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Secunia has reported that an unpatched security vulnerability in the 64-bit version of Windows 7 may be able to be exploited to inject and execute malicious code; currently, the only known exploit causes the system to crash.
It is possible to trigger a memory error in the system file win32k.sys by accessing a crafted HTML file in Safari. | https://www.ntcompatible.com/news/story/highly_critical_zero_day_vulnerability_in_windows_discovered.html |
When using NuGet 3.x this package requires at least version 3.4.
This is a prerelease version of System. Security. Cryptography. Cng.
There is a newer version of this package available.
See the version list below for details.
For projects that support PackageReference, copy this XML node into the project file to reference the package.
paket add System. Security. Cryptography. Cng --version 5.0.0-preview.4.20251.6
#r "nuget: System. Security. Cryptography. Cng, 5.0.0-preview.4.20251.6" #r directive can be used in F# Interactive, C# scripting and .NET Interactive. Copy this into the interactive tool or source code of the script to reference the package.
// Install System. Security. Cryptography. Cng as a Cake Tool
#tool nuget:?package=System. Security. Cryptography. Cng&version=5.0.0-preview.4.20251.6&prerelease
The NuGet Team does not provide support for this client. Please contact its maintainers for support.
System. Runtime. System. Security. Cryptography. Algorithms (>= 4.3.0)
System. Security. Cryptography. System. Runtime. System. Security. Cryptography. System. Security. Cryptography. System. Security. Cryptography. System. Runtime. InteropServices (>= 4.3.0)
System. Security. Cryptography. System. Security. Cryptography. Encoding (>= 4.3.0)
System. Security. Cryptography. Primitives (>= 4.3.0)
6.0.0-preview.2.21154.6 3,910 3/11/2021 6.0.0-preview.1.21102.12 1,593 2/12/2021 5.0.0 3,500,403 11/9/2020 5.0.0-rc.2.20475.5 12,534 10/13/2020 5.0.0-rc.1.20451.14 12,119 9/14/2020 5.0.0-preview.8.20407.11 58,397 8/25/2020 5.0.0-preview.7.20364.11 17,327 7/21/2020 5.0.0-preview.6.20305.6 7,542 6/25/2020 5.0.0-preview.5.20278.1 3,320 6/10/2020 5.0.0-preview.4.20251.6 8,493 5/18/2020
4.7.0-preview3.19551.4 12,927 11/13/2019 4.7.0-preview2.19523.17 7,719 11/1/2019 4.7.0-preview1.19504.10 10,931 10/15/2019
4.6.0-rc1.19456.4 19,805 9/16/2019 4.6.0-preview9.19421.4 6,228 9/4/2019 4.6.0-preview9.19416.11 370 9/4/2019 4.6.0-preview8.19405.3 36,927 8/13/2019 4.6.0-preview7.19362.9 17,414 7/23/2019 4.6.0-preview6.19303.8 44,339 6/12/2019 4.6.0-preview6.19264.9 365 9/4/2019 4.6.0-preview5.19224.8 5,408 5/6/2019 4.6.0-preview4.19212.13 1,964 4/18/2019 4.6.0-preview3.19128.7 11,717 3/6/2019 4.6.0-preview.19073.11 13,125 1/29/2019 4.6.0-preview.18571.3 11,172 12/3/2018
4.1.0-rc2-24027 6,711,273 5/16/2016 4.0.0-beta-23516 229,673 11/18/2015 4.0.0-beta-23409 19,858 10/15/2015 | https://www-0.nuget.org/packages/System.Security.Cryptography.Cng/5.0.0-preview.4.20251.6 |
MTAA and event sponsor MTPConnect will be hosting a one day conference on the cyber security issues affecting medical devices.
This is an opportunity for the MedTech community to hear about the latest developments in cyber security issues, hear from leading experts on the key threats affecting MedTech and provide your input into future policy development.
A unique opportunity to participate in 'war games' that will dissect hypothetical scenarios and break down the processes involved when companies and organisations are faced with cyber threats and invasions.
Click here to download the full program.
Michelle Price is the CEO for AustCyber. She was the inaugural Chief Operating Officer of AustCyber, joining the company in January 2017 and appointed as CEO in April 2018. Prior to joining AustCyber, Michelle was the first Senior Adviser for Cyber Security at the National Security College within The Australian National University, where she established an integrated approach to the College’s cyber security program across executive and postgraduate education and policy engagement.
Before joining the ANU, Michelle was with the Australian Government Department of the Prime Minister and Cabinet (PM&C), where she was instrumental to the delivery of the Australian Government’s 2015 Cyber Security Review and Cyber Security Strategy. In a previous role at PM&C, Michelle delivered the National Security Strategic Risk Framework (the first of its kind in the world) and Coordinated National Security Budget. Prior to PM&C, Michelle worked in several strategy and risk roles across Government, having moved to the public service from the communication and media sector and the food safety segment of Australia’s food manufacturing sector.
Michelle is passionate about Australia’s cyber security sector enabling all Australian organisations to grow and take advantage of the cyber world. She is also a strong advocate for increasing diversity in the cyber security workforce and helping people be inspired by the possibilities of cyber innovation. AustCyber was established in 2017 as part of the Australian Government’s Industry Growth Centres Initiative and announced both as part of the Government’s National Innovation and Science Agenda and Australia’s Cyber Security Strategy.
Adam is co-founder and CEO of ParaFlare – an Australian cyber operations company focused on Managed Detection and Response based in Sydney, Australia. Since formation, the company has grown from a humble startup, positioning to be a market leader and exporter of managed cyber detection and incident response services.
Previously, he was a member of the Australian Defence Force for over 14 years, responsible for the delivery and operation of niche cyber and ICT capabilities including those that were standalone and sensitive in nature. He has held senior positions with multiple Australian Defence programs of work, and now as CEO of ParaFlare, Adam provides company management and corporate oversight throughout the ParaFlare Group.
Daniel is the joint Managing Director of the Resilience by Design Group (RBD). RBD’s mission is to prepare our clients to confidently navigate their digital lives. We know and understand the transformative power of full participation in our digital world.
A passionate advocate for technology, Daniel is enthusiastic about helping medical professionals and the health care sector securely realise opportunities in digital innovation, services and products.
He has over 15 years experience in cyber security, intelligence and risk management developed in operational roles across the public and private sectors with the Office of National Assessments, Australian Federal Police and the Australian Communications and Media Authority.
Daniel has also served as an Executive Adviser to the Commonwealth Bank’s inaugural Chief Information Security Officer. In this role, Daniel helped to successfully implement Australia’s largest corporate cyber security uplift programme providing strategic direction, executive engagement and change leadership to the Commonwealth Bank’s Digital Protection Group.
Daniel values the important role of the public sector in online safety and security. He has been a key contributor to the Australian Government’s national cyber security review and served on the expert committee of the Victorian Government’s Cyber Security Strategy Group.
Daniel is an RMIT cyber security industry mentor, and was a ThinkUKnow volunteer. | https://www.mtaa.org.au/events/mtaa-webinar-2020-cyber-security-forum |
Books are books whether we read them in a library or on a Kindle or iPad, but California laws are lagging when it comes to protecting reader privacy in the digital age. That's why EFF is a supporter of the Reader Privacy Act, a bill that has passed the California legislature and is awaiting Governor Brown's signature to become law.
Who's looking over Californians' digital shoulder and why does it matter? You can take our quiz to find out what's at risk -- and how Californians can protect their private reading records. Then tell Governor Brown to sign the Reader Privacy Act to ensure Californians don’t have to compromise their privacy when downloading electronic books, using online book services or even buying books from their local bookstore. | https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2011/09/whos-looking-over-your-digital-shoulder-reader?page=4 |
With the NISV – the official regulation of the Network and Information System Security Ordinance- Austria has now laid down concrete network and information security requirements for providers of essential services within the framework of the Network and Information System Security Act (NISG).
In the future, the Network and Information System Security Act (NISG) and the Network and Information System Security Regulation (NISV) will provide a comprehensive legal framework that is intended to regulate cybersecurity for operators of critical services or critical infrastructure in Austria – a good opportunity to take a closer look at the individual requirements contained therein.
Implementation of appropriate technical and organizational protective measures for their networks and IT systems to prevent security incidents.
Implementation of appropriate measures for the correct handling of security incidents that occur.
Reporting security incidents in a timely manner to national or sector-specific emergency teams (e.g. CERT.at, EnergyCERT).
Regular monitoring of the company’s protective measures and, if necessary, proof of corresponding test reports and findings to the supervisory authorities.
The incident reaction. Providers must ensure that processes are established for a rapid and effective response to emerging security incidents.
The incident report. Incident reporting must ensure that vendors have implemented processes that allow timely reporting of a security incident that has occurred.
The incident analysis. Providers must ensure that appropriate incident analysis and evaluation processes are in place so that the specific characteristics of a security incident can be quickly identified, and further decisions made on them.
In summary, providers of important services or critical infrastructures will have to ensure that the appropriate framework conditions are created in the company for the detection, analysis, reporting and reaction to occurring cybersecurity incidents. Since this is only possible if the organizational structures such as roles and processes, as well as the technical tools and professional competencies are available in the company, the practical implementation of these aspects represents a challenge.
As a provider of critical services, the first step is a thorough evaluation of the company’s capacities, processes and competencies. From our activities and support in the defense against security incidents, SEC Consult know that they always occur at the worst time and require significantly higher capacity, resources, cybersecurity know-how and manpower than is available in regular operationFor many providers of important services, it makes sense to secure these capacities and manpower in the event of an emergency via provisioning contracts to be able to respond quickly and purposefully
Professional Support
If you find yourself, in particular as a provider of a substantial service, potentially the subject of the NISG or NISV regulations, you will face numerous exciting challenges. All in all, the new framework conditions are an important step in the area of cybersecurity in Austria, especially when it comes to the protection of critical infrastructure.
However, the implementation of the specific contents can be quite a complicated and lengthy undertaking- especially if a company has hardly any experience in this area. The use of and cooperation with external specialists can be a good way to counteract these difficulties. Then you have the advantage of being able to build on existing expertise and a comprehensive knowledge base.
As a long-standing expert in the field of information security and the handling of cybersecurity incidents, SEC Consult is known to be a reliable partner. Through the SEC Defense partnerships we offer, we support as experts for the treatment of security incidents and digital forensics, already numerous enterprises with their successful handling of arising incidents.. We always ensure that we comply with all regulatory requirements – such as the NISG – and can therefore ensure a high level of compliance for our partners right from the start. | https://sec-consult.com/blog/detail/ready-for-the-nisg-nisv-official-requirements-for-dealing-with-security-incidents/ |
SafeGuard Cyber detected a remote access trojan (RAT) posted to a Telegram discussion channel in June 2022.
