Cybersecurity

Russia's Federal Security Service, or FSB, recently reported that it found a cyberspying virus in the computer networks of more than 20 state authorities and defense contractors. The claim that malware has infected various government and defense companies, published last month by Russia's official T...

The code warriors of the future literally might be computer code acting as warriors to defend against attackers on computer networks. The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, or DARPA, gave us a glimpse into that future last Sunday, when it announced the winners of its Cyber Grand Challenge at...

Apple on Thursday introduced its first bug bounty program, set to launch in September. Ivan Krstic, head of Apple security engineering and architecture, announced the program during his presentation at Black Hat security conference in Las Vegas. The focus reportedly is on an exceptionally high lev...

SPOTLIGHT ON SECURITY

Old Tech Can Create New Security Woes

"Patch your systems in a timely manner" is a mantra of security experts, but what happens when the patch well runs dry because a product's maker no longer supports it? That is a situation many large enterprises find themselves in, and it's one that poses security risks. Between 30 percent and 50 per...

The campaign of Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton is the latest possible victim of a series of hack attacks some cybersecurity experts have linked to the Russian government. Campaign officials reportedly acknowledged that an analytics program it uses, which is maintained by the DNC, wa...

A vulnerability in inexpensive wireless keyboards lets hackers steal private data, Bastille reported this week. The vulnerability lets hackers use a new attack the firm dubbed "KeySniffer" to eavesdrop on and capture every keystroke typed from up to 250 feet away. The stolen data is rendered in clea...

BlackBerry on Tuesday made a play for security-conscious Android users with the announcement of its new DTEK50. Running Android 6.0 Marshmallow and BlackBerry security software, the new unit is the "most secure Android smartphone" in the world, the company claimed. Many Android users have concerns a...

The FBI on Monday confirmed it has opened an investigation into claims that the Wikileaks email dump of nearly 20,000 DNC emails over the weekend might be linked to the Russian government. Hackers connected to Russian intelligence agencies allegedly have been working to help tilt the U.S. presidenti...

SPOTLIGHT ON SECURITY

Civil Rights Office Issues Ransomware Guidance

Ransomware infections are on the rise, and healthcare organizations are ripe targets, which may be why the federal government addressed the subject last week. Ransomware attacks have risen from about 1,000 a day last year to 4,000 a day this year, Symantec has reported. Many of those attacks are for...

NSA whistle-blower Edward Snowden and noted hacker Andrew "Bunnie" Huang on Thursday published a paper on their collaboration to design a smartphone case that will protect user privacy. The pair developed a prototype compatible with the 4.7-inch iPhone 6, as it's "driven primarily by what we underst...

Though quick to capitalize on connected health devices and the coming Internet of Medical Things, hardware manufacturers may be moving too slowly when it comes to building the necessary protections into the back end. The National Security Agency last month told participants in a defense technology s...

Facebook last week said it would begin testing long anticipated end-to-end encryption capabilities in its Messenger app, enabling users to have secret conversations. The new level of security means that a message will be visible only to the sender and the recipient -- Facebook won't even be able to ...

Google last week announced an experiment with post-quantum cryptography in Chrome. A small fraction of connections between Google's servers and Chrome on the desktop will use a post-quantum key-exchange algorithm in addition to the elliptic-curve key-exchange algorithm already being used. The idea i...

OPINION

Parsing the Clinton Email Scandal

I've been watching the Clinton email scandal closely, because I not only have been in and out of law enforcement and security for much of my early life, but also was an internal auditor for IBM and one of the leading email experts in the 1990s. I think this is the only time I've seen an investigator...

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