Retailers are gearing up for the year's busiest shopping weekend, which runs from Black Friday to Cyber Monday, but another group is also gearing up. Scammers. Security experts are warning that retailers should brace for impact because the best estimates are that there could be as many as fifty million fraud-based attacks between those spectacularly busy shopping days. The estimate is higher than it's ever been and is driven in large part by the sheer number of high profile data … Read more
Apple’s New Face ID May Have Been Compromised
Tech companies of all shapes and sizes have been on the hunt for the "Holy Grail" of security features since before the rise of the internet. So far, a number of strategies have been developed, but none have proved to be successful. Hackers have found ways around each and every one to date. Apple recently made another attempt when they released their new iPhone X, complete with a new "ultra-secure" Face ID security feature, which was touted during the new phone's September launch event. … Read more
Windows 10 Gets New Set Of Recommended Security Standards
Microsoft has introduced a new set of standards designed to make computers running Windows 10 more secure. Obviously, these standards are not industry requirements, and most of the off-the-shelf PCs you can buy will struggle to meet all of these requirements. In time, of course, that could change, but as things stand now if you're interested in making your computer as safe and secure as it possibly can be, this is a road you'll have to go down on your own and make the necessary mods and … Read more
Many Businesses Found To Be Running Old Microsoft Office Versions
When an operating system reaches the end of its supported life, such as Windows XP, NT and Vista have, it's big news. It makes headlines. When other forms of software reach the end of the line, there's just not as much fanfare. It's not that it's not important; it's just not something people think or care very much about. They probably should, at least according to a recently released survey by Spiceworks, which revealed statistics that were both shocking and dismaying. Here are a few of the … Read more
How Safe is Your Password Really?
Imagine this: You're setting up your login information for your email, or maybe it's your Cloud database account. Upon entering your password, the program prompts you to include a capitalized letter, number and possibly a symbol in your password. You wonder, "Is this really necessary? Who's going to be THAT determined to break into my accounts?" Well to answer that question: hackers. Hackers are going to great lengths to recover your account login credentials. And as hackers develop more ways … Read more
Android Gets Fix For KRACK WiFi Vulnerability
Last month, a new WiFi security vulnerability known as "Krack" was discovered by a security researcher named Mathy Vanhoef. It was about as serious as a security flaw could be, enabling hackers to clone a router and funnel traffic through it, either monitoring all the activity on the network or, if they wanted to be more destructive, conducting all manner of "man in the middle" attacks against anyone on the network. The major tech companies were all given advance notice of Vanhoef's research, … Read more
Facebook Has A Major Problem With Fake Accounts
Facebook has been in hot water with evidence mounting that hordes of fake accounts were used to spread misinformation about the recent presidential election. In addition to sparking congressional hearings, it also prompted Facebook and the other major social media companies to do a deep dive into their own active accounts and get a better sense of just how large and pervasive the problem was. According to Facebook's most recent quarterly earnings report, the problem turned out to be a fair … Read more
Touch And Vibration May Be The Fingerprints Of The Future
Researchers at Rutgers University have hit upon a novel idea that could be a game-changer in terms of biometric identification. The team published a paper entitled "VibWrite: Towards Finger-input Authentication on Ubiquitous Surfaces via Physical Vibration," and demonstrated a prototype of the device at the Association for Computing Machinery (ACM) conference in Dallas, Texas. The new technology is a lesson in simplicity, consisting of a simple vibration motor and a receiver on almost any … Read more
Report Shows Small Percentage Of Employees Know About Ransomware
The statistics are alarming. Ransomware is fast becoming the favored hobby horse of hackers worldwide. Barely a week goes by that a new strain isn't introduced into the wild, with expensive, and often tragic consequences. Right now, the average amount paid by office workers impacted by a ransomware attack is $1400, a figure that continues to creep higher. What's perhaps even more alarming, however, is the fact that although companies the world over have made a concerted effort to sound the … Read more
New Ransomware “BadRabbit” Starting To See Infections In The US
You may not have heard of the new strain of ransomware known as BadRabbit. If you haven't, it's because the overwhelming percentage of BadRabbit attacks have been occurring in Russia, which accounts for 71 percent of all known infections at present. Unfortunately, there have been a few infections reported in the United States, which may be a harbinger of things to come. The new threat is functionally similar to NotPetya, which not only encrypts the files on a target system but also then … Read more