It is unknown if it was part of a coordinated campaign, or if it was simply mass targeting users of the channel.
SafeGuard Cyber believes this Trojan was meant to target new or unsuspecting users of the channel and is used to steal cryptocurrency keys.
The handle “港島輝達資本” (Chinese for “Hong Kong Island Huida Capital”) and the handle “Your Grace” were used on the channel to attempt to spread the malware.
The handle “Your Grace” was seen attempting to post an archive file containing the malware, but no further messaging was seen from the handle.
The handle “港島輝達資本” posted many messages, including various image files, and one of them appeared to be the malware. The lure appears to be spamming images until a victim inadvertently clicks on the attachment.
The “港島輝達資本” handle was seen having routine conversations within the channel.
The post did not appear to be a response to any of the surrounding messages in the channel.
We did not find that anyone responded to either handle or complain about the file, though this does not prove that users of the channel did not get infected.
Malware Summary
After execution, a command prompt window is displayed and what appears to be an error window appears with indiscernible text. After the user hits ‘enter’ in the command prompt window, it pings the localhost. The program then exits and the application removes itself from the desktop and runs as “Skc3sk.exe”. It also makes a copy in the SYSWoW64 folder and tries to hide itself as an operating system file. The task “Skc3sk.exe” runs persistently in the background. It’s assumed that the callout and ping command is meant to beacon the attacker that the connection is active.
The malware also appears to create hidden copies of the victims’ private and public key store. Since this malware was detected in a cryptocurrency platform, it can be assumed that this malware is targeting victim keys used for cryptocurrency. In addition, since the method used to hide the additional program was dropped in the SYSWOW64 folder, it can mean that this malware could be used as a backdoor.
No further activity was found regarding this sample.
This attack didn’t appear to be targeted directly at a particular user and was just trying to lure a user to inadvertently download the malware.
SafeGuard Cyber believes that the attacker was attempting to mask the malicious file as an image document.
Stay up-to-date on the latest social engineering, insider threats, and ransomware vulnerabilities.
SafeGuard Cyber protects the connections we need to thrive by securing communication wherever it exists. | https://www.safeguardcyber.com/blog/security/crypto-stealing-malware-detected |
5 I'm having performance problems using openshh(server) and putty(client) combination to use a remote webproxy. I'd like to disable encryption and test the results to see if it makes a difference. How can i do that? Is there anything i can modify in the sshd_config. I'm very new to openssh.
Any other ideas would be appreciated.
I've basically set my IE to use 127.0.0.1 socks as a proxy. I connect my putty to my openssh server at home and voila - i'm able to browse the internet through that. However, it's increadibly slow even though I know I have a fast connection to my home (ftp for example works at above 50Kbytes/sec.
Unless the client or the server is drastically underpowered, I'd highly doubt that it's the encryption that is causing your performance issues. I use an "-D 8080" ssh socks proxy regularly and have never noticed anything but a very slight slowdown.
One thing to check is to see what the latency is between your client and the server. If it's a very latent connection, you would surely see poor performance over the tunnel when using HTTP, while not seeing performance problems with FTP. Once an FTP transfer is in progress, latency doesn't really matter, but with HTTP, you're dealing with web pages that may have 50 or more individual HTTP handshakes that need to happen. High-latency connections will really slow this process down and will make browsing unbearable.
So anyway, the recommendations that Zephyr Pellerin made are sound. If you really think that it's encryption that's causing the problem them by all means, switch to a different cipher. I'd suggest looking into latency first, though, as that seems to be a much more likely candidate.
IF you want to try a completely unencrypted and uncompressed tunnel you could try using something like rinetd to forward the data instead of SSH. This would iliminate the SSH extras while stil offering a plain binary-safe tunnel for TCP connections.
When you say that you have a fast connection at home, are you sure that it is fast in both directions? Many home connections are very asymetric (my home ADSL for instance is ~11Mit downstream and ~1.5Mbit upstream and many are worse than that, some I can quote from friends/family connections: 7M/0.4M, 19M/1.3M, 20M/0.75M, ...). Remeber that if you are using home as a proxy the data has to go through your link both ways so will move at best at the slowest of your downstream and upstream speeds and you have a chunk of extra latency to factor in too. Also your ISP might deliberately throttle upstream communication (either blanket, or selectively so that things like email and selected popular web sites are not affected) as a way to discourage people running servers/proxies off their home links, though this is relatively rare. | http://serverfault.com/questions/116875/how-can-i-disable-encryption-on-openssh |
A lot has been made about the transformational effects that M2M and the Internet-of-Things can bring to building management, to engender “smarter” buildings. A lot has also been made about the trend of compromised consumer data at several big retailers – PF Chang's, Target, Neiman-Marcus and Michael’s as the most notable examples.
What, exactly, does the former have to do with the latter? More than you’d think.
Indeed, the built environment is one of the most promising growth sectors for M2M, proving its value far beyond interior climate control. A recent survey shows that the majority of building planners intend to integrate operational areas such as lighting, HVAC and security systems into a common connected platform, which would give facility engineers better visibility into everything from lighting management to fire alarms, water sprinklers and surveillance systems and, in turn, allow them to become far more effective at keeping these buildings at peak efficiency. The transformational effects come in the form of optimized energy consumption, safety conditions and workforce productivity at once.
The secret sauce, so to speak, is that M2M sensors get deployed to collect ongoing data about a building’s operating conditions and will send it in real-time to an external analytics system, where processes can then be automated or packaged into actionable advice for the facility manager. This also happens to be right where the data breach considerations come into play.
In all three of the recent high-profile cases, attackers were apparently able to plant malware on point-of-sale (PoS) systems as a means to gather credit card information from unsuspecting shoppers while they made their purchases. Our interest here lies in how the bad guys managed access to these POS devices, short of sneaking in under cover of darkness to corrupt the credit card machines. In the case of Target, the smoking gun was in fact the intelligent, interconnected building management systems in place at the individual store level. Hackers gained login credentials belonging to Target’s HVAC services contractor and used that access to cross over into the company's payment systems.
To us, the big question here is “How and why did the HVAC network controls have reason to interact with the POS network controls in the first place?” With that in mind, the breach appears to be the result of the company not properly segmenting its data networks.
By its nature, M2M is a client-server operation and for most any building management application, there’s a relatively small amount of interconnectivity among other systems that these sensors would need in the stores themselves. Instead, each system within the store would have a point-to-point relationship with the command center, with all necessary security protocols in place including PCI for the payment processing systems along with standard access control, ingress testing, etc. for the other connected systems (I.e., HVAC, fire alarm and surveillance). The HVAC’s sole purpose is to monitor the building’s physical conditions and help managers decide, singularly, when to raise or lower the output.
Given that, would a retail operations analyst ever need to interact with facility analyst? Probably not. So why, then, would the HVAC system ever need to interact with the payment system?
As M2M professionals, we can take away some important lessons from the data breach epidemic. When setting up connected systems for discrete purposes at a building or otherwise, be sure always to establish discrete networking channels that do not allow, as a rule, interconnectivity among systems when there is no need for the systems to interact. KORE M2M experts are well-versed in the proper use of network segmenting and access control, particularly when it comes to sensitive applications. | http://www.koretelematics.com/blog/what-can-the-spate-of-retail-data-breaches-in-security-teach-us-about-smart-buildings-in-an-age-of-the-internet-of-things |
While salaries are up for tech professionals, satisfaction with compensation continues to decline, according to research from career website Dice. Just half (52%) of tech pros were satisfied with their salary in 2014, slightly down from 54% the year before.
“As demand for technology professionals rises and highly skilled talent is harder to find, the pressure is being reflected where it counts: paychecks,”says Shriven Goli, president at Dice. “Still, tech pros are less happy with their earnings, signaling to companies that in order to recruit and retain the best candidates, offering more will be necessary.” [ See also: How not to ask for a raise. And get your daily dose of tech news and trends with ITworld's daily newsletter. Don't miss a thing! ]
With a booming IT job market and recent spike in hiring, now could be an opportune time to go after that raise you’ve been thinking about.
“If you can prove your value and are truly dedicated to your job, you want to give that opportunity to your employer first before going elsewhere,” says Allison Hutton, senior IT recruiter at talent acquisition firm Allavanti Group.
Asking your manager for a raise can be a nerve wracking experience -- especially if you’re not sure what to expect. Here are seven things CIOs and hiring managers want you to know about asking for a raise so you can better position yourself for success.
1. You are not entitled to a raise. If it has been a while since your last raise, that alone doesn’t entitle you to one, says Mark Berger, senior IT recruiter at talent acquisition firm Steven Douglas Associates. “Some people think that since they’ve been at a company for a while and because they do good work, that warrants a raise,” he says. “But that’s not the case. You need to do something other than just showing up and doing your job to earn it.” | http://www.cio.com/article/2956373/careers-staffing/how-to-ask-for-a-raise-7-things-your-boss-wants-you-to-know.html |
As if Flashback was not enough, Microsoft detected a new piece of malware targeting Apple OS X computers that exploits a vulnerability in the Office productivity suite patched nearly three years ago.
The malware is not widespread, said Jeong Wook Oh of Microsoft’s Malware Protection Center. But it does show hackers pay attention if it’s found people do not apply patches as those fixes release, putting their computers at a higher risk of becoming infected.
“Exploiting Mac OS X is not much different from other operating systems,” Oh wrote. “Even though Mac OS X has introduced many mitigation technologies to reduce risk, your protection against security vulnerabilities has a direct correlation with updating installed applications.”
The security update Microsoft released in June 2009, addressed two vulnerabilities an attacker could use to gain remote control over a machine and run other code. Both vulnerabilities could suffer exploitation with a specially-crafted Word document.
The exploit discovered by Microsoft doesn’t work with OS X Lion, but does work with Snow Leopard and prior versions. Oh said it is likely attackers have knowledge about the computers they are attacking, such as the victim’s operating system version and patch levels.
The malware delivered by the exploit is specifically for OS X and is basically a “backdoor,” or a tool that allows for remote control of a computer.
Microsoft advised those who use Microsoft Office 2004 or 2008 for Mac or the Open XML File Format Converter for Mac to ensure those products have applied the patch.
