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January 19, 2019 by Vertical Axion
Recently, Marriott Hotels informed the world that they had been the victims of a massive data breach. As it turns out, the breach was even more serious than was initially reported. As the company has learned more from the ongoing investigation into the matter, they’ve been doing an admirable job at keeping the public updated, […]
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January 18, 2019 by Vertical Axion
There’s a new side channel attack to worry about. This one is after the target system’s OS page cache, where a variety of sensitive data that has been accessed by the device’s owner is stored for rapid retrieval. Perhaps the worst and most ominous aspect of this newly identified threat is the fact that it’s […]
January 17, 2019 by Vertical Axion
One of the exciting new features offered by the latest smartphones is facial recognition, which allows users to unlock their devices simply by looking at them. On paper, it’s a great feature and incredibly convenient, but there’s a problem. The issue was uncovered by a non-profit group called the Dutch Consumentenbond, which tested more than […]
January 16, 2019 by Vertical Axion
Two new critical flaws have been discovered in Adobe Acrobat and Reader that require your urgent attention. In fact, the flaws were rated as so severe that the company broke with its tradition of releasing security updates around the middle of the month in coordination with Microsoft’s “Patch Tuesday”. They released an update sooner this […]
January 14, 2019 by Vertical Axion
It’s been the better part of two years since the outbreak of the Wannacry ransomware epidemic. Unfortunately, all this time later, some companies are still dealing with the fallout. According to the latest research, Wannacry is still infecting hundreds of thousands of computers around the globe. As grim as that sounds, it’s not all bad […]
January 12, 2019 by Vertical Axion
Are you still using Internet Explorer? Now you have a new reason to consider switching to a more up to date browser. As most people know, Microsoft essentially gave up on Explorer after it failed to gain ground against its major competitors in the browser ecosystem. They started fresh, with Microsoft Edge, designed as a […]
January 11, 2019 by Vertical Axion
According to Alexa, Amazon is the 4th most visited website in the United States and ranks 8th worldwide. To say that it gets a lot of traffic every day would be an understatement, which is why a newly discovered phishing campaign pretending to come from Amazon is so disturbing. Although Amazon sees heavy traffic every […]
January 10, 2019 by Vertical Axion
Google is taking additional steps to protect its Chromebook user base. Currently, if a hacker has physical access to your machine, he or she could insert a flash drive in the USB port and run malicious code from it. The company is adding a new feature called USBGuard, which blocks USB port access any time […]
January 7, 2019 by Vertical Axion
2018 hasn’t been a great year for social media, with all the major platforms suffering a number of significant data breaches at various points in the year. Twitter alone has seen several, including the biggest one in May when the company urged all of its 330 million users to reset their passwords. This was after […]
January 4, 2019 by Vertical Axion
Microsoft recently announced an addition to Windows 10 that should make the lives of Enterprise and power users a whole lot easier. Running an unknown, untrusted .exe file on your machine can be an event that fills you with dread. The best case, of course, is that everything turns out fine. Worst case, the file […]
January 3, 2019 by Vertical Axion
Recently Facebook fessed up to a bug in their photo API that exposed the photos belonging to nearly seven million of the company’s users to app developers. The way the photo API is supposed to work is as follows: When you give an app permission to access your Facebook photos, that app is only supposed […]
January 2, 2019 by Vertical Axion
There’s a new, widespread phishing campaign underway that you need to be aware of if you use the Apple App store at all. At this time, no one knows who’s behind the campaign, but already, a surprising number of people have been taken in by it. The campaign works like this: You’ll receive an email […]
January 1, 2019 by Vertical Axion
There’s a new malware threat in the MacOS ecosystem called OSX.LamePyre. If you haven’t heard of it yet, it belongs on your radar. At the moment, industry experts agree that it’s more of a crude work in progress. Unfortunately, the danger of crude works in progress is that the hackers continue to develop them, making […]
December 31, 2018 by Vertical Axion
Do you own an Android device? Are you a PayPal user? If you answered yes to both of those questions, you have something new to worry about. A limited number of versions of an app called “Optimization Battery” contains a Trojan designed to steal money from PayPal accounts, including those that are protected by two-factor […]
December 28, 2018 by Vertical Axion
The annual list of the worst passwords in use during 2018 has just been published by SplashData. This year’s list features a number of the usual suspects, but there are also a few new entries. Here are the ten worst passwords in use, according to the data: 123456 password 123456789 12345678 12345 111111 […]
December 26, 2018 by Vertical Axion
Are you a Quora user? If so, you’re certainly not alone. It is the internet’s most popular question-and-answer website, which makes it a unique property in the social media ecosystem. Unfortunately, the site recently suffered a massive data breach that exposed the personal information of about one hundred million of the site’s users. The Quora […]
December 25, 2018 by Vertical Axion
Marriott now has the dubious honor of having suffered one of the worst breaches in history. Granted, the 500 million customer records recently stolen from the company pales in comparison to Yahoo’s loss of nearly three billion customer records, but Marriott’s number is certainly nothing to scoff at. In 2016, the company acquired rival Starwood […]
December 24, 2018 by Vertical Axion
Are you one of the legions of Americans who run on Dunkin’? If so, be advised that your DD Perks Reward Account may have been compromised. The company reported that they were recently breached by a currently unknown third party, and that at least some customer information was compromised. Dunkin’ (formerly known as Dunkin Donuts) […]
December 21, 2018 by Vertical Axion
It’s no secret that ransomware attacks have been on the rise over the last couple of years. Many companies, desperate to get their files back, have resorted to simply paying the ransom and hoping the hackers act in good faith and keep their word where unlocking the files is concerned. That approach just got a […]
December 19, 2018 by Vertical Axion
Most people use Google Chrome. In fact, according to the latest statistics, Chrome has more than half the browser market share, with the rest dividing the smaller portion of the market between them. That’s relevant because recently, Google has made important changes to their browser that provide visual cues when a website you’re visiting doesn’t […]
December 18, 2018 by Vertical Axion
Have you ever created an account on Dell’s website to purchase computer equipment? If so, your account may have been compromised. As a precaution, Dell has forced password resets for every account on their site. You’ve likely already got a notification sitting in your inbox with a password rest link and additional instructions and information. […]
December 17, 2018 by Vertical Axion
In recent months, security researchers have unearthed all sorts of new hardware vulnerabilities. Several of them allow hackers to quietly assume control of your PC’s built-in camera or microphone, giving them the ability to spy on you and invade your privacy at will. Normally this is accomplished when a hacker can trick you into downloading […]
December 14, 2018 by Vertical Axion
Akamai has discovered a nasty new hack that’s allowing cybercriminals to move beyond simply compromising routers, but also, in some instances, to use the compromised routers to take control of other machines sitting behind it on your network. The hack, known as UPnProxy exploits weaknesses in the design of the UPnP services installed on many […]
December 13, 2018 by Vertical Axion
Bob Diachenko, the Director of Cyber Risk Research for Hacken, recently made a disturbing discovery. He found an ElasticSearch server open and vulnerable on the internet, without so much as a password to protect it. Unfortunately, the server was leaking a staggering 73GB of data and had a number of databases cached inside the server’s […]
