Ethical hackers help organizations avoid cyber incidents
Ethical hacking company HackerOne has announced that its ethical hacker community has surpassed $300 million in total all-time rewards on the HackerOne platform.
The company's 2023 Hacker-Powered Security Report also shows 30 hackers have earned more than a million dollars on the platform, with one hacker surpassing four million dollars in total earnings.
Almost 8 million DDoS attacks launched in first half of 2023
Cybercriminals have launched approximately 7.9 million DDoS attacks in the first half of 2023, representing a 31 percent year-on-year increase.
A new report from NETSCOUT shows global events like the Russia-Ukraine war and recent NATO bids have driven recent DDoS attack growth.
The IT assets that could put your organization at risk
Attackers are always looking for routes that will offer them a way into organizations' networks. New research released today by Armis shows the devices that are most likely to pose a threat.
Interestingly the list includes various personal devices as well as business assets, suggesting attackers care more about their potential access to assets rather than the type and reinforcing the need for security teams to account for all physical and virtual assets as part of their security strategy.
Millions of Freecycle users need to change their passwords following a huge data breach
Swap-unwanted-stuff-for-free site Freecycle has acknowledged a security breach that took place at the end of last month. Hackers were able to access a wealth of data including usernames, User IDs, email addresses and passwords.
The organization says that it has notified the "appropriate US authorities" of the incident, as well as the Information Commissioner's Offier (ICO) in the UK. Few details of what happened have been revealed, but Freecycle is advising all members to change their account passwords as a security measure.
Getting colder -- cutting the risk of thermal attacks
Earlier this week we reported on a technique that could determine a password by listening to keystrokes. Just in case you weren't worried enough by that, today we learn of the risk of passwords being compromised by 'thermal attacks'.
These use heat-sensitive cameras to read the traces of fingerprints left on surfaces like smartphone screens, computer keyboards and PIN pads. Hackers can then use the relative intensity of heat traces across recently-touched surfaces to reconstruct users' passwords.
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Hacking hybrid: Closing security gaps in a distributed workforce
When, where, and how we work has evolved. And in the past few years, the rise of flexible working patterns has helped improve employee wellbeing and created new opportunities to innovate. According to the Office of National Statistics, 44 percent of people in the UK work in a hybrid model -- making it almost as common as commuting to the office.
At the same time, these new freedoms have ushered in new priorities for security teams. Securing the enterprise is now more complex because the perimeter has become blurred. To address this, focus must be put on securing endpoints, such as PCs and printers -- the "ground zero" for most attacks. New cybersecurity strategies are needed to prevent, detect, and contain cyber-threats, but also enhance remote PC management to mitigate the risks associated with lost or stolen devices.
AI will outperform the average hacker in five years -- say hackers
The latest 'In the Mind of a Hacker' report from Bugcrowd, which includes responses from 1,000 white hat hackers across 85 countries, finds 55 percent saying that generative AI can already outperform hackers or will be able to do so within the next five years.
But despite this, hackers aren't especially worried about being replaced, with 72 percent saying that generative AI will not be able to replicate the creativity of human hackers.
Hacking and why it can be good for cybersecurity [Q&A]
Hacking tends to have something of a bad name, but there are many hackers who do good work, identifying flaws before they can be exploited in cyberattacks.
However, many of these people operate in the shadows for fear of being prosecuted for violating legislation. We talked to Laurie Mercer, director of sales engineering at security platform HackerOne, to discuss whether ethical hackers need to be more open about their activities in order to bring about change and how ethical hacking is making organizations safer.
77 percent of UK citizens are concerned about online privacy
A new survey shows that 77 percent of people in the UK are concerned about the privacy of their data online, but 15 percent don't do anything at all to protect themselves online.
The study, carried out for Proton by YouGov, reveals concern is even greater among those who have been a victim of a hack, or know someone who has.
How long would it take to crack your password?
Thankfully the days of organizations storing passwords in plain text are pretty much gone. Most are now hashed using algorithms that prevent hackers from reading the database easily.
But, as new research from Specops Software reveals, that doesn't necessarily make things safe. The quality of the password itself has a big impact on how long it will take to crack.
From a hacker's cheat sheet to malware… to bio weapons? ChatGPT is easily abused, and that's a big problem
There's probably no one who hasn't heard of ChatGPT, an AI-powered chatbot that can generate human-like responses to text prompts. While it's not without its flaws, ChatGPT is scarily good at being a jack-of-all-trades: it can write software, a film script and everything in between. ChatGPT was built on top of GPT-3.5, OpenAI’s large language model, which was the most advanced at the time of the chatbot's release last November.
Fast forward to March, and OpenAI unveiled GPT-4, an upgrade to GPT-3.5. The new language model is larger and more versatile than its predecessor. Although its capabilities have yet to be fully explored, it is already showing great promise. For example, GPT-4 can suggest new compounds, potentially aiding drug discovery, and create a working website from just a notebook sketch.
Understanding the business model of cybercrime
As businesses get bigger they begin to gain extra layers of management and start to behave in different ways. A new report from Trend Micro reveals that the same is true for cybercrime groups.
A typical large cybercrime organization allocates 80 percent of its operating expenses to wages, with the figure similarly high (78 percent) for smaller criminal organizations, according to the report.
Reddit reveals details of security incident that gave hackers access to internal documents, code and internal business systems
Reddit has fallen victim to a security incident that has been described as a "sophisticated and highly-targeted phishing attack". Hackers targeted employees of the site a few days ago, and were able to gain access to "some internal documents, code, and some internal business systems".
The unknown attackers sent Reddit employees "plausible-sounding prompts" leading to a website that cloned the behavior of the company's intranet gateway. While able to use an employee's credentials to steal data and code, user accounts are not affected.
You don't have to be clever to be a cybercriminal
Cybercriminals don't need to be clever and use inventive hacking exploits to breach systems as organizations are making things too easy for them, says a new report.
Intelligence-led computer security testing company SE Labs has released its annual Cyber Threat Intelligence report with a warning that CEOs need to take cybersecurity seriously or risk falling into the clutches of criminals eager to take their data and their money.
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