“In conclusion, we can see that Mac OS X is not safe from malware,” Oh wrote. “Statistically speaking, as this operating system gains in consumer usage, attacks on the platform will increase.” | http://www.isssource.com/microsoft-finds-apple-malware/ |
To register please sign up here.
If you have any queries about the webinar please get in touch. | https://cyprusshippingnews.com/2020/11/11/join-marlink-bureau-veritas-and-an-expert-panel-to-assess-the-state-of-cyber-security-in-shipping/ |
Ninety-one percent of targeted attacks start with spear-phishing email, according to a newly released research by Trend Micro.
Spear-phishing emails contain a malicious attachment exploiting a Microsoft Office vulnerability (CVE-2012-0158).
These emails are part of the operations of an emerging and active targeted threat called Safe campaign, the operations of which are documented in the research paper by Trend Micro.
These spear-phishing emails contain a malicious attachment and encourage a recipient to open a harmful attachment by attracting him with contextually relevant content.
From a threat perspective, Trend Micro has identified five key target organisations including government ministries, technology companies, media outlets, academic research institutions and non-governmental agencies.
Threats are not new and IT departments have already seen various kinds of advanced persistent threats (APTs) or malware-based espionage attacks that have been around for years.
Recent years have seen "noisier" campaigns within the security community, and now are learning to combat the emerging new and smaller campaigns.
Trend Micro has not determined the total number of victims in the campaign but apparently, about 12,000 unique IP addresses spread over more than 100 countries were connected to two sets of command-and-control (C&C) infrastructures related to this threat and the average number of actual victims was counted at 71 per day.
Defence strategy
As this threat identified by Trend Micro has the potential to affect people all across the world, enterprises should focus on detecting and mitigating attacks and leverage core components of a defence strategy as presented by the report.
Businesses can use logs from endpoint, server, and network monitoring to gain a view of the activities within an organisation. This information can be processed for anomalous behaviours and eventually indicate a targeted attack.
Integrity checks should be performed as malware will make modifications to the file system and registry in order to maintain persistence.
Enterprises should also empower human analysts and also leverage technologies available today to gain visibility, insight, and control over networks to defend against targeted threats.
Once an attack is identified, the cleanup strategy should focus on determining the attack vector and cut off communications with the command-and-control (C&C) server.
IT department should then also determine the scope of the compromise and assess the damage by analysing the data and forensic artifacts available on compromised machines.
Learn how cloud security automation can mitigate risk.
EU GDPR will be enforced on 25 May 2018. Now is the best time to re-examine company security policies with a secure USB drive free-trial program. | https://www.cso.com.au/article/463019/91_per_cent_targeted_attacks_start_spear-phishing_email/ |
As if the wars on terror and drugs weren't keeping U.S. officials busy enough, the drum beats of cyberwar are increasing.
There were the online espionage attacks Google said originated in China. Several mysterious activities with Internet traffic related to China. The Stuxnet worm that experts say possibly targeted Iranian nuclear centrifuges. An attack on the WikiLeaks site after it released classified documents damaging to U.S. foreign policy. And don't forget the Internet attack on Estonia from a few years ago.
To deal with the geopolitical dramas that are projected in the online world, the U.S. is using military strategy and mindset to approach cybersecurity, creating a Cyber Command and putting oversight for national cybersecurity under the auspices of the Department of Defense.
But offense isn't always the best defense, and it never is when it comes to Internet security, says Gary McGraw, author and chief technology officer at security consultancy Cigital. More secure software, not cyber warriors, is needed to protect networks and online data, he writes in a recent article, "Cyber Warmongering and Influence Peddling."
CNET talked with McGraw about how the militarization of cybersecurity draws attention from serious threats.
McGraw: The danger is that if we lump everything under 'cyberwar,' then our natural propensity in the United States is to allow the Defense Department to deal with it. The DoD set up a Cyber Command in May. Cyber Command has an overemphasis on offense, on creating cyber-sharpshooters and exploiting systems more quickly than the enemy can exploit them. I don't think that's smart at all. I liken it to the world living in glass houses and Cyber Command is about figuring out ways to throw rocks more accurately and quickly inside of the glass house. We would all be better suited trying to think about our dependence on these systems that are riddled with defects and trying to eliminate the defects, instead.
Is the rhetoric all driven by attracting money? That's a very cynical way of thinking.
McGraw: A lot of people think it is. The military industrial complex in the U.S. is certainly tied very closely to the commercial security industry. That is not surprising, nor is it that bad. The problem is the commercial security industry is only now getting around to understanding security engineering and software security. The emphasis over the past years has been on trying to block the bad people with a firewall and that has failed. The new paradigm is trying to build stuff that's not broken in the first place. That's the right way to go. If we want to work on cybercrime and espionage and war, to solve all three problems at once, the one answer is to build better systems.
You mention that cybercrime and cyber-espionage are more important than cyberwar. Why is that?
McGraw: Because there is a lot of crime, less espionage, and very little cyberwar. (chuckles) And the root cause for capability in all these things is the same. That is dependence on systems that are riddled with security defects. We can address all three of those problems. The most important is cybercrime, which is costing us the most money right now. Here's another way to think about it: everyone is talking about the WikiLeaks stuff, and the impact the latest (confidential files) release is having on foreign policy in the U.S. The question is, would offensive capability for cyberwar help us solve the WikiLeaks problem? The answer is obvious. No. Would an offensive cyberwar capability have helped us solve the Aurora problem where Google's intellectual property got sucked down by the Chinese? The answer is no. What would have helped address those two problems? The answer is defense. That is building stuff properly. Software security. Thinking about things like why on earth would a private (officer) need access to classified diplomatic cables on the SIPRNET (Secret IP Router Network)? Why? If we thought about constructing that system properly and providing access only to those who need it, then things would be much better off.
The term "cyber" makes it seem more scary. We're just talking about Internet, right? Might there be a problem with semantics?
McGraw: There could be. There has been an over emphasis on cyber war in the U.S. The problem with cybersecurity is that there is just as much myth and FUD and hyperbole as there are real stories. It's difficult for policy makers and CEOs and the public to figure out what to believe because the hype has been so great, such as with the Estonia denial-of-service attack from 2007. So that when we talk about Stuxnet it gets dismissed.
Stuxnet is real. Is that cyberwar?
McGraw: It seems like a cyberweapon. I think it qualifies as a cyberwar action. My own qualification is that a cyberattack needs to have kinetic impact. That means something physical goes wrong. Stuxnet malicious code did what it could to ruin physical systems in Iran that were controlling centrifuges or that were in fact centrifuges. If you look at the number of centrifuges operating in Iran you see some big drops that are hard to explain. (Iranian President Mahmoud) Ahmadinejad admitted there was a cyberattack on the centrifuges.
McGraw: This year, I've been working more in Washington than I have in past. I've been to the White House, the Pentagon, talked to think tanks. I'm a little bit worried that the discourse is too much about cyberwar. We should try to untangle the war, espionage, and crime aspects and maybe emphasize building better systems and getting ourselves out of the glass house as opposed to trying make a whole new cadre of cyber-sharpshooters as [CIA Director] General Hayden suggests. For policymakers the conception of our field [of security] is muddled.
I'm worried we're not spending on [Internet security] defense at all. There's no way to divide and conquer networks. That is, we can't defend the military network or the SIPRNET but not defend the Internet because we're ignoring 90 percent of the risk. Most of the infrastructure in the U.S., 90 percent of it that's important, is controlled by corporations and private concerns, not by the government. The notion that we can protect military networks and not the rest of it just doesn't make any sense. That's one problem. The other problem is the Air Force has always been about domination in the air and taking away that capability from the enemy early and eradicating infrastructure. This notion of a 'no-fly zone' is kind of interesting. Unfortunately those tactics don't work in cyberspace because there is a completely different physics there. There is no such thing as taking ground or controlling air space in cyberspace. Things move at superhuman speed in cyberspace. So some of these guys who are good military tacticians are having a hard time with cyberwar policy and cyberdefense because of the analogies they're using.
You mentioned in your article that "in the end, somebody must pay for broken security and somebody must reward good security." Are you suggesting that we hold software makers liable for flaws?
McGraw: I don't know what the answer is. We need to change the discourse to be around how do we incentivize people to build better systems that are more secure and how do we disincentive building of insecure systems that are riddled with risk? As long as we can have that conversation then policy makers might be able to come up with right sort of levers to cause things to move in the right direction. We're not suggesting any particular approaches, like liability. We're just trying to change the discourse from being about war to being about security engineering. | https://www.cnet.com/uk/news/demilitarizing-cybersecurity-q-a/ |
We live in a global village of interconnected systems that share data and other services. Such an environment calls for heightened awareness around application security. Enterprises should establish a strong application security program and integrate security into the entire software development lifecycle including the design, development, verification, and maintenance processes.
The following in an excellent Infographic from Veracode that talks about Application Security and where the vulnerabilities lie.
Do not want to run everything over SSL. Get the SSL cert or the Progressive signed cert – valid for the domain
Do not try to run everything over SSL. This could be expensive solution from cost and performance perspective
Install an SSL cert on the webserver hosting the app files. Get the SSL cert or your enterprise signed cert that is valid for the domain
SQL injection attacks have become the most widely exploited security attacks on the Internet as they can usually bypass layers of security such as firewalls and any other network detection sensors. They are used most often to attack databases and for extracting any confidential information such as Social Security Numbers, Credit Card information etc.
According to the Verizon Security report, in 2008 SQL Injection attacks ranked first when using to compromise databases – a staggering 79% of the 285 million records stolen.
Applications invoke interpreters, including SQL or LDAP. These interpreters take commands and data and execute the instructions. Injection happens when user input crosses the line between code and data where an attacker sends malicious data or commands into the application, tricking it into behaving differently. Attackers could modify queries to gain access to unauthorized information or corrupt the data store.
Validate input to verify user data cannot modify the meaning of commands and database queries.
Do not use an administrator account. Enforce least privilege when connecting to databases and other backend systems.
Use stored procedures and parameterized queries to bind all supplied variables in the SQL query. The results of the query must match what was expected.
A secured file system is a good alternative to store database credentials.
Parameterized Queries: Validate all parameters carefully to ensure they cannot modify the query. Treat all input variables as data only (i.e. bind all variables).
String concatenation must not be used to build SQL queries.
Treat embedded quotes etc as simple characters and not SQL and the input parameter value as mere data.
