July, 2018

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Here's Why Your Static Website Needs HTTPS

Troy Hunt

It was Jan last year that I suggested HTTPS adoption had passed the "tipping point" , that is it had passed the moment of critical mass and as I said at the time, "will very shortly become the norm" Since that time, the percentage of web pages loaded over a secure connection has rocketed from 52% to 71% whilst the proportion of the world's top 1 million websites redirecting people to HTTPS has gone from 20% to about half (projected).

DNS 275
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Identifying People by Metadata

Schneier on Security

Interesting research: " You are your Metadata: Identification and Obfuscation of Social Media Users using Metadata Information ," by Beatrice Perez, Mirco Musolesi, and Gianluca Stringhini. Abstract: Metadata are associated to most of the information we produce in our daily interactions and communication in the digital world. Yet, surprisingly, metadata are often still categorized as non-sensitive.

Media 258
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Google: Security Keys Neutralized Employee Phishing

Krebs on Security

Google has not had any of its 85,000+ employees successfully phished on their work-related accounts since early 2017, when it began requiring all employees to use physical Security Keys in place of passwords and one-time codes, the company told KrebsOnSecurity. A YubiKey Security Key made by Yubico. The basic model featured here retails for $20. Security Keys are inexpensive USB-based devices that offer an alternative approach to two-factor authentication (2FA), which requires the user to log in

Phishing 238
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NEW TECH: DataLocker introduces encrypted flash drive — with key pad

The Last Watchdog

One sliver of the $90 billion, or so, companies are expected to spend this year on cybersecurity products and services is an estimated $85 million they will shell out for encrypted flash drives. One of more fascinating innovators in this space is 11-year-old DataLocker, based in Overland Park, Kansas. Related: How DataLocker got its start h. Co-founder Jay took a business trip to South Korea in the fall of 2007.

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Optimizing The Modern Developer Experience with Coder

Many software teams have migrated their testing and production workloads to the cloud, yet development environments often remain tied to outdated local setups, limiting efficiency and growth. This is where Coder comes in. In our 101 Coder webinar, you’ll explore how cloud-based development environments can unlock new levels of productivity. Discover how to transition from local setups to a secure, cloud-powered ecosystem with ease.

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Russian Hackers Infiltrate U.S. Electrical Utilities: Report

Adam Levin

Russian hackers have successfully infiltrated the control system rooms of U.S. electrical utilities, the Department of Homeland Security announced earlier this week. Suspected hacking groups Dragonfly and Energetic Bear infiltrated their targets using common methods including spear-phishing and watering-hole attacks. They first targeted third-party vendors associated with the utilities, which they then leveraged to steal credentials and gain access to operating systems.

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The Pentagon Is Building a Dream Team of Tech-Savvy Soldiers

WIRED Threat Level

For years the Army has tried to recruit talent from Silicon Valley. A new initiative aims to nurture the rising technologists within its own ranks, too.

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Defeating the iPhone Restricted Mode

Schneier on Security

Recently, Apple introduced restricted mode to protect iPhones from attacks by companies like Cellebrite and Greyshift , which allow attackers to recover information from a phone without the password or fingerprint. Elcomsoft just announced that it can easily bypass it. There is an important lesson in this: security is hard. Apple Computer has one of the best security teams on the planet.

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LifeLock Bug Exposed Millions of Customer Email Addresses

Krebs on Security

Identity theft protection firm LifeLock — a company that’s built a name for itself based on the promise of helping consumers protect their identities online — may have actually exposed customers to additional attacks from ID thieves and phishers. The company just fixed a vulnerability on its site that allowed anyone with a Web browser to index email addresses associated with millions of customer accounts, or to unsubscribe users from all communications from the company.

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How ‘digital transformation’ gave birth to a new breed of criminal: ‘machine-identity thieves’

The Last Watchdog

There’s a new breed of identity thief at work plundering consumers and companies. However, these fraudsters don’t really care about snatching up your credentials or mine. By now, your personal information and mine has been hacked multiple times and is readily on sale in the Dark Web. This has long been true of the vast majority of Americans. Related article: 7 hacks signaling a coming global cyber war.

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14 Million Verizon Customers Affected by Data Compromise

Adam Levin

The personal data for up to 14 million Verizon customers was discovered on an unprotected web server in late June by a cyber risk researcher. The Verizon customer data was posted to a publicly-accessible Amazon Web Server by an employee of Nice Systems, which is an enterprise software company. Included in this data was a wide range of personal information associated with anyone who had contacted Verizon’s customer service representatives over the last several months.

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The Tumultuous IT Landscape Is Making Hiring More Difficult

After a year of sporadic hiring and uncertain investment areas, tech leaders are scrambling to figure out what’s next. This whitepaper reveals how tech leaders are hiring and investing for the future. Download today to learn more!

