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July 4, 2018 by Vertical Axion
Menlo Security has recently published a new report that will probably dismay you if you’re a business owner. Microsoft Office has been named as the attack vector of choice for hackers around the world. The most common form of the attack is a malicious Word document or other office document attached to an innocent looking […]
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July 3, 2018 by Vertical Axion
Researchers at Okta Security have stumbled across something big. Recently, they discovered a flaw in Apple’s OS that would have allowed hackers to completely undermine Apple’s code signing process. While at first glance that doesn’t sound so bad, the implications are terrifying. In a nutshell, code signing uses cryptographic “signatures” to verify and validate code. […]
July 2, 2018 by Vertical Axion
Do you use Cortana? It’s a handy virtual assistant (like Siri) built into Windows 10. Unfortunately, as useful as she is, there’s a problem. Even if you don’t use Cortana yourself, take heed: Microsoft has recently issued a security update based on findings by McAfee researchers. It turns out that Cortana can be “summoned” from […]
June 30, 2018 by Vertical Axion
File this one away under “confirming things we already knew.” A recent study conducted jointly by Blink and Trusona confirmed that people just don’t like passwords very much. Their study tracked the login behavior of 148 participants over a three-week period. Without knowing the true purpose of the study, participants were asked to log into […]
June 29, 2018 by Vertical Axion
What’s old is new again. Hackers have recently begun re-deploying a decade-old trick called ‘ZeroFont’ to get around Microsoft’s security filters and deliver phishing and spam emails to Office 365 email accounts. The gimmick? Zero-point fonts. As anyone with even passing familiarity to Office 365 knows, if you’re drafting a document, you can change the […]
June 28, 2018 by Vertical Axion
How many web apps do you have on your phone? Probably a ton. Here’s something you likely didn’t know. Based on the latest research from Positive Technologies, nearly half of them (48 percent) are vulnerable to unauthorized access. As bad as that is, it’s just the tip of the proverbial iceberg. Here are some […]
June 27, 2018 by Vertical Axion
Malicious code can wind up on your PC or phone by any number of roads. Companies do their best to guard the digital passes, but invariably, things get missed and the hackers find a way in. It’s a constant battle, and sadly, one that the good guys are losing. Recently Google has stepped up its […]
June 26, 2018 by Vertical Axion
More bad news for Intel. Yet another security flaw has been identified in the processors the company makes. This one is so newly discovered that the full technical details have yet to be released. Here’s what we know so far, from a recent Intel announcement: “System software may opt to utilize Lazy FP state restore […]
June 25, 2018 by Vertical Axion
Being “number 1” isn’t always a good thing. Rapid7 has just published their third annual “National Exposure Index,” and unfortunately, the United States has the dubious honor of being the nation most at risk for a cyber attack on its core services. The group’s methodology for ranking national exposure comes down to tracking the number […]
June 22, 2018 by Vertical Axion
Facebook is in hot water again. Recently, the company admitted that while testing a new feature on the site, they inadvertently made public the posts of more than fourteen million users. The incident occurred between May 18th and May 22nd and occurred when Facebook was testing a new “Featured Posts” enhancement. The goal was that […]
June 21, 2018 by Vertical Axion
Another week, another new threat. This time, in the form of a new strain of malware that researchers are calling InvisiMole. The new threat was discovered by researchers at ESET, who found it on a number of hacked computers in Russia and the Ukraine. While the researchers have yet to trace the software back to […]
June 19, 2018 by Vertical Axion
Cyber-criminals around the world are increasingly focusing their attention on job seekers. According to the security firm Flashpoint, there has been a notable uptick in ploys involving phony job listings that attempt to get job seekers to give up personal information. Perhaps the biggest surprise is the fact that this is only now becoming a […]
June 18, 2018 by Vertical Axion
Another week, another high-profile data breach, but this one can be filed under “Missed Opportunity.” The site in question is “TicketFly,” which is a web-based event ticket sales website owned by a company called Eventbrite. The TicketFly website was down since May 31st, and the normal homepage had been replaced by an image of Guy […]
June 13, 2018 by Vertical Axion
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 […]
June 11, 2018 by Vertical Axion
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 […]
June 9, 2018 by Vertical Axion
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 […]
June 6, 2018 by Vertical Axion
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 […]
June 5, 2018 by Vertical Axion
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. […]
June 1, 2018 by Vertical Axion
The news just keeps getting worse for Equifax. The company has already had to revise their estimates of how many people were impacted by last year’s breach more than once, and now, they’re having to revise their estimate yet again. This latest revision comes after company officials had to testify before Congress, which has been […]
May 31, 2018 by Vertical Axion
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 […]
May 29, 2018 by Vertical Axion
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 […]
May 28, 2018 by Vertical Axion
There’s a new security threat to be worried about, and security professionals are warning that it could be very bad indeed. The new malware is known as the “Vega Stealer,” and is currently being used in a relatively simplistic phishing campaign designed to harvest financial data that has been saved in both Google Chrome and […]
May 26, 2018 by Vertical Axion
An identity threat company called 4iQ has recently published a report called “Identities in the Wild: The Tsunami of Breached Identities Continues.” Unfortunately, the information in the report contains all bad news. Some of the details are simply confirmations of things we already knew, and some are shocking statistics that will leave you feeling dismayed. […]
May 25, 2018 by Vertical Axion
Depending on which side of the privacy debate you’re on, you’re either going to love or hate this announcement: “Fitbit intends to use Google’s new Cloud Healthcare API to help the company integrate further into the healthcare system, such as by connecting user data with electronic medical records.” Rarely has a single sentence been so […]
