Independent – Page 165 – Computer Security Articles

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.

ComputerWorld Independent

October 17, 2018 admin

Microsoft Patch Alert: October’s been a nightmare

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:

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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.

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