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Facebook Gave Russian Internet Giant Special Data Extension

WIRED Threat Level

Mail.ru also ran hundreds of apps on Facebook at a time when the platform’s policies allowed app developers to collect their users' friends' data.

Internet 111
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Why No HTTPS? Here's the World's Largest Websites Not Redirecting Insecure Requests to HTTPS

Troy Hunt

As of today, Google begins shipping Chrome 68 which flags all sites served over the HTTP scheme as being "not secure" This is because the connection is, well, not secure so it seems like a fairly reasonable thing to say! We've known this has been coming for a long time now both through observing the changes in the industry and Google specifically saying "this is coming" Yet somehow, we've arrived at today with a sizable chunk of the web still serving traffic insecurely: The major

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New Report on Chinese Intelligence Cyber-Operations

Schneier on Security

The company ProtectWise just published a long report linking a bunch of Chinese cyber-operations over the past few years. The always interesting gruqq has some interesting commentary on the group and its tactics. Lots of detailed information in the report, but I admit that I have never heard of ProtectWise or its research team 401TRG. Independent corroboration of this information would be helpful.

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Hackers Breached Virginia Bank Twice in Eight Months, Stole $2.4M

Krebs on Security

Hackers used phishing emails to break into a Virginia bank in two separate cyber intrusions over an eight-month period, making off with more than $2.4 million total. Now the financial institution is suing its insurance provider for refusing to fully cover the losses. According to a lawsuit filed last month in the Western District of Virginia, the first heist took place in late May 2016, after an employee at The National Bank of Blacksburg fell victim to a targeted phishing email.

Banking 194
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The Importance of User Roles and Permissions in Cybersecurity Software

How many people would you trust with your house keys? Chances are, you have a handful of trusted friends and family members who have an emergency copy, but you definitely wouldn’t hand those out too freely. You have stuff that’s worth protecting—and the more people that have access to your belongings, the higher the odds that something will go missing.

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MY TAKE: Here’s why identities are the true firewalls, especially as digital transformation unfolds

The Last Watchdog

Was it really that long ago that company networks were comprised of a straightforward cluster of servers, data bases, applications and user devices corralled largely on premises? Related article: Taking a ‘zero-trust’ approach to authentication. In today’s digitally transformed environment, companies must monitor and defend systems housed on-premises and in overlapping public and private clouds.

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10 More Women in Security You May Not Know But Should

Dark Reading

The second installment in a series highlighting women who are driving change in cybersecurity but may not be on your radar - yet.

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A Landmark Legal Shift Opens Pandora’s Box for DIY Guns

WIRED Threat Level

Cody Wilson makes digital files that let anyone 3-D print untraceable guns. The government tried to stop him. He sued—and won.

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Microsoft MVP Award, Year 8

Troy Hunt

Back in 2011, Microsoft gave me the rather awesome (IMHO) Most Valuable Professional Award for the first time. This is Microsoft's award for community leadership within a technology discipline which for me at the time, was developer security. I'm confident that award came largely due to the work I did on the OWASP Top 10 for.NET Developers series , a 10-part epic blog series that set me on the path to where I am today.

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IDC Analyst Report: The Open Source Blind Spot Putting Businesses at Risk

In a recent study, IDC found that 64% of organizations said they were already using open source in software development with a further 25% planning to in the next year. Most organizations are unaware of just how much open-source code is used and underestimate their dependency on it. As enterprises grow the use of open-source software, they face a new challenge: understanding the scope of open-source software that's being used throughout the organization and the corresponding exposure.

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Gas Pump Hack

Schneier on Security

This is weird : Police in Detroit are looking for two suspects who allegedly managed to hack a gas pump and steal over 600 gallons of gasoline, valued at about $1,800. The theft took place in the middle of the day and went on for about 90 minutes, with the gas station attendant unable to thwart the hackers. The theft, reported by Fox 2 Detroit , took place at around 1pm local time on June 23 at a Marathon gas station located about 15 minutes from downtown Detroit.

Hacking 193
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State Govts. Warned of Malware-Laden CD Sent Via Snail Mail from China

Krebs on Security

Here’s a timely reminder that email isn’t the only vector for phishing attacks: Several U.S. state and local government agencies have reported receiving strange letters via snail mail that include malware-laden compact discs (CDs) apparently sent from China, KrebsOnSecurity has learned. This particular ruse, while crude and simplistic, preys on the curiosity of recipients who may be enticed into popping the CD into a computer.

