ComputerWorld – Page 106 – Computer Security Articles

Credit to Author: Woody Leonhard| Date: Wed, 27 Jun 2018 13:23:00 -0700

Microsoft’s patches in June took on some unexpected twists.

Windows 7 owners with older, 2002-era Pentium III machines got their patching privileges revoked without warning or explanation (and a documentation cover-up to boot), but there’s little sympathy in the blogosphere for elderly PCs.

Win10 1803 was declared fully fit for business, a pronouncement that was followed weeks later by fixes for a few glaring, acknowledged bugs — and stony silence for other known problems.

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ComputerWorld Independent

June 22, 2018 admin

Supreme Court: Your digital location is protected by the Constitution

Credit to Author: Lucas Mearian| Date: Fri, 22 Jun 2018 12:15:00 -0700

The U.S. Supreme Court today ruled that access to historical cell-site records of a person’s location based on their mobile phone will require law enforcement to obtain a warrant before searching a person’s historical location records.

This is the first time the high court has ruled on whether a phone subscriber has a legitimate expectation of privacy regarding a telephone company’s records of their cellphone location data, according to Aloke Chakravarty, a partner in the Denver-based law firm of Snell & Wilmer.

“This is a landmark case for privacy, and how the court will deal with emerging technologies going forward,” Chakravarty said via email. “It creates a new lens through which to view a government’s ability to obtain third-party records where a criminal defendant neither possesses the records, doesn’t have a property interest in them, may not even know they exist, and he cannot personally even access them.”

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ComputerWorld Independent

June 22, 2018 admin

Big Win10 1709 patch reinforces twice-a-month patching pace but, oddly, nothing new for 1803

Credit to Author: Woody Leonhard| Date: Fri, 22 Jun 2018 05:36:00 -0700

Microsoft’s Windows 10 patching pace is so fast at this point that one Patch Tuesday doesn’t cover all the bases. Instead, we’re seeing one massive Cumulative Update on Patch Tuesday, and a second — typically large — grab bag of patches later in the month.

You have to wonder what’s happening, though, when Microsoft can deliver its second bundle of patches for 1709, 1703 and 1607 before the second patch for the latest version, 1803, sees light of day.

The Win10 patches

KB 4284822 for Win10 1709

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ComputerWorld Independent

June 22, 2018 admin

Apple pushes privacy theme in Safari for iOS 12, 'Mojave'

Credit to Author: Gregg Keizer| Date: Fri, 22 Jun 2018 03:23:00 -0700

Apple upgrades its Safari browser on macOS and iOS just once a year, making the refresh more strategic than most of its rivals, notably Google, which last year had eight separate opportunities to add features or functionality to Chrome.

The next Safari, which will be bundled with macOS 10.14 ‘Mojave’ and iOS 12, and offered as a separate download for those who stick with macOS High Sierra (10.13) and Sierra (10.12), thus must make its enhancements count.

On the security and privacy side, Safari tries its hardest to build a case. Here are the important ways Apple’s browser – which shed user share on both the desktop and on mobile over the past year – has staked its reputation for the next 12 months.

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ComputerWorld Independent

June 21, 2018 admin

Throwback Thursday: Get the picture?

Credit to Author: Sharky| Date: Thu, 21 Jun 2018 03:00:00 -0700

IT director pilot fish at a daily newspaper is reworking the company’s entire network. Why? “There is no security,” sighs fish. “None, with about 90 users in a peer-to-peer Mac and PC environment.”

One night he gets a call from an editor: One of the applications isn’t working. It’s the one that lets a reporter find a photo on a wire service’s website and save it to a folder. The app then moves the folder to a holding folder on another machine, where yet another machine can grab it and put it into the newspaper’s production process.

It takes a couple hours of troubleshooting, but fish tracks down the problem. That holding folder? The one that’s actually named “Do not touch, do not delete”?

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ComputerWorld Independent

June 19, 2018 admin

Getting hands-on with industrial control system setups at RSA | Salted Hash Ep 31

Host Steve Ragan is joined on the RSA 2018 show floor by Bryson Bort, CEO and founder of SCYTHE, to talk about the ICS Village, where attendees can learn how to better defend industrial equipment through hands-on access to the equipment.

ComputerWorld Independent

June 14, 2018 admin

Apple wins praise for adding 'USB Restricted Mode' to secure iPhones

Credit to Author: Lucas Mearian| Date: Thu, 14 Jun 2018 12:43:00 -0700

Apple confirmed today it will close a security hole that has allowed law enforcement officials, working with forensic companies, to break into iPhones to retrieve data related to criminal investigations.

In the upcoming release of iOS 12, Apple will change default settings on iPhones to shutter access to the USB port when the phone has not been unlocked for one hour. In its beta release of iOS 11.3, Apple introduced the feature – known as USB Restricted Mode – but cut it from iOS 11.3 before that version was released publicly.

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ComputerWorld Independent

June 14, 2018 admin

Which Android phones get regular security updates? Here's a hint

Credit to Author: JR Raphael| Date: Thu, 14 Jun 2018 08:48:00 -0700

Here in the land o’ Android, wrapping your noggin around the subject of software updates isn’t always easy to do.

We’ve got regular OS updates, sure — and info on the various phone-makers’ performance in that domain is readily available, if you (a) know where to find it and (b) are even aware that you should be looking for such data in the first place. But still, that’s only one piece of the puzzle.

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