails — our new best friends

Credit to Author: Sharky| Date: Fri, 19 Oct 2018 03:00:00 -0700

This IT pilot fish works with lots of sensitive data — and that means really sensitive, such as child abuse investigations.

“Until a few years ago, I had access to all that data, so I could write ad-hoc reports against it,” says fish. “We ‘systems’ people were given access to everything, so we could troubleshoot application problems for the users.

“Then one day I was called into the CEO’s office. He told me that according to the logs, I did a search against the Child Welfare data for a particular family on a date and time six months earlier — and wanted to know why I did the search.”

As best fish can recall, he was doing the search to troubleshoot a particular report that one caseworker was trying to run. To do that, he used his own workstation to duplicate the steps that the caseworker took to get to the error.

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ComputerWorld Independent

October 18, 2018 admin

How to use the Shodan search engine to secure an enterprise's internet presence

Shodan, a search engine for all ports within the internet, can help enterprises identify and lock down security vulnerabilities. Senior writer J.M. Porup and content producer Juliet Beauchamp talk through the security scenarios.