Cybersecurity

Proving once again that you can do a lot of damage with a little investment and a lot of ingenuity, security researcher Samy Kamkar recently managed to take down a locked, password-protected computer armed with only a $5 Raspberry Pi. The low-tech cookie-siphoning intrusion is one of Kamkar's simple...

SPOTLIGHT ON SECURITY

Cyber Grinches Could Disrupt Holidays' Biggest Shopping Weekend

Recent high-profile distributed denial of service attacks on the Internet's infrastructure and an investigative journalist's website have spiked concerns over possible disruptions of traffic during the biggest online shopping weekend of the year. Online spending last year exceeded $5.8 billion on Bl...

Sites that repeatedly violate Google's safe browsing policies will be classified as repeat offenders, the company said. A small number of websites take corrective actions after Google displays alerts on their landing pages warning visitors that they're harmful. However, they typically revert to viol...

Years ago, I worked as one of Rev. Robert Schuller's body guards (it was something to do on Sundays, I wasn't particularly religious) and one of his sayings was "when given lemons, make lemonade." Personally, I wasn't excited about either presidential candidate, but I actually think Trump could be...

SPOTLIGHT ON SECURITY

Defeating Malware With Its Own DNA

It's widely known that human DNA evidence has had a major impact in the criminal justice system. Now another kind of DNA may have a similar impact in the fight to eradicate malicious software. Malware DNA, also known as "malware provenance," is the art and science of attributing elements of one obj...

Microsoft earlier this week said it had fallen victim to "Strontium," its code name for the Russian hacking group also known as "Fancy Bear," which has been linked to recent attacks on Democratic Party systems. The group launched a spear phishing attack that targeted vulnerabilities in both the Wind...

SPOTLIGHT ON SECURITY

Bot Armies Boost Candidates' Popularity on Twitter

Internet bots have many useful online purposes, but they have a dark side, too, as three researchers demonstrated in their analysis of Twitter traffic during the first presidential debate between Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump. Bots are used to automate functions on the Net. For example, if you be...

Hundreds of websites -- including those of biggies such as Netflix, Twitter and Spotify -- on Friday fell prey to massive DDoS attacks that cut off access to Internet users on the East Coast and elsewhere across the United States. Three attacks were launched over a period of hours against Internet p...

The status of WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange grew a bit murky on Tuesday after the group accused the U.S. State Department of pressuring Ecuadorian officials to block him from posting additional emails linked to presidential candidate Hillary Clinton. The Ecuadorian foreign ministry on Tuesday ack...

Not that it isn't scary enough -- but if you look at both candidates, who have had their images destroyed largely by technology, i.e., tapes and emails -- there is a huge warning inherent in the process. Email really wasn't a big thing until the late 1990s and even having your own email server would...

SPOTLIGHT ON SECURITY

What Should be on the Next President's Cyberagenda?

When the new president takes up residence at 1600 Pennsylvania Ave., cybersecurity will be on the shortlist for action. What's a president to do? TechNewsWorld asked more than a dozen experts what should be at the top of the new leader of the free world's cyberagenda. Following are some of their res...

The Obama administration on Tuesday indicated it was considering a proportional response to retaliate against Russia for its efforts to influence the U.S. election process. The administration last week officially linked Russian operatives to a series of cyberattacks against the DNC and other organiz...

Medical device manufacturer Animas on Tuesday warned that its OneTouch Ping insulin pump system was susceptible to hacking. "We have been notified of a cybersecurity issue with the OneTouch Ping, specifically that a person could potentially gain unauthorized access to the pump through its unencrypte...

The source code for Mirai, the malware behind the botnet that launched a massive attack on the Krebs on Security website -- the largest DDoS attack on record -- has been released in the wild, according to Brian Krebs, author of the blog. A hacker who goes by the handle "Anna-senpai," apparently beca...

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