Independent – Page 148 – Computer Security Articles

Credit to Author: BrianKrebs| Date: Mon, 18 Feb 2019 13:51:01 +0000

The U.S. government — along with a number of leading security companies — recently warned about a series of highly complex and widespread attacks that allowed suspected Iranian hackers to siphon huge volumes of email passwords and other sensitive data from multiple governments and private companies. But to date, the specifics of exactly how that attack went down and who was hit have remained shrouded in secrecy. This post seeks to document the extent of those attacks, and traces the origins of this overwhelmingly successful cyber espionage campaign back to a cascading series of breaches at key Internet infrastructure providers.

ComputerWorld Independent

February 15, 2019 admin

CIOs, you’re doing blockchain wrong

Credit to Author: Lucas Mearian| Date: Fri, 15 Feb 2019 03:00:00 -0800

IT leaders who’ve taken the plunge into blockchain are mainly deploying it in proofs-of-concept tests to address the same problems a conventional database could handle, according to research firm Gartner.

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(Insider Story)

ComputerWorld Independent

February 14, 2019 admin

Mozilla to harden Firefox defenses with site isolation, a la Chrome

Credit to Author: Gregg Keizer| Date: Thu, 14 Feb 2019 11:13:00 -0800

Mozilla plans to boost Firefox’s defensive skills by mimicking the “Site Isolation” technology introduced to Google’s Chrome last year.

Dubbed “Project Fission,” the effort will more granularly separate sites and their individual components than is currently the case in Firefox. The goal: Isolate malicious sites and attack code so individual sites cannot wreak havoc in the browser at large, or pillage the browser, the device or the device’s memory of critical information, such as authentication credentials and encryption keys.

“We aim to build a browser which isn’t just secure against known security vulnerabilities, but also has layers of built-in defense against potential future vulnerabilities,” Nika Layzel, the project tech lead of the Fission team, wrote in a post last week to a Firefox development mailing list. “To accomplish this, we need to revamp the architecture of Firefox and support full Site Isolation.” Layzel also published the note as the first newsletter from the Fission engineering group.

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ComputerWorld Independent

February 14, 2019 admin

How to use your Mac safely in public places

Credit to Author: Jonny Evans| Date: Thu, 14 Feb 2019 10:59:00 -0800

Coffee shops across the planet are populated by earnest Apple Mac-wielding remote and/or freelance workers – but are they taking steps to protect themselves in a public place? Follow this checklist to make sure you are protected.

12 ways to use your Mac safely in public places

1. Worry about Wi-Fi

Public Wi-Fi networks are dangerous places, not least because you don’t really know how the network is set up or who else is sitting on the same network with you.

Criminals are known to set up legitimate-seeming hotspots on which their software lurks, attempting to take data (including your bank and intranet passcodes) in transit. Please beware:

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ComputerWorld Independent

February 14, 2019 admin

All about Android upgrades (and why they're late) | TECH(talk)

Credit to Author: Ken Mingis| Date: Thu, 14 Feb 2019 03:00:00 -0800

It’s not exactly news that Android upgrades almost always take a lo-o-o-o-o-ng time to roll out to most users. As in months. Often, many months. Sometimes more than a year.

Sometimes never.

(There is an exception: Google delivers new versions of Android to its Pixel line right away, and did just that with the release of Android 9.0 (Pie) last fall.)

It’s now been six months since Pie arrived, which means it’s time for Computerworld blogger JR Raphael’s comprehensive look at how device-makers are doing when it comes to upgrades.

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Independent Krebs

February 13, 2019 admin

Bomb Threat Hoaxer Exposed by Hacked Gaming Site

Credit to Author: BrianKrebs| Date: Thu, 14 Feb 2019 05:37:06 +0000

Federal authorities this week arrested a North Carolina man who allegedly ran with a group of online hooligans that attacked Web sites (including this one), took requests on Twitter to call in bomb threats to thousands of schools, and tried to frame various online gaming sites as the culprits. In an ironic twist, the accused — who had fairly well separated his real life identity from his online personas — appears to have been caught after a gaming Web site he frequented got hacked.

ComputerWorld Independent

February 13, 2019 admin

With latest mobile security hole, could we at least focus on the right things?

Credit to Author: Evan Schuman| Date: Wed, 13 Feb 2019 03:00:00 -0800

A bunch of apps from some major players — including Expedia, Hollister, Air Canada, Abercrombie & Fitch, Hotels.com and Singapore Airlines — recently came to grief because of a security/privacy hole in a third-party analytics app they all used, according to a report from TechCrunch. The incident exposed extremely sensitive customer information including payment card and password data shared in clear text. That sort of thing shouldn’t be happening — and yet everyone seems focused on the wrong lesson.

The analytics app, called Glassbox, captures all information from a user’s interaction with the app, including keystrokes entered and spots on the touchscreen the user touched or clicked. It also may include some screen captures. In every case, the apps give insufficient privacy disclosures to app users, or none at all. And, as already mentioned, it shares sensitive data in clear text.

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Independent Krebs

February 12, 2019 admin

Patch Tuesday, February 2019 Edition

Credit to Author: BrianKrebs| Date: Wed, 13 Feb 2019 03:31:36 +0000

Microsoft on Tuesday issued a bevy of patches to correct at least 70 distinct security vulnerabilities in Windows and software designed to interact with various flavors of the operating system. This month’s patch batch tackles some notable threats to enterprises — including multiple flaws that were publicly disclosed prior to Patch Tuesday. It also bundles fixes to quash threats relevant to end users, including critical updates for Adobe Flash Player and Microsoft Office, as well as a zero-day bug in Internet Explorer.