Independent – Page 53 – Computer Security Articles

Protecting your online accounts is more important now than ever — and in spite of some recent high-profile hacks, relying on a third-party password manager is still the easiest and most effective way to ensure your most important credentials remain secure.

Why? It’s simple: Reusing passwords puts you at a heightened risk for hacking. If someone discovers your password at just one website — via any sort of breach, be it large-scale or targeted — they can then use that same password to crack into your accounts at countless other places. It happens all the time.

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Independent Krebs

February 9, 2023 admin

U.S., U.K. Sanction 7 Men Tied to Trickbot Hacking Group

Credit to Author: BrianKrebs| Date: Thu, 09 Feb 2023 20:23:58 +0000

Authorities in the United States and United Kingdom today levied financial sanctions against seven men accused of operating “Trickbot,” a cybercrime-as-a-service platform based in Russia that has enabled countless ransomware attacks and bank account takeovers since its debut in 2016. The U.S. Department of the Treasury says the Trickbot group is associated with Russian intelligence services, and that this alliance led to the targeting of many U.S. companies and government entities.

Independent Krebs

February 7, 2023 admin

KrebsOnSecurity in Upcoming Hulu Series on Ashley Madison Breach

Credit to Author: BrianKrebs| Date: Tue, 07 Feb 2023 22:16:16 +0000

KrebsOnSecurity will likely have a decent amount of screen time in an upcoming Hulu documentary series about the 2015 megabreach at marital infidelity site Ashley Madison. While I can’t predict what the producers will do with the video interviews we shot, it’s fair to say the series will explore tantalizing new clues as to who may have been responsible for the attack.

ComputerWorld Independent

February 7, 2023 admin

Qualys now supports macOS in its cloud security tools

Qualys, sometimes described as one of the pioneering SaaS vendors, has bent with the times to begin offering Mac support within its cloud security offering.

A pioneer in SaaS goes Mac

Since it launched in 1999, Qualys has traditionally offered its services to PCs, mobile devices, and cloud-native applications. The company’s original 2000 product, QualysGuard, was distinguished as one of the first to market vulnerability management tools.

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Independent Krebs

February 5, 2023 admin

Finland’s Most-Wanted Hacker Nabbed in France

Credit to Author: BrianKrebs| Date: Sun, 05 Feb 2023 16:14:13 +0000

Julius “Zeekill” Kivimäki, a 25-year-old Finnish man charged with extorting a local online psychotherapy practice and leaking therapy notes for more than 22,000 patients online, was arrested this week in France. A notorious hacker convicted of perpetrating tens of thousands of cybercrimes, Kivimäki had been in hiding since October 2022, when he failed to show up in court and Finland issued an international warrant for his arrest.

ComputerWorld Independent

February 3, 2023 admin

How to protect your privacy in Windows 11

From the moment Microsoft released Windows 10 in 2015, the new OS came under fire for the amount of private information it gathered from users by default. Over the years, the vendor gradually introduced changes to Windows 10 that alleviated some of those privacy concerns, but some remain — and most of those apply to Windows 11 as well.

Whether you think Windows 11 crosses the privacy line or just want to safeguard as much of your personal life as possible, we’re here to help. Here’s how to protect your privacy in just a few minutes.

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ComputerWorld Independent

February 2, 2023 admin

ACLU, public defenders push back against Google giving police your mobile data

The ACLU and eight federal public defenders are asking the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals to exclude mobile device location data obtained from Google via a so-called geofence warrant that helped law enforcement catch a bank robbery suspect.

The first geofence civil rights case to reach a federal court of appeals raises serious Fourth Amendment concerns against unreasonable search and seizure related to the location and personal information of mobile device users.

Geofence warrants have primarily been issued for Google to hand over data about every cell phone or other mobile device within a specific geographical region and timeframe. The problem: location data on every person carrying a mobile device in that area is scooped up in a wide net and their data is then handed over en masse to law enforcement.

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ComputerWorld Independent

February 1, 2023 admin

US agency calls Apple, Google App Stores 'harmful'

Apple appears to have been given yet another set of reasons to expand its legal team as the US National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA) calls for antitrust action to force Apple and Google to make big changes to their mobile app store business models.

What’s the problem?

NTIA is the principal advisor on telecommunications and Internet policy to the Biden administration. It argues that the way things are run at present may be “harmful,” arguing that Google’s and Apple’s “gatekeeper” positions may harm consumers by raising prices and reducing innovation.

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