Independent – Page 209 – Computer Security Articles

Credit to Author: Gregg Keizer| Date: Wed, 14 Feb 2018 04:39:00 -0800

Microsoft plans to extend support for its Windows Defender ATP service to devices running older operating systems, including Windows 7.

The decision, announced this week, is a turn-about for Microsoft, which had limited the service to Windows 10 machines. In a post to a company blog, a Microsoft director cited customers’ heterogeneous set-ups to explain the change.

“We know that while in their transition, some [customers] may have a mix of Windows 10 and Windows 7 devices in their environments,” wrote Rob Lefferts of the Windows group’s security and enterprise team. “We want to help our customers achieve the best security possible on their way to Windows 10 ahead of the end of support for Windows 7 in January 2020.”

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Independent Krebs

February 13, 2018 admin

Microsoft Patch Tuesday, February 2018 Edition

Credit to Author: BrianKrebs| Date: Tue, 13 Feb 2018 21:13:27 +0000

Microsoft today released a bevy of security updates to tackle more than 50 serious weaknesses in Windows, Internet Explorer/Edge, Microsoft Office and Adobe Flash Player, among other products. A good number of the patches issued today ship with Microsoft’s “critical” rating, meaning the problems they fix could be exploited remotely by miscreants or malware to seize complete control over vulnerable systems — with little or no help from users.

ComputerWorld Independent

February 13, 2018 admin

Chrome 68 to condemn all unencrypted sites by summer

Credit to Author: Gregg Keizer| Date: Tue, 13 Feb 2018 03:10:00 -0800

Google has put a July deadline on a 2016 promise that its Chrome browser would tag all websites that don’t encrypt their traffic.

“Beginning in July 2018 with the release of Chrome 68, Chrome will mark all HTTP sites as ‘not secure,'” wrote Emily Schechter, a Chrome security product manager, in a Feb. 8 post to a company blog.

Google has scheduled Chrome 68 to release in Stable form – analogous to production-level quality – during the week of July 22-28.

Starting then, Chrome will insert a “Not secure” label into the address bar of every website that uses HTTP connections between its servers and users. Sites that instead rely on HTTPS to encrypt the back-and-forth traffic will display their URLs normally in the address bar.

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ComputerWorld Independent

February 12, 2018 admin

Get Windows Update locked down in preparation for this month’s problems

Credit to Author: Woody Leonhard| Date: Mon, 12 Feb 2018 06:44:00 -0800

January 2018 will go down in history as one of the worst patching months in Microsoft’s very checkered history. That isn’t an isolated muck-up. It’s a harbinger. We had a couple of really bad months in 2017 — February and November come immediately to mind — but an unconscionable number of patches left bricked machines and busted programs in their wake.

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Independent Krebs

February 12, 2018 admin

Domain Theft Strands Thousands of Web Sites

Credit to Author: BrianKrebs| Date: Mon, 12 Feb 2018 13:41:53 +0000

Newtek Business Services Corp. [NASDAQ:NEWT], a Web services conglomerate that operates more than 100,000 business Web sites and some 40,000 managed technology accounts, had several of its core domain names stolen over the weekend. The theft shut off email and stranded Web sites for many of Newtek’s customers. An email blast Newtek sent to customers late Saturday evening made no mention of a breach or incident, saying only that the company was changing domains due to “increased” security. A copy of that message can be read here (PDF). In reality, three of their core domains were hijacked by a Vietnamese hacker, who replaced the login page many Newtek customers used to remotely manage their Web sites (webcontrolcenter[dot]com) with a live Web chat service. As a result, Newtek customers seeking answers to why their Web sites no longer resolved correctly ended up chatting with the hijacker instead.

ComputerWorld Independent

February 12, 2018 admin

Managing open-source mobile security and privacy for activists worldwide | Salted Hash Ep 18

Nathan Freitas, who heads The Guardian Project, talks with host Steve Ragan and senior writer J.M. Porup about the group's easy-to-use secure apps, open-source software libraries, and customized mobile devices being used around the world.