Paul Roberts

Is Google Wallet Secure? What You Need to Know

Google announced its long-awaited mobile payments platform, Google Wallet, in New York City on Thursday. The company claims it will revolutionize commerce. But with stories about massive data breaches and hacks an almost daily occurrence, consumers are most concerned about whether Google Wallet is secure. Here’s what you need to know.

Hardware Vendor Offers Backdoor with Every Product

IT administrators know there’s nothing more frustrating than losing administrative access to your network equipment. But Allied Telesis, a Japan-based maker of switches, routers and other networking devices, has a fix: guaranteed backdoors for every product.

Frontline Takes On Wikileaks Scandal

The Wikileaks scandal has dominated headlines for the better part of two years, with revelations about the leak of classified military documents, diplomatic cables and more. Now PBS’s award-winning investigative news show, Frontline, is taking a crack at Julian Assange, Bradley Manning and the rest.


Dillon Beresford, the NSS Labs researcher who disclosed serious holes in industrial control system software from Siemens says the company is downplaying the seriousness of the vulnerabilities in its public statements, and that a supposed “fix” for the vulnerabilities is inadequate. 

UPDATE: A week after a security researcher decided to cancel a technical discussion of security holes in industrial control software from Siemens, Inc., public exploits for the vulnerabilities are on hold while the company works to shore up systems running its Simatic programmable logic controller (PLC) software.

Security researcher Dillon Beresford decided not to present a talk at the TakedownCon in Dallas on Thursday, citing concerns about mayhem that could have resulted. But in an e-mail, he told Threatpost that the vulnerabilities could allow remote attackers to start or stop Siemens Programmable Logic Controllers (PLCs) and harvest information from the devices.