Malware 188
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GUEST ESSAY: Theft of MQ-9 Reaper docs highlights need to better protect ‘high-value assets’

The Last Watchdog

The discovery of sensitive U.S. military information for sale on the Dark Web for a nominal sum, in and of itself, is unfortunate and unremarkable. However, details of the underlying hack , ferreted out and shared by researchers of the Insikt Group, an arm of the security research firm Recorded Future, are most welcomed. They help frame wider questions, and pave the way for improved best practices.

Internet 145
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Oracle Sets All-Time Record with July Critical Patch Update

Threatpost

July's critical patch update addresses 334 security vulnerabilities (including 61 rated critical) covering a vast swathe of the Oracle enterprise portfolio.

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Beware of Pixels & Trackers on U.S. Healthcare Websites

The healthcare industry has massively adopted web tracking tools, including pixels and trackers. Tracking tools on user-authenticated and unauthenticated web pages can access personal health information (PHI) such as IP addresses, medical record numbers, home and email addresses, appointment dates, or other info provided by users on pages and thus can violate HIPAA Rules that govern the Use of Online Tracking Technologies by HIPAA Covered Entities and Business Associates.

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How Cloudflare Uses Lava Lamps to Guard Against Hackers

WIRED Threat Level

Inside Cloudflare's San Francisco office, 100 units of Edward Craven Walker’s groovy hardware help guard the internet.

Internet 112
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Seamless A/B Testing, Deployment Slots and DNS Rollover with Azure Functions and Cloudflare Workers

Troy Hunt

Two of my favourite developer things these days are Azure Functions and Cloudflare Workers. They're both "serverless" in that rather than running on your own slice of infrastructure, that concept is abstracted away and you get to focus on just code executions rather than the logical bounds of the server it runs on. So for example, when you have an Azure function and you deploy it under a consumption plan , you pay for per-second resource consumption (how much memory you use for how long)

DNS 127
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Department of Commerce Report on the Botnet Threat

Schneier on Security

Last month, the US Department of Commerce released a report on the threat of botnets and what to do about it. I note that it explicitly said that the IoT makes the threat worse, and that the solutions are largely economic. The Departments determined that the opportunities and challenges in working toward dramatically reducing threats from automated, distributed attacks can be summarized in six principal themes.

Marketing 183
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‘LuminosityLink RAT’ Author Pleads Guilty

Krebs on Security

A 21-year-old Kentucky man has pleaded guilty to authoring and distributing a popular hacking tool called “ LuminosityLink ,” a malware strain that security experts say was used by thousands of customers to gain unauthorized access to tens of thousands of computers across 78 countries worldwide. The LuminosityLink Remote Access Tool (RAT) was sold for $40 to thousands of customers, who used the tool to gain unauthorized access to tens of thousands of computers worldwide.

Marketing 156
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Software Composition Analysis: The New Armor for Your Cybersecurity

Speaker: Blackberry, OSS Consultants, & Revenera

Software is complex, which makes threats to the software supply chain more real every day. 64% of organizations have been impacted by a software supply chain attack and 60% of data breaches are due to unpatched software vulnerabilities. In the U.S. alone, cyber losses totaled $10.3 billion in 2022. All of these stats beg the question, “Do you know what’s in your software?

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GUEST ESSAY: How SIEMS, UEBAs fall short in today’s turbulent threat landscape

The Last Watchdog

Understanding today’s cybersecurity landscape is complex. The amount of threats aimed at enterprises is staggering. More than 230,000 new malware samples are launched every day. The average small and medium-size business experiences a cyber attack 44 times every day. And the cost of damage directly related to cybercrime is adding up, expected to reach $6 trillion by 2021.

CISO 140
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Ransomware vs. Cryptojacking

Dark Reading

Cybercriminals are increasingly turning to cryptojacking over ransomware for a bigger payday. Here's what enterprises need to know in order to protect their digital assets and bank accounts.

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The Worst Cybersecurity Breaches of 2018 So Far

WIRED Threat Level

There haven't been as many hacks and attacks compared to this time last year, but that's where the good news ends.

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Pwned Passwords V3 is Now Live!

Troy Hunt

Over recent weeks, I've begun planning the release of the 3rd version of Pwned Passwords. If you cast your mind back, version 1 came along in August last year and contained 320M passwords. I made all the data downloadable as SHA-1 hashes (for reasons explained in that post) and stood up a basic API to enable anyone to query it by plain text password or hash.

Passwords 126
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The Cloud Development Environment Adoption Report

Cloud Development Environments (CDEs) are changing how software teams work by moving development to the cloud. Our Cloud Development Environment Adoption Report gathers insights from 223 developers and business leaders, uncovering key trends in CDE adoption. With 66% of large organizations already using CDEs, these platforms are quickly becoming essential to modern development practices.