Use strongly typed parameterized queries, such as SqlCommand with SqlParameter or an Object Relational Mapping (ORM) technique like Hibernate in .NET.
Stored Procedures: Applications pass parameters to stored procedures. Stored procedures return result sets and/or output parameters. By using stored procedures, SQL expertise is moved to the database and developers no longer have to generate dynamic SQL in their code.
.NET: Use SqlCommand with CommandType. StoredProcedure
ASP: Use Server. CreateObject with command type: adCmdStoredProc
Connection Strings: A connection string or URL contains the attributes required for an application to access a database. Anyone with access to code or configuration files where connection strings are usually stored, and network access to the database(insider threat) can use credentials to attack the database or steal information.
Encrypt connection strings and store them in the registry on Windows platform using aspnet_setreg.exe.
Use the DPAPI (Data Protection API) in the .NET framework to encrypt/decrypt connection strings from web.config file.
Limited database account: The account used to access the database must have the minimum amount of privilege required by the application. Only grant execute permissions to specific stored procedures in the database and provide no direct table access. This limits the damage that an attacker can do if an attack successfully reaches the database.
Direct object references: Do not expose internal object references (ids) to users. This could be in the form of hidden fields or other form parameters in the URL. A malicious attacker can manipulate these references and possibly access records outside of their authorization scope for the next request. Database references commonly exposed include Primary/foreign keys, column names, and table names.
Use restrictions in “where” clause to enforce access control. Such restrictions ensure ‘expected’ relationships remain true such as the current user is owner of referenced account.
SELECT * FROM quote WHERE quoteID = {current quote id} AND userID ={current user id} limits queries to current user where {current user id} is coming from the session.
If a single record was expected, then ensure that only one record was obtained. Validate results returned from database to see if they match, check for error codes, and handle any exceptions.
SHODAN lets you find servers/ routers/ etc. by using the simple search bar up above. Most of the data in the index covers web servers at the moment, but there is some data on FTP, Telnet and SSH services as well.
For example: get all web (port:80) hosts running ‘apache’ in switzerland (country:CH) that also have ‘.ch’ in any of their domain names:
apache country:CH port:80 hostname:.ch
SHODAN is the brainchild of John Matherly aka @achillean
Lets say you want to find servers running the ‘Apache’ web daemon. A simple attempt would be to use: | https://www.root777.com/category/application-security/ |
Have you ever noticed how your child's favorite TV shows are directing them to the Internet to watch extra episodes and access special content like games and other shows? My daughter is just now starting to show interest in our family laptop, finding it wherever we might be hiding it. We keep putting off establishing parental controls, but it's only a matter of time before she figures out how to make the laptop work. As a family we will be nervous with not only the content she will be introduced to, but the wide variety of identity theftand other serious dangers that lurk within. Struggling with allowing her to learn while keeping her safe is a big challenge, one every parent is going to encounter.
This led me on a path of research, searching the web for keywords like "family safe internet software" and "parental controls for the internet." I saw quite a few sites selling software solutions like NetNanny, BSecure, and free tools like K9webprotection. There were others which carried with them some recommendations like FocusontheFamily and ConsumerSearch, which suggest pre-reviewed products to use.
Looking at all of the options, I can understand how it would be difficult to choose the best product for your family. Here are a few questions to help identify your family’s need for a tool like this:
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The most successful controls at my house are physical.
1) The kids' computer is positioned in the family room with the monitor pointing at the kitchen so we can easily oversee their activity.
2) We control the amount of time they can be online, sending them outside to play when they've been on too long.
We also had "the talk" before they were allowed online. The cyber equivalent of 'don't take candy from strangers'.
We do have some limited software controls running, though. What do you think of the parental controls built into Windows Vista and Windows 7?
I spent some time with the Parental Controls available in Windows 7 last night.
I like the ability to control when a specific person can log into the computer by day and time. The control you have to limit usage of applications based on ratings (even picking different types of ratings like the "ESRB") is really cool. Picking a specific application looked like it was going to be great, but I was a bit disappointed by the complexity of the list provided to you.
I started looking into the "Add-On’s" section, thinking this is how I'd be able to protect web filtering and social media, but there really isn't a great deal of information readily available. I checked into the K9WebProtection mentioned earlier, and they appear to integrate as an add on for Windows 7, perhaps I'll give that a try this weekend.
From what I can see on their website, K9WebProtection is offered free for home use from Blue Coat, a company that sells security and network technology to other companies.
Their website even states "K9 Web Protection is our free Internet filtering and control solution for the home. K9 puts YOU in control of the Internet so you can protect your kids." | http://infosec.westfieldinsurance.com/2010/06/parental-controls-online-6-questions-to-ask-your-family.html |
Once you are happy with this plan, we would be happy to deploy your plan and equipment, or use our industry knowledge to make recommendations for other vendors and service providers.
Pleasant Solutions maintains a highly skilled team of developers and specialists, we are uniquely qualified to offer such options as integration with an existing SSO (Secure Sign-On) network, and even creating custom software to meet all of your organizations' needs better than any off the shelf solution. | http://www.pleasantsolutions.com/Two-Factor-Authentication |
Take a snapshot of the EBS Volume.
Deploy the instance in to an isolated environment.
Isolate VPC, ensure no internet access. | https://www.thedigitalforensics.com/incident-response/archives/04-2019 |
RT @WSIB: Q. Do I have the right to refuse unsafe work? A. You have the right to participate in training and information sessions to help y…4 hours ago
RT @CROSH_CRSST: #Fatigue is key aspect of #OHS and is an important area of #research that we do here at #CROSH_CRSST. The @NIOSH science b…5 hours ago | https://www.pshsa.ca/products/msd-toolbox-part-c-in-depth-risk-assessment/?utm_source=SalArmy&utm_medium=link&utm_content=all&utm_campaign=affiliate |
Correspondence: Address correspondence to Chris Kirman, Summit Toxicology, LLP, 29449 Pike Drive, #100, Orange, OH 44022, USA. E-mail: [email protected]
Dow Chemical participation in this study is pursuant to a services agreement with Union Carbide Corporation.
In the early 1970s, a Union Carbide Corporation (UCC) manufacturing facility contracted with a company for the removal and disposal of drummed chemical waste. The removal company deposited some of these drums at the Reich Farm Site in Dover (renamed Toms River) Township, New Jersey, without the knowledge of UCC (Ghassemi 1976). Despite removal of drums by UCC, wastes leaked from them and migrated through the groundwater. In 1983, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) included the Reich Farm Site on its National Priority List (NPL) of Superfund Sites. Pursuant to a U.S. EPA-approved groundwater sampling program (part of the U.S. EPA approved remediation plan for the site), contaminants from Reich Farm were found to have migrated about 1 mile from the site to a well field that supplied drinking water to the neighboring community (ATSDR 2001).
In response to concerns of community members, the New Jersey Department of Health undertook a cancer incidence study for the years 1979 through 2000 for the Toms River section of Dover Township where the contaminated wells were located (Berry and Haltmeir 1997) and excess cancers such as leukemia or central nervous system cancer, were observed (Berry et al. 2003). A case-control study was then undertaken and many possible associations were examined, including sources of drinking water, to try to determine the cause(s) of the excess cancers. The study found few associations related to exposures. The authors did report a statistical association with exposure to one well, while acknowledging “that there is considerable uncertainty in the finding” (NJDHSS and ATSDR 2003). Extensive review of groundwater analyses was undertaken and the presence of a group of unregulated and unidentified organic compounds was observed at concentrations of 1 ppb or less.
The compound found at the highest levels was then identified as styrene-acrylonitrile trimer, SAN Trimer. SAN Trimer is a mixture of six isomers (four isomers of 4-cyano-1,2,3,4-tetrahydro-alpha-methyl-1-naphthaleneaceton itrile [THAN] and two isomers of 4-cyano-1,2,3,4-tetrahydro-1-naphthaleneproprionitrile [THNP]) (Gargas et al. 2008). SAN Trimer is a by-product of the production of acrylonitrile styrene plastics (Union Carbide Corporation 1998). Few, if any, manufacturers still use this process. At room temperature, SAN Trimer is a viscous, light brown liquid (NTP 2011a), with a Henry's law constant of 1.55 × 10−9 atm-m3/mol (NTP 2011a), a density of 1.101 g/ml, a water solubility of 84.9 mg/L, and a log octanol/water partition coefficient of 3.1 (NTP 2011a).
There is no current exposure to contaminants from Reich Farm (ATSDR, 2001), as UCC enhanced its groundwater treatment system to remove SAN Trimer from the groundwater. Groundwater treatment is ongoing at the well field, with the latest sampling data from 2010 and 2011 indicating not only that are standards for regulated compounds being met but that SAN Trimer concentrations are now below the interim cleanup criterion of 0.00015 mg/L. This interim level was established by the New Jersey Department of Environmental Protection (NJDEP) based upon limits of detection, since there was no known toxicological information on SAN Trimer at the time on which to establish a risk-based criterion. To fill this data gap, given the results from the exposure monitoring and the health studies, the ATSDR recommended that toxicity testing be undertaken for the SAN Trimer. An interagency workgroup established by the U.S. EPA nominated SAN Trimer for study by the National Toxicology Program (NTP). The NTP completed the toxicology studies designed by the SAN Trimer Interagency Working Group and the final technical report was issued (NTP 2011a; 2011b).
The aim of the study presented here was to conduct a screening-level risk assessment for SAN Trimer detected in soil and groundwater at the Reich Farm Superfund Site in Toms River, NJ, based on the available National Toxicology Program (NTP) toxicology studies including a recently completed cancer bioassay. This assessment is focused only on potential exposures to SAN Trimer. As a screening-level assessment, a number of assumptions and decisions are made that are conservative in nature, intended to be protective, and not predictive, of exposures and potential human health hazards. For these reasons, the hypothetical exposures and potential hazards described in this screening-level assessment are expected to overestimate actual exposures occurring at the site. For example, reference dose (RfD) values were derived for SAN Trimer based upon its effects on the liver in exposed rats, since that organ would be the most sensitive and therefore would yield more conservative results.
The identification of the exposure scenarios to be quantitatively evaluated for the Reich Farm site included a consideration of (1) points of contact, (2) complete exposure pathways, and (3) potential human receptors. Based on current and projected future use, an industrial land use scenario was considered most appropriate for evaluation of on-site environmental conditions, and a residential land use scenario was considered appropriate for off-site conditions. To determine whether a complete exposure pathway exists, it must be determined whether there is a point of contact between an affected medium and a likely receptor. Based on an estimated Henry's law constant of 1.55 × 10−9 atm-m3/mol (NTP 2011a), SAN Trimer is not considered to be a volatile compound, and therefore inhalation exposure to SAN Trimer via volatilization from either soil or groundwater is an incomplete pathway. However, inhalation exposures to particulates released from soil were considered for on-site exposure scenarios. Additional exposure pathways are described in the following.
