If this past quarter's stories are any indication, we could very well be seeing the rise of a new wave of threats that will affect people in a more pronounced and physical level, reports Trend Micro in its Q2 Security Roundup Report. more
The movement for upping the minimum wage in the US is gathering momentum. Protests and placard waving are on the increase, and the quest for $15 per hour is well underway. There are plenty of arguments as to why such a hike in minimum wage is necessary, and what the consequences could be to those businesses dependent upon the cheapest hourly labor. But, for the information security industry, upping the minimum wage will likely yield only good news. more
One of the most important debates in the realm of Internet governance pertains to when, how and how much voluntary action registrars can and should take to prevent the use of their registration platforms in furtherance of criminal activity. In the Internet pharmacy world, the trend over the past four years has been unmistakable: A growing number of registrars worldwide, large and small, recognize the value of prohibiting the use of their registration services... more
In this multipart series I will be presenting some of the leading industry-standard best practices for enterprise network security using Cisco technologies... In Part 1 of this series, I provided an overview of the critical role that properly designed data security architectures play within an Internet-connected organization. Before we begin to discuss the security designs, processes and recommendations related to Cisco technology, let's first discuss some of the ways a network becomes unsecure... more
The papers have been abuzz with the shutdown of Liberty Reserve, an online payments system, due to accusations of large scale money laundering via anonymous transactions. Many people have noted similarities between LR and Bitcoin and wonder whether Bitcoin is next. I doubt it, because with Bitcoin, nothing is anonymous. more
I read an interesting article in the Wall Street Journal today entitled Cyber Criminals Sniff out Vulnerable Firms. It's a story of a small business owner in New York whose company was broken into by cyber criminals and stole $1.2 million from its bank accounts, although the owner was able to later recover about $800,000 of that. The moral of the story is that small businesses feel like they are not a major target for online thefts like these. more
I often think there are only two types of stories about the Internet. One is a continuing story of prodigious technology that continues to shrink in physical size and at the same time continue to dazzle and amaze us... The other is a darker evolving story of the associated vulnerabilities of this technology where we've seen "hacking" turn into organised crime and from there into a scale of sophistication that is sometimes termed "cyber warfare". And in this same darker theme one could add the current set of stories about various forms of state sponsored surveillance and espionage on the net. more
Last September MySpace sued ur-spammers Sanford "Spamford" Wallace and Walt "Pickle Jar" Rines were for egregious violations of CAN SPAM. Neither responded, so as was widely reported, earlier this week the court granted a default judgement. Since they sent a lot of spam, the statutory damages came to an enormous $235 million. Even for Spamford, that's a lot of money. more
A group of companies, including Microsoft, have collaborated to launch a major action to disrupt the use of cracked, legacy copies of the security tool Cobalt Strike which cybercriminals have abused to deploy ransomware. more
With the alarming increase in cyberattacks, criminals are literally turning businesses against their own customers in order to steal consumer's personal data, warns the latest annual X-Force Trend and Risk report from IBM. "The security industry puts a lot of effort into the technical evaluation of security threats, examining, sometimes at great length, the potential threat that each issue might present to corporations and consumers. Criminal attackers out for profit, however, have considerations that the security industry does not always take into account, such as monetization cost and overall profitability." more
With 2019 coming to a close, we're not just saying goodbye to the past 365 days, we're also saying goodbye to an entire decade. As we bid farewell to the 2010s, we're taking this opportunity to look back and reflect on the digital decade as well as consider what the future might have in store for us all. The past ten years were a whirlwind of change, with new advances in technology exploding onto the market at a faster pace than ever before. more
As hacking groups such as Anonymous and LulzSec continue to make headlines, many of us in the Information Security field can only sit back and shake our heads. The large number of successful system breaches, web site defacements, and the publication of confidential data is not at all surprising, and for the most part was only a matter of time. more
If, like me and my clients, you ever receive an email about a domain name expiration, proceed with great suspicion -- because many of these "notices" are a sham. They're designed to sell you services you don't need or to trick you into transferring your domain name to another registrar. Usually, the emails can safely be ignored. Here's an example: As shown, an important-looking email from "Domain Service" refers to a specific domain name in the subject line. more
The Silent Librarian advanced persistent threat (APT) actors have been detected once again, as the academic year started in September. With online classes increasingly becoming the norm, the group's phishing campaigns that aim to steal research data and intellectual property could have a high success rate. Dozens of phishing domain names have been reported, although some may have already been taken down. more
One could think that the authors of The Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR) -- adopted in 1948 -- had the Internet in mind when they declared in Article 19: "Everyone has the right to freedom of opinion and expression; this right includes freedom to hold opinions without interference and to seek, receive and impart information and ideas through any media and regardless of frontiers." All human beings are entitled to certain rights, and it makes no difference if they choose to exercise them in a town square or an Internet chatroom. more
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