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April 25, 2018 by Vertical Axion
If you’re downloading software from the web, be careful. Take the extra step of verifying that you’re on the developer’s website, because the hackers have a new trick up their sleeve. It’s actually a deceptively simple one. Hackers are buying ads on Google and Bing’s search engines, with the links in their ads pointing to […]
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April 24, 2018 by Vertical Axion
Panera Bread company is the latest to find itself in hot water. Recently, security researcher Dylan Houlihan discovered that the company had failed to encrypt (or otherwise protect) a file containing usernames, email addresses, physical addresses, phone numbers and loyalty account numbers for a staggering thirty-seven million of its customers. The file was found stored […]
April 23, 2018 by Vertical Axion
The bad news just doesn’t seem to stop where Intel and the Speectre vulnerability are concerned. The latest bit of news comes directly from Intel, as the company admits that it’s just not possible to address the Spectre vulnerability in some of its older hardware. This means that nine families of chips and more than […]
April 21, 2018 by Vertical Axion
Microsoft recently made small but significant changes to its Office 365 subscription service and to OneDrive, which are often used in tandem. The goal is to make it easier for users whose files have been encrypted by ransomware (or otherwise corrupted) to recover them. The most significant of the changes is a new button that […]
April 20, 2018 by Vertical Axion
First it was 55 million. Then 77 million. Now, it’s 2.2 billion, or pretty much every user on Facebook. That’s how many people should assume that their public profile information has been scraped. The conversation began when it came to light that Cambridge Analytica (a political research firm) had misused Facebook’s search function to scrap […]
April 19, 2018 by Vertical Axion
Delta Airlines and Sears Corporation have both been notified of a data breach that has exposed the credit card information of some 100,000 Sears customers and “hundreds of thousands” of Delta customers. Neither Delta nor Sears were breached directly. A live chat service called [24]7 (used by both companies), was breached, allowing access to Sears […]
April 18, 2018 by Vertical Axion
Rumors have been circulating for years that Apple has plans in the works to cut Intel and their chips out of the equation, in preference for using their own custom chips in its laptops and desktop computers. Their iPhones and other devices already use custom chips, and according to the latest buzz, the move is […]
April 17, 2018 by Vertical Axion
Last year’s Wannacry attack was bad, but in many ways, it was a self-inflicted wound. According Webroot’s recently published “Annual Threat Report,” almost all of the machines that succumbed to the Wannacry attack were running Windows 7. That attack is estimated to have caused in excess of $4 billion in total losses. The central problem […]
April 16, 2018 by Vertical Axion
Congratulations to Adobe Flash Player for not being the software most targeted by hackers. Security vendor “Recorded Future” has just published their annual list of the software hackers most commonly focus on when targeting computers and handheld devices for attack. For the last several years, Adobe’s Flash Player has topped the list, but this year […]
April 14, 2018 by Vertical Axion
The energy sector is in danger, and almost nobody is talking about it. This, according to a newly published report by Kaspersky Labs. At issue are ICS (Industrial Control System) computers. Hackers are increasingly targeting them, having recently been given a robust set of tools to do so. Recall that in 2010, Kaspersky Labs uncovered […]
April 13, 2018 by Vertical Axion
How much of your website’s traffic is driven by bots? The answer may surprise you. Overall, bots account for nearly half of all web traffic. The “good” bots account for 20.4 percent, and “bad” bots account for 21.8 percent. Hackers, scammers and fraudsters commonly use bad bots to scrape content, test stolen account credentials, issue […]
April 12, 2018 by Vertical Axion
There’s a lot to talk about in Apple’s latest update to iOS. Version 11.3 boasts some significant changes and is well worth getting. We’ll go over the highlights below. Battery management is the biggest and most significant change. Last year, the company found itself in hot water when they began quietly throttling older phones and […]
April 11, 2018 by Vertical Axion
Amazon has made a small but significant change to its Alexa service, which now makes it possible to donate to charity by issuing voice commands. So far, there are 48 charities connected to the system, with more in the pipeline. There are two ways you can make use of the new feature. The first is […]
April 10, 2018 by Vertical Axion
If you use Amazon’s Cloud MP3 Locker to store your music online, now is the time to start looking for a new home for it. Last year, the company announced that they were ending the service, but didn’t provide a firm date. April 30, 2018 will be the last day you’ll be able to access […]
April 9, 2018 by Vertical Axion
There are some big changes coming to Facebook, which may have some serious unintended consequences. In a recent interview, Mark Zuckerberg indicated that he’s considering allowing users to independently appeal to the content moderation team if their posts get taken down for violating various community policies. On the surface of it, this seems like it […]
April 7, 2018 by Vertical Axion
There’s a new type of hacking attack to be concerned with, and it’s growing by leaps and bounds. Called “Crypto-Jacking,” it’s a process by which malicious code is placed on websites. When the sites are visited, the code secretly siphons off a portion of the affected user’s PC, laptop, or smartphone’s processing power and uses […]
April 6, 2018 by Vertical Axion
Another week, another high-profile data breach. This time, it’s Under Armour in the hot seat. Under Armour acquired the MyFitnessPal app back in February 2015, and the company recently announced that their new acquisition was hacked in late February 2018. So far, the company is taking all steps we’ve come to see as usual in […]
April 5, 2018 by Vertical Axion
If you are a fan of, and regularly use Goo.gl (the URL shortener service), brace for impact. The company has announced that as of March 30, 2019, the service will be shut down for good. Long before then, beginning April 18th of this year, only existing users will be able to shorten links via goo.gl. […]
April 4, 2018 by Vertical Axion
Researchers at Preempt Security recently discovered a critical flaw in Microsoft’s Credential Security Support Provider protocol (CredSSP for short) that impacts every version of Windows in existence. It could allow a hacker to remotely exploit Windows Remote Desktop to execute malicious code and steal any data stored on the machine. The flaw, logged as CVE-2018-0886 […]
April 3, 2018 by Vertical Axion
There’s a new threat on the horizon, according to security researchers from Check Point. A group of hackers in China are busy building a massive botnet that so far, totals almost five million Android smartphones. The hackers are quietly taking control of these devices using a strain of malware known as “RottenSys.” While the malware […]
April 2, 2018 by Vertical Axion
Wearable computing devices from smart watches to glasses are struggling to find an audience, and Google’s Android Wear operating system hasn’t gotten much love in recent years. It has weakened as major players in the tech space have struggled to find a market for these products. On the face of it, these products would seem […]
March 31, 2018 by Vertical Axion
By now, you’ve almost certainly heard of “Spectre,” one of two recently discovered security flaws that impact every chip made by Intel in the last ten years. The story of Spectre, and Intel’s response to it has been an interesting one. In response to the flaw’s discovery, Intel rushed a firmware patch, but quickly had […]
March 30, 2018 by Vertical Axion
According to a Microsoft security researcher, a massive malware attack attempted to install a cryptocurrency mining software on more than 400,000 computers in less than twelve hours. The failed campaign is noteworthy because of the attack vector used. It was a supply chain attack implemented by compromising Bittorrent, a highly popular program used to share […]
March 29, 2018 by Vertical Axion
If your company has an incident response plan that you can rely on in the face of a cyber attack, then you’re ahead of most of the world, according to research recently conducted by the Ponemon Institute. Shockingly, more than 75 percent of survey respondents from around the world admitted that they have no formal […]