Reliable exposure point concentrations are required to estimate the magnitude of exposure to potential receptors. In this case, the concentration of SAN Trimer in soil was measured directly at different depths during 2003 and 2004; these data are used to quantify exposures via the ingestion, inhalation, and dermal contact routes. Soil samples were collected for SAN trimer analysis at 19 locations in three previously excavated areas (USACE 2005). Four intervals were sampled per location. Soil sample locations and intervals were determined based on a statistically based sampling approach (USACE 2005). Soil samples were analyzed for SAN Trimer using U.S. EPA Method 8270. The soil data for SAN Trimer from these sampling events were categorized as either surface soil (collected at depths less than 2.5 ft [0.76 m]) or total soil (collected at depths up to 29 ft [8.8 m]). This definition of surface soil differs from the U.S. EPA default assumption of less than 2 cm (U.S. EPA 2002a), to include U.S. EPA sample RF5 (0–2.5 ft [0.76 m]), which was assumed to reflect surface soil concentration. All other surface soil samples were collected from depths less than 2 ft (0.61 m).
For the soil investigations conducted in 2003 and 2004, soil sample locations and depth intervals were sampled between 1 and 3 times. In combining soil data across investigations, the following steps were taken to avoid inappropriate weighting of sample locations: (1) The maximum detected value for each depth interval was identified where multiple samples were obtained for a given location and depth; (2) for surface soils, the maximum detected value for the surface interval was used for each location; and (3) for total soils, the maximum values for each depth interval were averaged for each sample location, under an assumption that potential exposures to soils during excavation activities will occur across the entire soil column. Potential temporal variation between 2003 and 2004 (e.g., degradation) was ignored, and these data were assumed to be reflective of current and future conditions at the site. For on-site and off-site groundwater investigations conducted in 2010, sample locations were sampled between 1 and 16 times. In calculating exposure point concentrations for groundwater, the maximum detected concentration for each location was used. This screening-level approach is expected to overestimate actual exposures to SAN Trimer.
For characterizing potential on-site and off-site exposures, the arithmetic mean and its upper confidence limit (UCL) were used to reflect central tendency exposure (CTE) and reasonable maximum exposure (RME) conditions, respectively. In calculating mean and UCL values, nondetect samples were evaluated using the detection limit divided by the square root of 2. UCL values were determined using U.S. EPA ProUCL software (version 4.1.00) to account for geospatial variation. The detection frequency, arithmetic mean, UCL, and maximum detected concentrations of SAN Trimer in each exposure category for soil and groundwater are provided in Table 1.
The following exposure scenarios are evaluated for site soils and groundwater for current and potential future conditions.
Short-term exposure (defined here as approximately 2 wk) scenarios at the site include excavation workers and visitors, as defined in the following. This definition is consistent with U.S. EPA Office of Water's definition of short-term exposure in deriving 10-d health advisories, with the ATSDR definition of short-term in deriving acute minimal risk levels (MRL), and with the recommended definition of short-term of 1–30 d (U.S. EPA 2002b).
Excavation worker scenario—Potential excavation activities were assumed to involve intrusive activities involving direct contact with total soil on a daily basis for a short period of time. Although total soils include samples collected at depths of up to 29 ft (8.8 m), excavations at the site are generally expected considerably shallower than that, particularly for smaller renovation and construction projects (e.g., erecting fences, etc.). Exposures to on-site groundwater are not expected to occur for this scenario because (1) depth to groundwater exceeds 20 ft (6.1 m) below grade and (2) potable use of groundwater within the historic plume is prohibited by municipal ordinance and a state administrative control (due to general groundwater contamination).
Pica child visitor scenario—These visitors were assumed to be engaged in outdoor activities that may bring them in contact with surface soil on a daily basis for a short period of time. The pica child visitor is considered to reflect a “worst-case” on-site visitor scenario with respect to exposures to on-site soil, and likely overestimates more likely exposures at the site (e.g., a youth trespasser scenario). Although the site is industrial, child exposure scenarios were specifically included in this assessment, due to potential concerns with increased rates of childhood cancers (Berry and Haltmeir 1997; Berry et al. 2003). The exposure pathways assumed for this scenario were the ingestion of, dermal contact with, and inhalation of particulates from surface soil. Exposures to on-site groundwater are not expected to occur for this scenario because: (1) depth to groundwater exceeds 20 ft (6.1 m) below grade, and (2) potable use of on-site groundwater within the historic plume is prohibited.
Subchronic Exposure
Subchronic exposure (defined here as greater than 30 d, but less than 10% of expected lifetime) scenarios at the site include a child visitor, as defined in the following. Child visitor scenario—Visitors were assumed to be engaged in outdoor activities that may bring them in contact with site media on an intermittent basis (50–100 d/yr) for 6 yr. The child visitor was not assumed to be involved in intrusive activities such as excavation or construction, and this is expected to overestimate more likely visitor exposures at the site (e.g., a youth trespasser scenario). The exposure pathways assumed for this scenario were the ingestion of and dermal contact with surface soil, and inhalation of particulates. Exposures to on-site groundwater are not expected to occur (for the reasons cited earlier).
Chronic Exposure
General worker scenario—Workers include maintenance workers and others performing outdoor activities that may bring them in contact with site soil on a daily basis (250 d/yr). The outdoor worker was not assumed to be involved in intrusive activities such as excavation or construction. The exposure pathways assumed for this scenario were the ingestion of and dermal contact with surface soil, inhalation of particulates, and ingestion of on-site groundwater, despite the fact that potable use of groundwater by individuals and private entities within the area of the historic plume is restricted by municipal ordinance and a state administrative control.
Because the AAIR values already include values for exposure duration and body weight embedded within them, these exposure parameters are set to a value of 1 in the exposure equations already given when AAIR are used.
Exposure parameter values are defined next and summarized in Table 2 for all scenarios evaluated.
ABS (dermal absorption fraction, unitless)—A default value of 10% absorbed from skin was assumed for the dermal absorption of SAN Trimerfrom soil (U.S. EPA 2004).
ADD (average daily dose, mg/kg-d).
AF (soil adherence factor, mg/cm2)—Values in Table 2 for the soil adherence factor were defined (based on groundskeeper), excavation worker (based on construction worker), and child visitor scenarios (based on child playing in dry soil) (U.S. EPA 2004).
AAIR (age-adjusted intake rate, mg-yr/kg-d for ingestion, cm2-yr/kg-d for dermal) = age-adjusted intake rate, calculated.
AT (averaging time, d)—Averaging times for noncancer endpoints were calculated as Exposure Duration (years) multiplied by 365 d/year.
BW (body weight, kg)—Values in Table 2 for all scenarios reflect default central tendency values for body weight for adults and children (U.S. EPA 2009).
Cs (concentration in soil, mg/kg)—Arithmetic mean and upper 95% confidence limit (UCL) concentration values were calculated from site soil monitoring data (Table 1).
Cw (concentration in water, mg/L)— Arithmetic mean and UCL concentration values were calculated from and off-site groundwater monitoring data (Table 1).
CFs (Conversion factor for soil, 0.000001 kg/mg).
CFw (Conversion factor for water, 0.001 L/cm3).
ED (exposure duration, years)—Exposure duration values for child and excavation worker scenarios in Table 2 are assumed values, which reflect the subchronic and short-term exposures evaluated. Exposure duration values and adult resident reflect the mean and upper bound values for occupational and residential tenure, respectively (U.S. EPA 2009).
EF (exposure frequency, d/year)—Exposure frequency values for the excavation worker and visitor scenarios in Table 2 are assumed. Exposure frequency values and residential scenarios reflect default values assuming that 2 wk out of the year is spent away from work/home.
ETs (exposure time at site, h/d—For the inhalation of particulates, the exposure time values in Table 2 reflect assumptions for time spent on-site.
ETw (exposure time for water contact, h/d)— For dermal contact with groundwater, exposure time values in Table 2 reflect typical mean and upper bound values for showering/bathing in children and adults (U.S. EPA 2004).
FA (fraction absorbed from water, unitless)— A default value of 1 was assumed for the fraction of SAN Trimer absorbed from water.
Fso (fraction of total skin surface area in contact with soil, unitless)—Values for the fraction of skin exposed to soil in Table 2 are assumed, with high values adopted for the excavation worker and visitor scenarios (20–40% of total skin surface area) than (10–20%).
IR (inhalation rate, m3/d)—Inhalation rate values in Table 2 reflect central tendency and upper bound values for adults and children (U.S. EPA 2009).
IS (ingestion of soil, mg/d)—For adult scenarios, 50 mg/d reflects the central tendency value for soil ingestion (U.S. EPA 2009), while the upper bound value of 100 mg/d is assumed. For the child visitor scenario, values of 25 and 118 mg/d reflect the mean and upper bound values as determined by a meta-analysis of child soil ingestion studies (Stanek etal. 2012).
IW (ingestion of water, L/d)—Drinking-water ingestion rates in Table 2 for residential scenarios reflect the average and upper bound values for adults and children (U.S. EPA 2009). Ingestion rates equivalent to one-half of the adult residential rates were assumed scenario.
Kp (dermal permeability coefficient, mg/cm)—A permeability coefficient value for SAN Trimer was estimated using the equation (U.S. EPA 2004): Kp = ⊖2.8 + 0.66 log Kow - 0.0056 MW, where, log Kow = 3.1 and MW = 210.
SA (skin surface area, cm2)—Total skin surface area values in Table 2 reflect central tendency values for male and female adults and children (U.S. EPA 2004).
Tl (lag time, h)—A lag time of 0.41 h for styrene (U.S. EPA 2004) was adopted as a surrogate value for SAN Trimer.
where RfD is the reference dose (mg/kg-d), POD the point of departure, determined using benchmark dose methods (mg/kg-d), and UFtotal the total uncertainty factor, accounting for interspecies variation (UFa), intraspecies variation (UFh), LOAEL-to-NOAEL extrapolation (UFl), subchronic to chronic extrapolation (UFs), and database uncertainties (UFd). RfD values for SAN Trimer were derived for short-term, subchronic, and chronic exposures, as described later.
