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“We are what we pretend to be, so we must be careful about what we pretend to be.” ― Kurt Vonnegut
Website hosting provider cPanel is calling on some users to change their passwords after it informed them on Friday that hackers compromised one of its technical support department’s servers. The hosting provider does not know for certain the extent of the hack or what, if any, information was stolen during the compromise.
For some time, attackers had the ability to bypass Google’s two-step authentication system through access to users’ app-specific passwords, giving them full access to victims’ Google accounts, including Gmail. The vulnerability that enables this attack, discovered by researchers from DuoSecurity, has been patched by Google.
Representative Ed Markey (D-MA) is urging the Chairman of the House Committee on Energy and Commerce, Fred Upton (R-MI), to take immediate action toward passing the Grid Reliability and Infrastructure Defense (GRID) Act, which Markey calls a bipartisan bill aimed at hardening the nation’s electrical grid and critical infrastructure against cyberattacks.
An enterprising cybercriminal has opened an underground shop that peddles access to American PayPal accounts which are then accessible through an anonymous proxy service.
W32/Autorun.worm.aaeb-h is an evolved, virtual machine-aware AutoRun worm that makes use of obfuscation and polymorphic techniques in order to evade detection and infect removable media and mounted network shares, according to McAfee.Researchers have seen an increase in samples for the year-old malware family, which is compiled in Visual Basic 6.
Good passwords are hard to remember while passwords that are easily remembered are often just as easily guessed. Therein lies the reason passwords are such a security headache. The race to replace passwords is ever-present in the security industry, and the newest entrant is the smart-watch.
Android application developer Dan Nolan claims that the Google Play store sends software developers the names, approximated locations, and email addresses of every individual that downloads one of their applications.
The Government Accountability Office has determined that the Federal Communications Commission failed to properly implement necessary security controls in the initial phases of its Enhanced Secured Networks project, and, as a result, FCC data remains vulnerable to “unnecessary risk of inadvertent or deliberate misuse, improper disclosure, or destruction.”
For all intents and purposes, the Heartland Payment Systems data breach saga ended more than two years ago when the embattled payment processor finalized settlements paying out millions of dollars to various banks, credit card issuers and consumers. That is until a handful of banks reportedly requested the Fifth Circuit reopen their negligence case that stemmed from the 2008 breach.
Nearly everyone agrees that passwords are the bane of Internet security. For years, industry thinkers have somewhat vaguely referenced the need for Internet fingerprints capable of reliably verifing identities online. Yet here we are, it’s 2013 and passwords remain the primary means of authenticating users onto networks and workstations.
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