Independent – Page 167 – Computer Security Articles

Credit to Author: Woody Leonhard| Date: Wed, 17 Oct 2018 10:30:00 -0700

This month’s bad patches made headlines. Lots of headlines. For good reason.

You have my sympathy if you clicked “Check for updates” and got all of the files in your Documents and Photos folders deleted. Even if you didn’t become a “seeker” (didn’t manually check for updates) your month may have been filled with blue screens, odd chicken-and-egg errors, and destroyed audio drivers — and Edge and your UWP (“Metro” Store) apps might have been kicked off the internet.

You didn’t need to lift a finger.

Worst Windows 10 rollout ever

Hard to believe that Windows 10 version rollouts could get any worse, but this month hit the bottom of a nearly bottomless barrel. Some folks who clicked “Check for updates” wound up with a brand spanking new copy of Win10 version 1809 — and all of the files in their Documents, Pictures, Music, Videos and other folders disappeared. I have a series of articles on that topic, arranged chronologically:

To read this article in full, please click here

ComputerWorld Independent

October 16, 2018 admin

Big browsers to pull support plug for TLS 1.0 and 1.1 encryption protocols in early '20

Credit to Author: Gregg Keizer| Date: Tue, 16 Oct 2018 04:06:00 -0700

The makers of the four biggest browsers all said Monday that their applications will drop support for the TLS (Transport Layer Security) 1.0 and 1.1 encryption protocols in early 2020.

“In March of 2020, Firefox will disable support for TLS 1.0 and TLS 1.1,” wrote Martin Thomson, principal engineer at Mozilla, in a post to a company blog.

Other browser developers, including Apple (Safari), Google (Chrome) and Microsoft (Edge and Internet Explorer) issued similar notices. All pegged early 2020 as the target for disabling support.

To read this article in full, please click here

ComputerWorld Independent

October 16, 2018 admin

Stats make iOS a hard OS to ignore

Credit to Author: Evan Schuman| Date: Tue, 16 Oct 2018 03:00:00 -0700

The latest version of Apple’s mobile operating system — iOS 12 — was released just a few weeks ago, and yet it’s already installed on 53% of relatively newer iPhones (introduced since September 2014) and 50% of all iPhones. Bottom line: It’s the fastest acceptance of any Apple OS.

This is more than a minimally interesting statistic. It illustrates the key difference between Apple mobile devices and Android mobile devices: Although there are more Android users on the globe, Apple’s users are much more of a community. That means many things from an Apple marketing perspective, but for IT, it means far greater security.

To read this article in full, please click here

ComputerWorld Independent

October 15, 2018 admin

Talking DerbyCon, spy chip whispers and Google's data breach | Salted Hash Ep 47

Steve Ragan and J.M. Porup catch up post-DerbyCon conference to discuss psychological issues in the infosec community, supply chain security and whether it's time to make China the boogeyman again, as well as Google's recent data breach.

Independent Securiteam

October 14, 2018 admin

SSD Advisory – Firefox JavaScript Type Confusion RCE

Credit to Author: SSD / Ori Nimron| Date: Sun, 14 Oct 2018 12:00:10 +0000

Vulnerabilities Summary A vulnerability in register allocation in JavaScript can lead to type confusion, allowing for an arbitrary read and write, which leads to remote code execution inside the sandboxed content process when triggered. Vendor Response The reported security vulnerability was fixed in Firefox 62.0.3 and Firefox ESR 60.2.2. CVE CVE-2018-12386 Credit Independent security researchers, … Continue reading SSD Advisory – Firefox JavaScript Type Confusion RCE

Independent Krebs

October 12, 2018 admin

Supply Chain Security 101: An Expert’s View

Credit to Author: BrianKrebs| Date: Sat, 13 Oct 2018 01:03:12 +0000

Earlier this month I spoke at a cybersecurity conference in Albany, N.Y. alongside Tony Sager, senior vice president and chief evangelist at the Center for Internet Security and a former bug hunter at the U.S. National Security Agency. We talked at length about many issues, including supply chain security, and I asked Sager whether he’d heard anything about rumors that Supermicro — a high tech firm in San Jose, Calif. — had allegedly inserted hardware backdoors in technology sold to a number of American companies.