All dose-response modeling was performed using U.S. EPA benchmark dose software (BMDS, version 2.1.2), in a manner consistent with U.S. EPA guidelines (U.S. EPA 2000). Default values for the benchmark response rates were selected based upon the type of data assessed: (1) For quantal datasets (e.g., incidence) the dose corresponding to a 10% increase in extra risk (BMD10) and its 95% lower confidence limit (BMDL10) were used; and (2) for continuous data sets (e.g., organ weight changes) the dose corresponding to a change equivalent to one standard deviation in the response for unexposed animals (BMDSD) and its 95% lower confidence limit (BMDLSD) were used. Short-term, subchronic, and chronic reference doses (RfD) for SAN Trimer, which correspond to the exposure durations defined for exposure scenarios already described, are derived next.
where HI is the hazard index (unitless), ADD the average daily dose, summed across routes of exposure (mg/kg-d), and RfD the reference dose (mg/kg-d).
If the HI value is smaller than 1, then a non-cancer hazard is not expected to present an unacceptable risk under the conditions defined in the exposure scenarios. HI values above 1 do not necessarily imply a potential hazard exists, since the RfD includes an uncertainty factor (in this case, a factor of 300) that may maintain an adequate margin of safety even for exposures equivalent to or numerically higher than the RfD. An HI above 1 serves to indicate that additional action or investigation may be required. An HI above a value of the total uncertainty factor value would indicate that the exposures are greater than the POD (i.e., doses where effects are observed in rats).
UFa—A default factor of 10 was adopted for interspecies variation.
UFh—A default factor of 10 was adopted for intraspecies (intraindividual) variation.
UFs—A value of 1 was adopted for UF since the duration of the toxicity study corresponds directly to the duration of interest.
UFl—A value of 1 was adopted for UFl since BMD methods were adopted, and the end-points were considered to be relatively mild.
UFd (database deficiencies)—A factor of 3 was used to account for deficiencies in the toxicological database for SAN Trimer, namely, that toxicity testing has only been conducted in a single species. Because the available rat studies were designed specifically to examine the endpoints of interest and window of susceptibility (early life), a higher value (10) is not required.
Application of a total uncertainty factor of 300 (10 × 10 × 1 × 1 × 3) to the POD value yields a short-term RfD value of 0.1 mg/kg-d (41 mg/kg-d/300 rounded to one significant figure) for SAN Trimer.
The draft NTP report concluded that there was equivocal evidence of carcinogenic activity for SAN Trimer in male rats based upon a small number of astrocytomas and granular-cell tumors in the brain and spinal cord, and that there was no evidence of carcinogenic activity in female rats (NTP 2011a). However, after a review of NTP draft conclusions by the NTP Technical Reports Peer Review Panel on January 26, 2011, it was concluded by a vote of 6 to 1 that there was no evidence of carcinogenic activity in both genders of rats (NTP 2011b).
There were significant decreases in the incidences of pituitary gland pars distalis adenoma in 1600 ppm males and females, and the incidences in both genders occurred with negative trends. The incidences of mammary gland fibroadenoma occurred in females with a negative trend, and the incidences in 800 and 1600 ppm females were significantly less than that in the control group. The incidences of mononuclear-cell leukemia in all exposed groups of males and females were significantly less than those in the controls.
SAN Trimer is only one of several chemicals identified in the well water, and the human epidemiology studies reported equivocal evidence for cancer with “considerable uncertainty in the findings” (ATSDR 2003; NJDHSS 2001). While the carcinogenicity of SAN trimer was not formerly examined in occupational studies where the potential for exposure would be much higher, there have been two large studies of acrylonitrile workers that have a portion of the workers exposed to SAN where the SAN trimer would be a contaminate. While the cancer rates for the SAN workers are not presented separately, these large studies of acrylonitrile workers found no increased risk of leukemia, brain cancer or any other cancer or cause of death (Blair et al. 1997; Swaen et al. 2006). SAN Trimer is readily metabolized in animals, having a half-life in blood of 3–4 h following oral exposure (Gargas et al. 2008). Based on these findings, there is no evidence to indicate that SAN Trimer is carcinogenic, and therefore it is inappropriate to characterize potential cancer risks to potentially exposed human populations.
An increase in the incidence of childhood cancers including leukemia or central nervous system in Toms River, coupled with the detection of SAN Trimer in soil and groundwater at the Reich Farm site, prompted the conduction of a cancer bioassay in rats by the NTP. In 2011, the NTP published the technical report on the toxicology and carcinogenesis study of SAN Trimer (NTP 2011a). The findings from the studies conducted by the NTP along with those conducted by Union Carbide were that SAN Trimer exerts low toxicity in animals, with the most prominent and consistent effect observed being liver weight increases. It is rapidly eliminated following oral exposure with a half-life of 3–4 h (Gargas et al. 2008). The weight of evidence indicated that SAN Trimer is not genotoxic (NTP 2011a), and the NTP cancer bioassay conclusively demonstrated SAN Trimer is not a carcinogen (NTP 2010 2011b). Of particular note, the incidence of central nervous system tumors was not significantly increased in exposed rats, while the incidence of mononuclear-cell leukemia was significantly decreased in all treated animals when compared to controls (NTP 2011a). Given the lack of significant carcinogenic response in the NTP bioassay, risk assessments for SAN Trimer are based, instead, on noncancer endpoints. Reference dose values were derived based on the liver weight increases reported in exposed rats. Extensive soil and groundwater sampling at the Reich Farm Superfund Site since the 1980s created a robust database that can be used to model potential human exposures to be used for a screening-level risk assessment. As a screening-level assessment, a number of assumptions and decisions made in this assessment are conservative in nature, intended to be protective (and not predictive) of potential human health hazards. Sources of uncertainty and conservative assumptions are discussed briefly next.
Soil concentration—For this screening-level assessment, the concentration of SAN Trimer in total soil used to assess exposures in the Excavation Worker Scenario included samples collected at depths of 29 ft (8.8 m) below grade. Although samples collected from these depths contained the highest concentrations of SAN Trimer detected (up to 29 mg/kg), they are unlikely to serve as points of contact for most excavations. Limited the sample depth to 20 ft (6.1 m) for the excavation worker scenario would result in mean concentration of 0.48 mg/kg (approximately threefold lower than the value of 1.6 mg/kg used here). For the RME short-term exposure scenarios (i.e., excavation worker, pica child), a case could be made for using the maximum soil concentration rather than the UCL. This is a reasonable assumption for acute (single day) exposures, but becomes much less likely for exposures of 2 wk in duration. Based upon a review of the soil concentrations (Table 1), use of the maximum detected soil concentrations for the RME short-term scenarios would result in HI values that are approximately twofold higher than depicted here using the UCL. Based upon a review of the soil concentrations (Table 1), use of the maximum detected soil location (7.3 mg/kg) or sample depth interval (29 mg/kg) concentrations for the RME excavation worker scenario would result in HI values that are respectively twofold (HI = 0.0002) and ninefold (HI = 0.0009) higher than depicted here using the UCL (HI = 0.0001).
Groundwater concentration—The arithmetic mean and UCL values for SAN Trimer in surface soil, total soil, on-site groundwater, and off-site groundwater serve as exposure point concentrations for the screening-level risk assessment. In calculating exposure point concentrations for on-site and off-site groundwater, the maximum value detected for each location in 2010 was used. This is a conservative assumption since the maximum value is as much as ninefold higher that the arithmetic mean for some locations. UCL values could be calculated for all media except for on-site groundwater, which was highly influenced by a single sample, resulting in the use of the maximum detected concentration (0.034 mg/L) as the exposure point concentration for the RME on-site worker scenario. This concentration is not consistent with the remaining on-site water collected (the next highest concentration detected in on-site groundwater was 0.00006 mg/L), and is not expected to be sustained for the 25-yr exposure duration evaluated for the RME on-site worker. Using the next highest on-site groundwater concentration would result in ADD and HI values for the on-site groundwater pathway that are more than 500-fold lower than evaluated in this screening-level assessment.
Exposure scenarios—As an industrial site, the general worker and excavation worker scenarios are expected to reasonable depictions of potential human exposures. However, the child visitor scenarios (including short-term pica exposure) are not expected to occur at an industrial site. The child visitor scenarios are expected to overestimate the potential exposures and hazards for a more likely exposure scenario, such as a youth trespasser scenario, since children would be expected to contact more SAN Trimer (on a milligrams per kilogram per day basis) due to differences in body weights and contact rates.
Exposure pathways—Exposure pathways for on-site and off-site groundwater were assumed to be complete in this screening-level assessment, despite the fact that potable use of groundwater within the historic plume is prohibited by municipal ordinance and a state administrative control. The groundwater pathway contributed 100% of potential exposure to the off-site resident scenarios, and 98% of the potential exposure to the on-site worker. Therefore, excluding the groundwater pathway, off-site resident exposures to SAN Trimer would be zero, while on-site worker exposures to SAN Trimer would be negligible (i.e., only 2% of the total HI calculated here). For the on-site excavation worker scenario, the potential for use of personal protection equipment (PPE), which would greatly reduced the fraction of skin surface area exposed to soil, was conservatively ignored. If PPE were to effectively eliminate the dermal pathway, the HI for the RME excavation worker would drop to 0.00003.
Combined exposure scenarios—The possibility remains that multiple exposure scenarios can apply to a single individual (i.e., a worker who lives near the site). To account for this possibility, the HI values for multiple scenarios can be summed. However, this is best accomplished using the CTE values, since combining RME scenarios, which are already conservative by themselves, will likely result in unrealistic exposure assumptions. For example, the CTE HI values scenario (0.0007) and the off-site resident child/adult scenario (0.007) can be summed (0.008, rounded to one significant figure) to assess the potential hazards to an off-site resident who works at the site. Consistent with a screening-level assessment, this approach is conservative due to overlapping assumptions for the two exposure scenarios (e.g., 250 d/yr for the worker, 350 d/yr for the resident).
Reference doses—For the short-term and subchronic RfD values, an endpoint (liver weight changes) that may be considered to be an adaptive change rather than evidence of toxicity was selected. These organ weight changes following short-term exposure were assumed to be a conservative precursor event to the histopathological changes noted in the liver following chronic exposures. For the chronic RfD value, the endpoint selected (eosinophilic foci) provided more conservative POD values than the other chronic end-points considered (mixed cell foci, bone marrow hyperplasia), but were generally within a factor of 2. In addition, the dose-response models selected as providing the best overall fit to the key data sets yield POD values that are similar (i.e., generally within a factor of 2) to alternative models. For all three RfD values, default uncertainty factors were used to account for inter-and intra-species variation.
