Articles about Security

Levels of attack traffic observed by F-Secure's network of decoy honeypots in 2018 increased by 32 percent over the previous year, and increased fourfold in the latter half of 2018 compared with the first half of the year.

The report suggests that many companies may not have the visibility they need to catch attacks that make it past preventative measures like firewalls and endpoint protection.

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Google's Project Zero has gone public about a "high severity" flaw in the macOS kernel after Apple failed to patch it 90 days after being told about the problem.

A security researcher discovered a problem in XNU that means it is possible to perform malicious activities. The security bug related to copy-on-write (COW) behavior, enabling an attacker to manipulate filesystem images without the operating system being notified. Apple was informed of the vulnerability back in November, but has failed to release a patch.

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Open source breaches have increased by 71 percent over the last five years, while 26 percent of companies have reported a confirmed or suspected web application breach in the past year alone according to a new report.

The study from open source governance specialist Sonatype also shows 41 percent of executives admit their company doesn’t follow an open source governance programme.

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The World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) and the FIDO Alliance have today announced that the Web Authentication (WebAuthn) specification is now an official web standard.

W3C's WebAuthn recommendation, a core component of the FIDO Alliance's FIDO2 set of specifications, is a browser/platform standard for simpler and stronger authentication.

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The US has made no secret of the fact it does not trust Huawei, and the company's hardware has been shunned by the government over fears about Chinese espionage. There have also been calls for Huawei hardware to be barred from the US power grid.

The smartphone manufacturer has previously indicated that it is not willing to go down without a fight, and this threat could be about to be put into action. Huawei is said to be preparing to sue the US government, challenging last year's addition to the US National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA), according to sources talking to the New York Times.

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With every passing year, cybercrime gets worse. It makes sense: it’s lucrative. Cybercrime is estimated to be a $1.5 trillion industry, with some countries now basing their economy around cybercrime. As a result, cybercriminals are now emboldened with new technology that makes data breach attacks easier and more accessible.

With all of that in mind, you may be wondering whether your business, in particular, is likely to suffer an attack. And even though you may have seen some statistics, the answer is a little more complicated than it seems. Here are some important cybersecurity statistics that can shed some light on what you can expect in 2019.

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Privileged accounts are a necessity in all enterprise IT environments. Administrators must have enhanced privileges to manage the environment. Unfortunately, these privileged accounts bring high risk to a company’s network; in fact, recent research shows that almost half (44 percent) of all security breaches that happened in 2017 involved privileged account access.

There are a number of reasons these privileged accounts bring such high risk with them. For example, something so simple as a password reset can mistakenly grant a user full administrative rights that can be misused either intentionally or accidentally. These accounts are also inherently difficult to manage due to the high volume of users and systems that need access to the same credentials, making it difficult to keep the credentials secure. Luckily, there are some concrete, critical steps that an organization can take to ensure risk on its network is minimized and protected from privileged account misuse.

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Facebook has been encouraging users to enable two-factor authentication to boost the security of their accounts, but it turns out that there's a slightly sinister side to this feature.

You may well have opted to maintain an element of privacy by omitting personal information such as your address and phone number from your profile. But if you've used your mobile number to secure your account with 2FA, even if it is not visible to others, it can still be used to search for you -- and there is no way to opt out of this.

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iPhones are renown for their security -- to the point that even law enforcement agencies have trouble accessing their contents. An Israeli firm, Cellebrite, became well-known when it transpired that hacking tools it made were used by the US government to crack locked iPhones… and now its hacking tools are available to buy on eBay.

For as little as $100-$1000, you can get your hands on a second-hand piece of Cellebrite equipment (a fraction of its usual selling price). For just a few Benjamins, you could get a Cellebrite UFED (Universal Forensic Extraction Device) and use it for whatever you might fancy.

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We recently reported on how formjacking has become a popular and lucrative form of online fraud. It’s difficult for the consumer to detect which makes it a particular hazard.

But in the UK the new Open Banking standard, aimed at making it easier for consumers to share financial data across organizations, could make formjacking and other frauds obsolete. We spoke to Luca Martinetti, CTO and co-founder of financial API provider TrueLayer  to find out more

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Despite the fact that in recent months we've seen cybercriminals focusing their efforts on businesses, 68 percent of infections are seen on consumer endpoints, compared to 32 percent on business endpoints.

This is one of the findings of the latest Webroot Threat Report, which also shows that legitimate websites are frequently compromised to host malicious content, with 40 percent of malicious URLs hosted on good domains.

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If you've ever tried to book tickets for a concert, festival or event you will know that it can be something of a frustrating experience, and bots could be making it even more so.

New research from Distil Networks finds 39.9 percent of traffic on ticketing sites comes from bots used by brokers, scalpers, hospitality agencies, and sundry criminals to execute a number of attacks, including denial of inventory, spinning and scalping, scraping seat map inventory, fan account takeover, and fraud.

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A new study reveals that 87 percent of cybersecurity professionals believe separating privileged environments from corporate, internet-exposed environments is highly critical for protecting sensitive information.

But the Privileged Access Workstations (PAW) survey carried out by Cybersecurity Insiders for endpoint security company Hysolate also finds that time-consuming access processes and the inability to install apps, browse the web or plug in external devices, are key implementation roadblocks.

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Security researchers from Dojo by Bullguard have discovered a vulnerability in Amazon's Ring doorbell that leaves it prone to man-in-the-middle attacks.

As well as enabling a hacker to access audio and video feeds in a severe violation of both privacy and security, the vulnerability also means that an attacker could replace a feed with footage of their own. Revealing the security flaw at Mobile World Congress, Yossi Atias from Dojo, demonstrated how a feed could be hijacked and injected with counterfeit video.

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Thanks to the huge volume of stolen credentials now available online, credential stuffing has become a major issue for the retail industry.

A new report from edge platform specialist Akamai shows that hackers directed credential abuse attempts at retail sites more than 10 billion times from May to December last year.

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