Category: Computer Tech
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Password Managers
The current mainstream method of authenticating to applications and systems remains a difficult prospect for most people. Password re-use is not a good idea but remembering a separate password for each system is not feasible. Biometrics and 2-factor-authentication are great solutions but not available in all circumstances, and typically the 1st factor is still a…
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Your TV is being creepy
Of all the points of electronic insecurity one deals with every day, your TV is probably the last you’d expect. Not so, because Vizio has been caught spying on its customers – through approximately 11 million smart TVs in the US and since 2014. These TVs have automatically tracked consumers’ viewing habits and sent that data…
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Equality and security
Trending on Twitter right now: There are no US ambassadors because Donald Trump just fired them all True or False? I recently wrote a piece on “fake news and false information” in the context of online security. The feedback was interesting because most commenters did not ( immediately ) equate fake news/false information with their own…
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Fake news and false information
We live in the information age and information is arguably the most important form of currency now and we’re bombarded with it 24×365. A never ending stream of information, news and data fed through channels like Facebook, YouTube, Twitter and Instagram. And it’s this overload of information that can lead to bad decisions and behaviour.…
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Windows 10 updates and privacy settings
Windows 10 has put a heavy burden on network administrators due to its overhauled update system and numerous privacy settings. The results are a significant increase in network traffic, a slow down in machine operation and information leakage. Here follows a number of suggested settings to help minimise the impact of these changes and safeguard your…
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DNS Meltdown
There have been enough clues over the last few years that the global DNS system as used in its current form, is particularly frail and subject to simple attacks. Yet the main commercial protagonists piggy-backing onto this system, have remained almost spectacularly silent on the issue and there seems to be little impetus to change things. Similar…
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Office365 Ransomware attack
There is a massive ransomware attack targeting Office365 users at the moment. Originating on the 22nd of this month, the attack used phishing emails to distribute the Cerber ransomware, which encrypts users’ files and demands a ransom to decrypt the files. Cerber was widely distributed after its originator was apparently able to easily confirm that…
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Security News – WK4 May 2016
The great Linkedin hack A hacker called “Peace” recently tried to sell a password database of ~ 117 million Linkedin login details that come as a the result of a 2012 breach on the professional relationship social media site. In a blog post published on May 18, LinkedIn CISO Cory Scott wrote, “Yesterday, we became…
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Surprise!
And following on from Locky comes Surprise, this week’s flavour of ransom-ware! Yeah! This latest ransom-ware family that’s being distributed with Teamviewer 10, specifically version 10.0.47484, launches a file remotely called surprise.exe and then silently goes about its business injecting malware and encrypting files. Teamviewer themselves have indicated that they’ve had no breach of credentials…
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Security News – Wk2/3 Mar 2016
MITRE has been running the CVE vulnerability identification and logging system for what seems like forever. Mostly this has worked well but recently it seems that applications to MITRE for CVE no’s have been taking longer than expected. In fact, the issue appears to be so bad that Kurt Seifried from Red Hat has decided…
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DROWN
Another day, another SSL attack. A new, low-cost attack has been found, that decrypts sensitive communications in a matter of hours and in some cases almost immediately. I hereby name you DROWN! And CVE-2016-0800. The attack works against TLS-protected communications that rely on the RSA cryptosystem when the key is exposed even indirectly through SSLv2, a TLS precursor…
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Security News – Wk2 Feb 2016
We start off this week with news of Adobe’s Creative Cloud deleting data on Apple MACs – not a security issue in itself but still a serious issue. I’m sure there’s a lot of pissed-off people out there – losing data due to someone else’s problem is not nice. Onto security-specific news, the UK GCHQ…
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Security News – wk4 Jan 2016
Backdoors seem to be the order of the day: SEC Consult in Austria have found what they term a “deliberately hidden backdoor account” in NX-1200, a network controller appliance for conference rooms manufactured by AMX, which is used by governmental and military bodies (even the US White House), educational and healthcare institutions, hotels and conference centers…
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Security News – wk2 Jan
I’m going to be pushing my security column out on at least a bi-monthly basis from now on – a 2016 resolution! ; ) This past week’s Patch Tuesday from Microsoft was quite a serious affair – 9 security advisories covering 25 vulnerabilities of which 6 advisories address critical level flaws in IE, Office, Windows and…
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The scourge of Ransomware
From Wikipedia: Ransomware is a type of malware that prevents or limits users from accessing their system. This type of malware forces its victims to pay the ransom through certain online payment methods in order to grant access to their systems, or to get their data back. Some ransomware encrypts files. To say that Ransomware…