For the reasons just discussed, the hypothetical exposures and potential HI discussed for the scenarios presented are expected to overestimate actual exposures and hazards at the site. Based upon these small HI values, along with the conservative nature of this screening-level assessment, adverse effects are unlikely to be observed from potential human exposures to SAN Trimer in soil and groundwater at or near the site.
REFERENCES
Berry M.. Haltmeier. P: Childhood cancer incidence health consultation: A review and analysis of cancer registry data, 1979–1995, for Dover Township (Ocean County), New JerseyYear: 1997TrentonNew Jersey Department of Health and Senior Services
Berry M.. Haltmeier P.. Fagkiano J.. Childhood cancer incidence update: A review and analysis of cancer registry data, 1979–2000 for Dover Township (Ocean County), New JerseyYear: 2003TrentonNew Jersey Department of Health and Senior Services
Gargas M.L.. Collins B.. Fennell T. R.. Gaudette N. F. Jr.. Sweeney L. M.. Disposition of styrene-acrylonitrile (SAN) trimer in female rats: Single dose intravenous and gavage studiesToxicol. LettYear: 20081781818384980
Huntingdon Life ScienceSAN Trimer (AN2S): 14-Day oral gavage toxicity study in the ratYear: 1999 Final report. study no. 98–2573. McConnell E. E.. Comments submitted to NTPYear: 2011 January 13. Available at http://ntp.niehs.nih.gov/ntp/about_ntp/TRPanel/2011/January/PublicComm/SANTrimer_AssocMcConnell_Review.pdf. National Toxicology ProgramNTP technical report on the toxicology and carcinogenesis study of styrene-acrylonitrile trimer in F344/N rats (Perinatal and postnatal feed studies)Year: 2011a TR 573. Board draft. Available at http://ntp.niehs.nih.gov/ntp/about_ntp/trpanel/2011/january/drafttr573.pdf. National Toxicology ProgramActions on draft NTP technical reports peer reviewed at the NTP Technical Reports Peer Review Panel Meeting on January 26Year: 2011b Board Draft. Available at http://ntp.niehs.nih.gov/NTP/About_NTP/TRPanel/2011/January/Minutes20110126.pdf. New Jersey Department of Environmental ProtectionN.J.A.C. 7:26D. Remediation StandardsYear: 2009 Date Last Amended: November 4, 2009. Available at http://www.state.nj.us/dep/srp/regs/rs/rs_rule.pdf. New Jersey Department of Health and Senior ServicesPublic health assessment: Reich Farm hazardous site health evaluation programYear: 2001TrentonNew Jersey Department of Health and Senior Services
Stanek E. J. III. Calabrese E. J.. Xu B.. Meta-analysis of mass-balance studies of soil ingestion in childrenRisk AnalYear: 20123243344721883335
USACEU.S. Army Corps of EngineersDraft Final Technical Memorandum for Soil Sampling Activities at the Reich Farm Superfund Site Dover Township, New JerseyYear: 2005 Prepared for USEPA Region II, New York, New York. U.S. Environmental Protection AgencyBenchmark dose technical guidance documentYear: 2000Washington, DCU.S. Environmental Protection Agency EPA/630/R-00/001. External review draft. U.S. Environmental Protection AgencySupplemental guidance for developing soil screening levels for Superfund sitesYear: 2002aWashington, DCU.S. Environmental Protection Agency OSWER 9355.4–24. U.S. Environmental Protection AgencyA review of the reference dose and reference concentration processesYear: 2002bWashington, DCU.S. Environmental Protection Agency EPA/630/P-02/002F. Final report. U.S. Environmental Protection AgencyRisk assessment guidelines for Superfund: Human health evaluation manual (Part E, supplemental guidance for dermal risk assessmentYear: 2004Washington, DCU.S. Environmental Protection Agency EPA/540/R/99/005. U.S. Environmental Protection AgencyExposure factors handbook: 2009 UpdateYear: 2009Washington, DCU.S. Environmental Protection Agency EPA/600/R-09/052A. Figures [Figure ID: F1] FIGURE 1. [Figure ID: F2] FIGURE 2. Benchmark dose modeling results based on relative liver weight changes in male and female rats exposed to SAN Trimer for 18 weeks (NTP 2011a). X = arithmetic mean; error bars = standard deviation; dashed line = Hill model; solid lines = BMD and BMDL.
[Figure ID: F3] FIGURE 3. Benchmark dose modeling results based on eosinophilic foci data in male and female rats exposed to SAN Trimer for 2 years (NTP 2011a). X = incidence; error bars = standard deviation; dashed line = log-logistic model; solid lines = BMD and BMDL.
[Figure ID: F4] FIGURE 4. Summary of hazard index values calculated for SAN Trimer exposure scenarios. X = CTE value; error bars = RME value; solid line = exposure equivalent to the RfD value; dashed line = exposure equivalent to the BMDL value.
aBMD values based on the best fitting model for the short-term data set (exponential, Figure 1).
bBMD values based on the best fitting model for the subchronic data set (Hill, Figure 2).
cBMD values based on the best fitting model for the chronic data set (log-logistic, Figure 3). | http://www.biomedsearch.com/nih/Screening-Level-Risk-Assessment-Styrene/23030654.html |
Unfortunately this job has now expired. However you can view all of our Live jobs here.
Castille’s client is recruiting an IT Security Analyst accountable for maintaining a secured enterprise environment to safeguard the company’s sensitive information in line with regulatory necessities and recognised information security principles.
Accurately monitoring and analysing logs, events, and other data sources to aid in the determination of suspicious activities and prospective threats while inducing proactive risk mitigation approaches in line with industry best practices.
Providing support services within the established service management procedures and SLA.
A minimum of one year experience in a similar role within an enterprise setting administering security platforms.
Excellent troubleshooting, communication and report writing skills and initiative.
Industry-related certifications such as CCNA Security and CISA are considered an asset. | https://www.castilleresources.com/job/it-security-analyst |
A Microsoft update that will disable the compromised RC4 stream cipher on Windows systems was released on Tuesday.
The update is described in Security Advisory 2868725, but it seems to have gone largely unmentioned in Microsoft's general Patch Tuesday announcements. The update will disable RC4 use on Windows 7, Windows 8, Windows RT client operating systems, as well as Windows Server 2008 R2 and Windows Server 2012.
Organizations that have Automatic Update turned on for their clients will start to receive this update. It will get installed automatically in those cases, although Microsoft's security advisory recommends testing the update before applying it across computing environments, explaining that "failing to test the new settings could result in impact to the user experience for Internet Explorer or other applications that make use of TLS."
Microsoft also noted on Tuesday that its Internet Explorer 11 browser uses Transport Security Layer (TLS) 1.2 by default, which avoids using RC4. The RC4 stream cipher has long been used in encrypting and decrypting Web traffic and e-mails, but researchers have found that it has an encryption weakness that could be exploited through the use of malware.
Microsoft's update, in turning off RC4 use by Windows Systems, helps ward off potential "man-in-the-middle" attacks in secure HTTP (HTTPS) communications. However, it just applies to Windows and doesn't change Internet Explorer settings. A man-in-the-middle attack is the interception of plain text by a hacker who has access to the encrypted traffic between two parties.
The update does not apply to Windows 8.1, Windows RT 8.1 or Windows Server 2012 R2. Those operating systems already restrict RC4 use, according to Microsoft's security advisory.
RC4 is essentially broken, according to Ivan Ristic, director of application security research at Qualys Ltd.
"RC4 is indeed considered weak and broken," Ristic stated via an e-mail. "Some of the weaknesses had been known for quite a while, but they either did not apply to how RC4 was used in SSL/TLS, or we knew of no practical way to exploit them. The situation changed in February 2013, when some new research was published."
Ristic offers some steps for IT pros and the security industry to take in this Qualys blog post. He explained that while there are no known publicly reported attacks (other than those carried out by security researchers), IT pros should consider RC4 encryption to be broken.
"The best attack we know today requires an active attacker and millions of forced connections, which means that it is not very practical," Ristic said. "However, it is prudent to assume that RC4 is fully broken -- there might be other issues that are not publicly known. Hence Microsoft's decision."
Microsoft issued a proposal to the Internet Engineering Task Force in April that advocates wholly banning the use of the RC4 stream cipher.
Ristic advised IT pros to not use RC4 on their servers, and to make other changes.
"While they are at it, there are many other improvements to server configuration they could make," he said. "For example, deploying HTTP Strict Transport Security (to ensure SSL is always used and defeat active man-in-the-middle attacks) is relatively easy to deploy but has a big positive impact."
Ristic noted that the update from Microsoft disables OS use of RC4, and that doing so could affect the use of older browsers. However, he added that he hasn't yet had a chance to test the update to see any potential effects.
Qualys generally tracks RC4 use, as well as other TLS security issues, at its SSL Pulse page here. | https://mcpmag.com/articles/2013/11/13/rc4-encryption-disabled.aspx |
1 · Amazon Web Services · June 19, 2023, 8:44 p.m.
This week, I’ll meet you at AWS partner’s Jamf Nation Live in Amsterdam where we’re showing how to use Amazon EC2 Mac to deploy your remote developer workstations or configure your iOS CI/CD pipelines in the cloud. Last Week’s Launches While I was traveling last week, I kept an eye on the AWS News. Here […]...
Read full post on aws.amazon.com | https://diff.blog/post/aws-week-in-review-amazon-ec2-instance-connect-endpoint-detective-amazon-s3-dual-layer-encryption-amazon-verified-permission-june-19-2023-141777/ |
A risk is quantified by evaluating the impact of an event against its occurrence. In today’s digital world, all organizations face IT risks irrespective of their size. IT Asset Disposition (ITAD) entails getting rid of unwanted or obsolete IT resources in an ecologically-responsible and safe manner. It’s an important part of risk management and should be incorporated into your company’s corporate data security strategy.
The 2018 Pokemon Report pegged the average global cost of a data breach at $3.86 million, which is a significant figure by all standards. When your organization’s IT resources approach the end of their life cycle, the possibility of data breaches and non-compliance with industry standards increases. Here’s how you can avoid risks that are inherent in the ITAD process.
By evaluating possible IT risks, the data security of your disposed IT equipment is guaranteed. Likewise, you get an extra sense of security, knowing that thanks to the program, IT resources that are no longer useful have been destroyed professionally.
