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August 15, 2016 by Vertical Axion
USB drives. They’re ubiquitous. They’re everywhere. You probably have several floating around your office, or nearby. We tend to use them so often that we don’t even think about it, and that’s a potential problem. At a recent Black Hat hacking convention, a demonstration was performed that proved just how easy it is to gain […]
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August 13, 2016 by Vertical Axion
If you have a Yahoo email account, you’re not alone. The company is one of the largest free email account providers on the internet, which unfortunately means that when they suffer a data breach, it tends to impact a lot of users. Back in 2012, Yahoo reported a data breach which they estimated impacted about […]
August 12, 2016 by Vertical Axion
Banner Health, based in Phoenix, AZ, has the dubious honor as having been the recipient of the largest healthcare related data breach so far in 2016. The cyberattack was launched on June 17, and potentially impacts 3.7 million Banner Health patients. Not only is the number of patient records exposed noteworthy and disconcerting, but so […]
August 11, 2016 by Vertical Axion
Does your company currently have a formal email policy? If you don’t, you need one, and sooner, rather than later. As the first “killer app” in the world of computing, email is, to this day, one of the most widely used communications tools in business. Unfortunately, it’s also the source of the most breaches and […]
August 10, 2016 by Vertical Axion
In recent months, we’ve seen an upsurge in the number of attacks that have been executed by exploiting wireless peripherals attached to computers. Hackers can even intercept signals sent to your PC via wireless mouse and use them for their own purposes. If they can do it to a wireless mouse, then a keyboard is […]
August 9, 2016 by Vertical Axion
Public WiFi is ubiquitous. Pretty much anywhere you go these days, you’re going to find a free network you can connect to. Stop in to grab some coffee, free WiFi. Grab lunch at the restaurant downtown? Free WiFi. It’s everywhere, and that’s at least part of the problem. At this year’s Democratic National Convention, security […]
August 8, 2016 by Vertical Axion
The FBI has recently shut down a particularly nefarious ad server called the AdGholas group, which used a new and innovative method of infecting computers and managed to avoid detection for several months. The hackers employed advanced steganography techniques via code embedded in graphics files, which marks the first time in history that malware has […]
August 6, 2016 by Vertical Axion
Video streaming services like Netflix, Amazon Prime, Hulu Plus, and others are becoming so ubiquitous that they’re a fixture in everyday life for tens of millions of people. Unfortunately, hackers have proven incredibly adept at taking well known, popular trends and turning them against us. The latest example of this used Netflix as a springboard. […]
August 4, 2016 by Vertical Axion
According to security company Infoblox, a staggering 83% of the networks they’ve studied contain some form of malicious activity. The news is as staggering as it is grim, but if there’s a silver lining to be found in the report, it is that the company has broken out the biggest and most commonly found threats. […]
August 3, 2016 by Vertical Axion
The annual “Cost of a Data Breach” study has been released, and the results aren’t pretty or encouraging. Between 2013 and now, the total cost to a company hit by a data breach is a staggering $4 million, which is a nearly 30% increase over the last three years. Worse, between 2014 and 2015, we […]
July 30, 2016 by Vertical Axion
If your company deals with protected health information, then you know what a maze of regulation HIPAA rules can be. The Federal government has recently signaled just how seriously they take data breaches, by fining Oregon Health & Science University $2.7 million for two breaches that impacted a total of 7,066 individuals. Compared to other […]
July 28, 2016 by Vertical Axion
Security researchers at the firm ESET have recently warned of a total of 8 apps found on the Google Play store. These apps, at first glance, appear to be designed to help users increase their number of followers on various social media platforms, and as such, may have found their way on a variety of […]
July 27, 2016 by Vertical Axion
Last July, Android users got a nasty surprise. The surprise came in the form of a new type of attack directed against smartphones. Dubbed “Stagefright,” it allowed a hacker to assume total control over the target device, simply by sending a properly encoded multimedia message to it. The bug that allowed this type of attack […]
July 26, 2016 by Vertical Axion
How solid is your firm’s web security? According to recent findings by the penetration expert Ilia Kolochenko, probably not very good. Kolochenko should know. He is the CEO of High-Tech Bridge, and he and his research team have just finished an extensive review of business internet vulnerabilities. The results aren’t pretty. The two biggest highlights […]
July 22, 2016 by Vertical Axion
Vectra Networks has found an old, longstanding vulnerability in Windows, and it comes from a rather unexpected source. Printers. Way back in 2007, an eternity ago in the world of tech, Microsoft introduced a convenient new feature that was widely lauded by network administrators. This service called Microsoft Web Point-and-Print stated its purpose was to […]
July 21, 2016 by Vertical Axion
By now, the headlines will scarcely surprise anyone. Yet another business has suffered a major data breach. This time, it was Omni Hotels, a luxury hotel chain. The breach, which was discovered on May 30, 2016, began December 23, 2015 and was not completely eradicated from the company’s network until June 14, 2016. Unfortunately, we […]
July 20, 2016 by Vertical Axion
The world’s hackers are branching out. No longer content to simply breach the digital fortresses that today’s businesses and governments have become, they’re now beginning to turn their attention to automobiles, too. In recent weeks, four vehicles with electronic key FOBs and digital security measures have been stolen. No trace of them has been found […]
July 19, 2016 by Vertical Axion
In the old days, before the rise of the iPad and iPhone, hackers were mostly content to leave Apple alone. They had such a tiny slice of the computer market that it was generally deemed as being more trouble than it was worth to create a virus that would only impact such a small number […]
July 18, 2016 by Vertical Axion
Identity theft is a large, pervasive, and growing problem. In fact, statistics show that the instances of identity theft jumped a staggering 57% last year alone, this, according to figures from the fraud-prevention service Cifas. The firm’s research into the increase of identity theft found that much of the growth has seen fraudsters targeting a […]
July 16, 2016 by Vertical Axion
Most people engaged in legitimate business have no idea just how profitable hacking can be. Hummingbad is a case in point. Part of the “Hummer” family of Trojans, this bit of malware is the most widely installed Trojan on the mobile device ecosystem, impacting more than two billion Android users worldwide. The Trojan originated in […]
July 15, 2016 by Vertical Axion
Security researchers from Cisco’s Talos Group have discovered a huge and disturbing spike in spam emails containing a widely used ransomware called Zepto. In fact, the team has uncovered 137,731 such emails over just a four-day period, containing more than three thousand unique samples. These emails use simple social engineering tricks to give them a […]
July 14, 2016 by Vertical Axion
Ransomware has become one of the fastest growing cybercrimes of 2016. Worse, these attacks are growing in their sophistication, and the hackers deploying ransomware have been upping their game by branching out onto different systems. As evidence, according to data provided by Kaspersky Lab, the number of users being attacked by mobile ransomware has quadrupled […]
July 13, 2016 by Vertical Axion
Hard Rock Hotel & Casino has had some hard luck when it comes to data breaches. Last year, the company admitted that hackers had breached their POS (Point of Sale) credit card processing system from September 2014 through April of 2015, swiping credit card numbers, expiration dates, and card holder names. Now, they’ve admitted a […]
July 11, 2016 by Vertical Axion
Ransomware is becoming an epidemic. It’s one of the fastest growing kinds of attacks we’re seeing in 2016, and the hacking community has shown a tremendous appetite for expanding the scope and scale of their operations. PCs and laptops were, of course, obvious targets for this kind of attack, but we’re now seeing strains of […]
