Dennis Fisher

About

Dennis Fisher is a journalist with more than 13 years of experience covering information security.

Plaintext Credentials Threaten RLE Wind Turbine HMI

A week after disclosing a cross-site request forgery vulnerability in small wind turbines manufactured by a company called XZERES, a security researcher has discovered a serious bug in the human-machine interface for turbines made by German company RLE International GmbH. Researcher Maxim Rupp discovered the vulnerability in the Nova-Wind Turbine HMI and reported it to the vendor. […]

FBI Investigating Alleged Attack on Houston Astros

In one of the more bizarre alleged hacking stories to emerge recently, federal authorities are investigating whether employees of the St. Louis Cardinals hacked into systems belonging to the Houston Astros and got access to internal team conversations about players, trades, scouting reports, and other sensitive information. The alleged attack against the Astros’ network is the focus […]

Amazon Transparency Report Shows Few Requests For User Data

Amazon has released its first transparency report, and for a company as large as Amazon, there is surprisingly little in the way of detail or explanation in the report. The company reported that it received 813 subpoenas, 25 search warrants, and 0-249 national security requests. Of the 813 subpoenas Amazon received in the first five […]


The attackers behind the recently disclosed Duqu 2.0 APT have used stolen digital certificates to help sneak their malware past security defenses, and one of the certificates used in the attacks was issued to Foxconn, the Chinese company that manufactures products for Apple, BlackBerry, Dell, and many other companies. Researchers at Kaspersky Lab, who discovered […]

The Yoast WordPress SEO plugin, which has been downloaded more than 14 million times, has a serious cross-site scripting vulnerability that can allow an attacker to force a vulnerable site to execute arbitrary HTML code. The bug may have been reported to the plugin’s developer as long as two years ago, but it was still […]

UPDATE–As the debate over potential government interference with encryption technologies rages in countries around the world, Congress is now going down a different path, asking technology companies whether it’s feasible and potentially effective for certificate authorities to restricting the way that government-owned CAs can issue certificates. Members of the House Committee on Energy and Commerce […]

The Duqu attackers, who are considered by researchers to be at the top of the food chain of APT groups and are responsible for attacking certificate authorities and perhaps spying on Iran’s nuclear program, have resurfaced with a new platform that was used to compromise high-profile victims, including some related to the Iran nuclear talks […]

Apple is encouraging developers who create apps for iOS to begin moving their apps to an HTTPS-only model as soon as possible in an effort to thwart eavesdropping on insecure, plaintext HTTP connections. The move is yet one more sign that major Internet and technology companies are becoming ever more resistant to large-scale, passive surveillance […]