There's a constant tug of war playing out on the national stage. On one side, privacy advocates are pushing for greater autonomy for end users, and hard limits to the types of searches that law enforcement agencies are allowed to conduct. On the other side are the government agencies themselves, which often cite national security concerns as the justification for more and easier access to the sensitive data contained on personal devices like laptops and smartphones. Generally speaking, … Read more
New Wifi Standard WPA3 May Be Coming
Remember the KRACK WiFi (WPA2) vulnerability, discovered by Mathy Vanhoef? It turns out that his discovery was a catalyst for action. Recently, the WiFi Alliance, which is the industry's standards organization, released details about its new WPA3 protocol. Here's a quick rundown of the changes you can expect to see in the months ahead: Enhancements in encryption capabilities - The new protocol will enable encrypted connections between connected devices and the router/access point, and … Read more
Weird Sounds Coming From Your Speakers? Could Be A Hacker
Have you been hearing strange, otherworldly sounds on your Bose or Sonos speakers? If so, rest assured that your speakers aren't haunted. They've likely been hijacked by hackers. Researchers at Trend Micro have confirmed that some models (the Sonos Play:1, the Sonos One and the Bose SoundTouch) of both brands of speakers are vulnerable to hacking if the speaker is connected to a misconfigured network. If the hackers find such a speaker, they can take control of the speaker and direct to … Read more
Sound Waves May Be Used In Future Hard Drive Attacks
Another week, another attack vector, and this one deserves extra points for creativity. New research has proved the viability of using something as simple and innocuous as sound waves to disrupt the normal functioning of HDDs, which can be used to sabotage a wide range of equipment from Pcs, to CCTV systems, ATMs and more. Researchers have toyed with, and been aware of the possibility of using sound waves to disrupt the normal functioning of an HDD for more than a decade, but the most … Read more
Virus Spread Through Facebook Messenger Mines For Cryptocurrency
Facebook scams are fairly common occurrences, owing to the sheer size of the platform's user base. It's no surprise that there's a new one making the rounds that you should be aware of. This latest threat was discovered by researchers at Trend Micro, and makes use of Facebook Messenger. If you get a message containing an embedded video file saved as a zip (the file name usually appears as "video_xxxx.zip"), don't click on it, even if it's from someone you know. This file is a modified … Read more
Major Security Flaw Discovered In Intel Processors
There's some bad news if you own a computer driven by an Intel processor. Recently, a dangerous, catastrophic security flaw has been discovered in Intel's X86-64 architecture that allows hackers to access the kernel, which sits at the heart of your OS. By accessing the kernel, a hacker can gain access to virtually everything on the targeted machine. This is accomplished by way of a little-known feature called "speculative execution" which allows the processor to perform operations before … Read more
Corporate Attacks On The Rise Through Vulnerable Printers
Few things are more ubiquitous in an office environment than printers. Of course, these days, most printers are much more than simply that. They can also scan, copy and even send emails. As such, they've become an increasingly attractive option to hack, according to the latest data released by Barracuda Networks. The reason is simple. Most printers aren't as well protected as PCs and other devices on your network. They're the weak point in your company's defensive armor. The upsurge in … Read more
2017 List Of Most Used Passwords Released
SplashData has released their latest annual report on the most commonly used passwords. Unfortunately, the more things change, the more they stay the same. By now, everyone knows that the number of hacking attempts and high-profile data breaches is on the rise. Everyone has heard, on more than one occasion, how important it is to not use the same password across multiple web properties, to enable two-factor authentication if and where it is offered and to use passwords that contain a … Read more
Windows 10 Third Party Password Manager Could Have Security Issue
Do you use "Keeper?" If you're not sure what it is, then you probably don't. It's a password manager that Microsoft has been bundling with some of its Windows 10 releases. Either way, there's a serious flaw in its design that you should be aware of. Earlier in the year, Tavis Ormandy, a researcher on Google's Project Zero team, discovered a bug that saw Keeper injecting privileged user information into web pages, exposing all manner of private data unnecessarily to website owners. The … Read more
Microsoft Word Gets Update To Disable DDE After Malware Concerns
In recent months, Microsoft Word has been getting a fair amount of bad press, thanks to an old-but-still-supported feature called DDE (Dynamic Data Exchange). This is the feature that allows Word to pull data from other MS Office applications. For instance, if you embed a chart into your Word document, each time you open the doc, it will automatically poll the spreadsheet the chart was created from an update it dynamically. It's a good feature, but unfortunately, it's subject to abuse by … Read more
