It seems like a new attack vector emerges on a weekly basis, and this week is no exception. The latest threat: Emails containing specialized audio files whose acoustic vibrations can damage your computer's hard drive. This is possibly damaging to the point of causing system failure, data corruption, and making it impossible to successfully reboot your machine. As the researchers point out, "Intentional acoustic interference causes unusual errors in the mechanics of magnetic hard disk drives … Read more
Apple Users Are Getting Group Facetime
Apple's Legions of users love FaceTime, but there's a problem with the highly popular app. It only allows you to see and talk to one person at a time. Apple fans have been clamoring for Group FaceTime for almost as long as the app has existed, and soon, they'll get their wish. Beginning with iOS 12, Group FaceTime will finally be "a thing," allowing you to simultaneously talk with up to 31 of your contacts. Even better, the new functionality will allow you to turn any iMessage group chat … Read more
T-Mobile Site Leaked Data On Millions Of Customers
ZDNet Researcher Ryan Stevenson recently found a big problem on T-Mobile's website regarding an unprotected API. As a result of the flaw, untold millions of T-Mobile's customers' account information was left exposed and completely unprotected. Literally anyone who stumbled across the site and tried to abuse it could access a wide range of customer information with no password required. This includes, but is not limited to: Customer name Phone number Mailing Address Account … Read more
FBI Advises Users To Reboot Their Routers
Cisco's Talos Security Team has identified a new threat, and it's a nasty one impacting more than half a million consumer-grade routers in the US. According to the Talos Team's report, the new malware is impacting a broad cross-section of routers made by TP-Link, QNAP, Netgear, Mikrotik, and Linksys. Known as "VPNFilter," the malware currently infecting routers appears to be the first stage in a multi-phase attack, with the first segment allowing the hackers to collect a wide range of … Read more
Passwords May Be Dead Soon If Microsoft Gets Its Way
Karanbir Singh (a program manager at Microsoft) is on a mission: Kill the password. As he said in a recent blog post: "Nobody likes passwords. They are inconvenient, insecure, and expensive. In fact, we dislike them so much that we've been busy at work trying to create a world without them--a world without passwords." The company's stated goal is to make it possible that an end user will never have to bother with passwords on a day to day basis and would instead provide credentials … Read more
Coca Cola Breach Proves Employees May Be Significant Threat
Coca-Cola is the latest company to fall victim to a data breach. Unlike some of the others that have recently made headlines, however, this one was conducted from within. In September 2017, an employee at one of the company's subsidiaries stole an external hard drive containing personal data belonging to more than 8,000 company employees. Law enforcement officials notified the company when the drive was confiscated, but urged them not to make a public announcement regarding the incident … Read more
Now Is A Good Time To Upgrade To SSD Drives
If you've been considering swapping out some of your old HDDs to SSDs, now is a great time to do so, thanks to the convergence of two factors. First is the fact that the manufacturers of SSDs have been making strides in terms of increasing the capacity of the drives they're offering. They are doing this while simultaneously offering other enhancements that reduce data duplication, making their products faster and more efficient than their HDD counterparts. Second is the fact that there is … Read more
New Vulnerability May Expose Encrypted Emails
Security researchers at the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) have discovered a dangerous new email vulnerability called "Efail." Exploiting this new email vulnerability would allow hackers to decrypt emails encrypted with either PGP or S/MIME - including emails that were sent several years earlier. Both of these encryption tools are commonly used by politicians, journalists and other professionals who need a secure means of electronic communication. Since the standards are so well … Read more
SSD Drive Makers Adding Features To Reduce Duplicate Data
Big changes are in the works in the SSD-based storage ecosystem. It includes three different vendors all making similar announcements regarding designs to help companies that rely on SSD-based storage systems to reduce duplication and control data creep. It's not hard to see why they're scrambling. Although the price of SSD-based storage systems are coming down, it's a slow process. Currently, a gigabyte's worth of SSD storage costs about forty cents, versus about five cents per gigabyte of … Read more
Chili’s Is The Latest To Suffer A Credit Card Breach
Brinker International (the parent company of the Chili's restaurant chain) formally announced that on May 11, they discovered malware on an undisclosed number of their point of sales terminals. Details are sketchy at this point, because the investigation is still ongoing, but the company had the following to say about the incident: "If you used your payment card at a Chili's restaurant between March and April 2018, it does not mean you were affected by this incident. However, out of an … Read more
