Blog

By Nancy Rand, Posted in Security

November 18, The Register – (International) Blackhole’s back: Hated exploit kit returns from the dead. Researchers from Malwarebytes discovered that the previously extinct Blackhole Exploit Kit has resurfaced after finding an active drive-by download campaign via compromised websites with the same Adobe Java platform and PDF exploits as the Blackhole Exploit Kit, which can still compromise vulnerable computers despite its old exploits. Source November 18, Securityweek – (International) Security flaws in... read more.

• November 19, 2015

By Nancy Rand, Posted in Security

November 17, Securityweek – (International) Poor backend security practices expose sensitive data. Researchers at the Technical University of Darmstadt in Germany discovered more than 18.6 million records of security risks associated with the use of Backend-as-a-Service (BaaS) offerings including extrapolation of an ID and an undisclosed key for authentication from a victims’ mobile application that allows attackers access to the backend with the same privileges as the application. Source November 17, Se... read more.

• November 18, 2015

By Nancy Rand, Posted in Security

November 16, Securityweek – (International) Thousands of sites infected with Linux encryption ransomware. Researchers from Dr. Web reported that approximately 2,000 websites were compromised by the Linux file-encrypting ransomware dubbed Linux.Encoder1, that targets the root and home files, web servers, backups, and source code via a downloaded file containing the public RSA key used to store AES keys that adds .encrypt extension to each file, allowing files to be nearly impossible to recover without paying... read more.

• November 17, 2015

By Nancy Rand, Posted in Security

November 13, Securityweek – (International) Flaw in “Spring Social” puts user accounts at risk. Researchers at SourceClear (SRC:CLR) discovered that a vulnerability in Pivotal Software’s Spring Social authentication feature can be exploited via a specially crafted Uniform Resource Locator (URL) that bypasses the cross-site request forgery (CSRF) protection to link an attacker’s account, on a similar service to GitHub or Facebook, with a victim’s account on a compromised website. Pivotal Software patched the... read more.

• November 16, 2015

By Nancy Rand, Posted in Security

November 12, Securityweek – (International) Microsoft reissues security update due to Outlook crash. Microsoft reissued a security patch updating its KB3097877 software on Windows 7 and some versions of its KB3105213 update on Windows 10 after customer complaints revealed that the software update had an issue with its Outlook 2010 and 2013 versions which caused crashes for consumers viewing HyperText Markup Language (HTML) emails. Source November 11, Securityweek – (International) Attackers abuse securit... read more.

• November 13, 2015

By Nancy Rand, Posted in Security

November 10, Securityweek – (International) Flaw in Linux encryption ransomware exposes decryption key. Researchers at Bitdefender discovered a flaw in the Linux.Encoder1 ransomware in its advanced encryption standard (AES) key generation process that revealed the libc rand() function, seeded with the current system timestamp during encryption, allows the retrieval of the AES key without having to decrypt the malware by paying the attackers for a RSA public key. The security firm released a decryption tool... read more.

• November 13, 2015

By Nancy Rand, Posted in Security

November 9, Securityweek – (International) User data compromised in Touchnote breach. UK-based postcard-sending service, Touchnote revealed that its systems were compromised in an attack that stole customers’ personal information including names, email addresses, postal addresses, and other histories that may be used to trick victims into supplying attackers with more sensitive information. The company has notified impacted customers and an investigation is ongoing to find the attackers. Source November... read more.

• November 10, 2015

By Nancy Rand, Posted in Security

November 5, Help Net Security – (International) Firefox 42 is out, with many privacy and security improvements. Mozilla released Firefox 42 addressing several security patches including a new feature named Tracking Protection that actively blocks contents like ads, analytics trackers, requests from active trackers, and social share buttons that may record users’ activity and send personal information without their knowledge across multiple websites. Source November 5, Threatpost – (International) Updated... read more.

• November 09, 2015

By Ken Phelan, Posted in Uncategorized

Every business builds itself around the needs for three constituencies - customers, employees, and owners. The CEO acronym is an easy way to remember them. There is always a balance, but generally one of them has a priority role. Customer-driven businesses start with customer experience as their priority. A lot of retail organizations have this focus. Nordstrom’s comes to mind. Service industry’s often make employees a priority, knowing that a good employee will make the service product shine. Starbucks... read more.

• November 06, 2015

By Nancy Rand, Posted in Security

November 5, Securityweek – (International) Cisco patches serious flaws in security, wireless appliances. Cisco released software updates patching several critical and high severity vulnerabilities including a command injection vulnerability, CVE-2015-6298 that affects the certificate generation process in the interface of the Cisco Web Security Appliance (WSA), denial-of-service (DoS) vulnerabilities that causes affected devices to run out of system memory, and vulnerabilities in the Mobility Service Engine... read more.

• November 06, 2015