Retired IT resources should be disposed of so that they do not become risk sources. Keep in mind that easily-discoverable information regarding your ITAD process can lead to costly exposures. Similarly, the ITAD process can turn out to be a liability if it is managed unprofessionally.
Integrating risk management into your ITAD program will go a long way in keeping your company’s data safe and secure. Therefore, always prioritize potential risks and relevant regulations as you create a plan for an upcoming ITAD process. | https://nextuse.us/risk-management-for-itad/ |
British government said on Sunday that its security services must have access to encrypted messaging applications such as WhatsApp, revealing it was used by the killer behind the parliament attack.
The 52-year-old Briton Khalid Masood who killed four people before being shot dead in a rampage in Westminster on Wednesday, reportedly used the Facebook-owned service moments before the assault.
Home Secretary Amber Rudd told Sky News it was “completely unacceptable” that police and security services had not been able to crack the heavily encrypted service.
“You can’t have a situation where you have terrorists talking to each other — where this terrorist sent a WhatsApp message — and it can’t be accessed,” she said.
Police said Saturday that they still do not know why Masood, a Muslim convert with a violent criminal past, carried out the attack and said it was likely that he acted alone, despite a claim by the Islamic State group.
“There should be no place for terrorists to hide,” Rudd said in a separate interview with the BBC.
“We need to make sure that organisations like WhatsApp — and there are plenty of others like that — don’t provide a secret place for terrorists to communicate with each other.”
She said end-to-end encryption was vital to cyber security, to ensure that business, banking and other transactions were safe — but said it must also be accessible.
“It’s not incompatible. You can have a system whereby they can build it so that we can have access to it when it is absolutely necessary,” she told Sky News.
READ ALSO Uber woes mount ahead of workplace probe report
Rudd said she did not yet intend to force the industry’s hand with new legislation, but would meet key players on Thursday to discuss this issue, as well as the “constant battle” against extremist videos posted online.
“The best people — who understand the technology, who understand the necessary hashtags — to stop this stuff even being put up, not just taking it down, are going to be them,” she told the BBC.
US authorities last year fought a legal battle with tech giant Apple to get it to unlock a smartphone used by the perpetrator of a terror attack in California.
The FBI’s own experts ended up breaking into the device.
Social media giants are also coming under pressure over extremist content posted on their sites.
Germany this month proposed fining social networks such as Facebook if they fail to wipe illegal hate speech from their sites.
Meanwhile Google has faced a boycott by companies whose adverts appeared alongside extremist content on its internet platforms, particularly its video-sharing site YouTube.
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Notify me of new posts by email. | https://richgist.com/just-in-british-government-targets-whatsapp-encryption-after-london-attack/ |
I took my first Transcender practice exam for the BCMSN. I bought the online version. I have used Trancesnder in the past for Microsoft exams and have always been happy with them, and I used Boson for the CCNA as I was told Transcender was "not as good."
I scored a 94, but the test seemed far too easy. I was able to fly through the questions without having to think much. * EDIT: I was able to pass the BCMSN, but the Trancender only helped marginally. The level of questions on the real exam were much more difficult, and the Transcender can easily give you a false sense of security. I recommend spending your money on other study materials instead.
I have never done this well on any practice exam the first time, and I feel like I may have wasted my $69.
I will be finishing the rest of the practice exams and sitting the exam late next week or the following week, and I will keep you all posted.
I think it's up to you to decide whether you think the Transcender practice tests covered the content as well as it should. Look at your studies and see what it didn't touch on. I enjoyed the CCNA test. I believe the ICND1/2 books came with the Boson test engine, and it didn't work well for me so I went with Transcender. Not to say it didn't have it's own "features".
Let us know how you do and whether you think it was worth the money you spent. I have always used the Transcender tests until I scored in the 90's at which point I figure I'd pull the trigger and sit the test. It hasn't failed me yet, but I'm sure at some point I will hit a wall.
I am using the Global Knowledge self paced training, official exam certification guide, and portable command guide for my studies. For my labs I am using the Global Knowledge remote labs, they are 2x3750, 2x2950, and a WLC and LAP, my personal lab at work 4x3550, and at home 1x3550 2x2950 which I havn't used very much.
I have 8 years in the industry, 4 in IT security and 4 in networking (monitoring and troubleshooting). I have carried the CCNA since 2001 scoring 900+ every time. I don't do the configs on our equiptment, but I have access to run all 'show' commands on them. I would say about 1/2 of the BSMSN is new to me and most of it to this level of detail. | https://community.infosecinstitute.com/discussion/46602/transcender-bcmsn-review |
Crypto-jacking schemes are getting more intricate by the day. It appears hackers are now disguising cryptocurrency mining malware and passing it off as legitimate Windows installation packages.
Researchers say the malicious software, more commonly known as Coinminer, was specifically designed to fly under the radar. What makes the attack particularly difficult to detect is that it uses a series of obfuscation methods.
The discovery comes from security firm Trend Micro, which has since documented the attack vector at more length.
“The malware arrives on the victim’s machine as a Windows Installer MSI file, which is notable because Windows Installer is a legitimate application used to install software,” the report reads. “Using a real Windows component makes it look less suspicious and potentially allows it to bypass certain security filters.”
The hackers’ trickery doesn’t stop there though. The researchers note that, once installed, the malware directory contains various files acting as decoy. Among other things, the installer comes with a script that counteracts any anti-malware processes running on your machine, as well as the actual cryptocurrency mining module.
The researchers also observed that the malware has a built-in self-destruct mechanism to cover its tracks. “To make detection and analysis even more difficult, the malware also comes with a self-destruct mechanism,” the report says. “It deletes every file under its installation directory and removes any trace of installation in the system.”
While Trend Micro has been unable to link back the attack to a specific country, it notes the installer uses Cyrillic. In all fairness, Cyrillic seems to be pretty popular among cryptocurrency criminals.
In the latest high-profile crypto-jacking case, last week a Canadian university was forced to temporarily kill its entire network after it discovered pesky hackers had been stealing its computing power to secretly mine Bitcoin.
Factoring in the scale of cryptocurrency mining malware, it is no surprise that reports suggest crypto-jackers are profiting more than $250,000 each month. | https://thenextweb.com/hardfork/2018/11/08/cryptocurrency-mining-malware-windows/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+TheNextWeb+%28The+Next+Web+All+Stories%29 |
Downloader. GMS is a Trojan, which although seemingly inoffensive, can actually carry out attacks and intrusions: screenlogging, stealing personal data, etc.
Downloader. GMS accesses several websites to download files, which it then runs. These can be any type of file, although they are normally malware.
Downloader. GMS uses the following propagation or distribution methods:
Exploiting vulnerabilities with the intervention of the user: exploiting vulnerabilities in file formats or applications. To exploit them successfully it needs the intervention of the user: opening files, viewing malicious web pages, reading emails, etc.
File infection: it infects different types of files, which are then distributed through any of the usual means: floppy disks, email messages with attachments, Internet download, files transferred via FTP, IRC channels, P2P file sharing networks, etc. | https://www.pandasecurity.com/homeusers/security-info/about-malware/encyclopedia/overview.aspx?idvirus=99416 |
In The Sleuth Kit (TSK), “fsstat” is a command line tool that provides information about the file system structure and metadata of a given image or file system. The “fsstat” command works by analyzing the file system metadata, such as the file system’s superblock and inode tables, to extract information about the file system layout, block size, total size, and other relevant details.
This information is then displayed to the user, providing a high-level overview of the file system and its characteristics. “fsstat” is commonly used in digital forensics and incident response to quickly gain an understanding of the file system and to identify any unusual or suspicious characteristics that may indicate a security incident.
eyehatemalwares is “PAY WHAT YOU CAN” project.
The zip file associated with this lab is password protected.
For hands-on experience, click the “Donate” button and you will be redirected to eyehatemalwares Paypal donation homepage or scan the QR Code below.
You are trying to download a file that contains malicious executable.
To continue, click the “Download Sample” button to download the file.
Lastly, Execute the sample in a safe isolated environment. | https://eyehatemalwares.com/digital-forensics/tsk-fsstat/ |
That assessment, made Wednesday with "moderate confidence" from researchers at security firm FireEye, is all the more intriguing because the payload delivered to the Russian targets was developed by Gamma Group, the controversial UK-based seller of so-called "lawful intercept" spyware to governments around the world. The company suffered a major setback in 2014 when a hack of its servers exposed more than 40 gigabytes of highly proprietary data showing that its software was used to spy on computers in the United States, Germany, Russia, Iran, and Bahrain. Gamma Group has continued to operate since then, as evidenced by Wednesday's report showing that its software, known as Finspy, was installed as early as January using what until Tuesday was the zero-day vulnerability in Word.
Adding even more intrigue, the Word exploit used to install Finspy on Russian computers shares some of the same digital fingerprints as an exploit used in March to install crimeware. Known as Latenbot, the malware boasted a variety of capabilities, including credential theft, hard drive and data wiping, security software disabling, and remote desktop functions. The shared artifacts found by FireEye—which are documented in the image at the top of this post—strongly suggest the exploits used by both government spies and criminal hackers originated with the same source. That finding draws a connection between state-sponsored hacking and financially motivated online crime.
One of the booby-trapped Word documents used to infect Russian-speaking targets with Finspy was sent on January 25. It's a weaponized version of a widely available military manual purportedly published by the Donetsk People's Republic, a self-proclaimed state in Ukraine that backs Russia and has been deemed a terrorist organization by the Ukrainian government. The exploit downloaded malicious payloads and a decoy document from a server located at the IP address 95.141.38.110. FireEye researchers have yet to identify the targets.
Around the same time attackers started exploiting the Word vulnerability to install bank-fraud malware known as Dridex. The campaign continued through Wednesday, one day after Microsoft patched the Word vulnerability. FireEye researchers still aren't sure what the source was for the exploit that delivered the Dridex payloads. It's possible, the researchers said, that a vulnerability disclosure provided insight that allowed the attackers to figure out how to exploit the bug, or it's possible someone with access to the exploit gave it away when it became clear a patch was only a few days away.
It still remains unclear who developed the shared exploit and what connection the person or group had to Gamma Group. Still, the strange bedfellows underscore the often overlooked interconnectedness of software exploits.
"Though only one Finspy user has been observed leveraging this zero-day exploit, the historic scope of Finspy, a capability used by several nation states, suggests other customers had access to it," FireEye researchers concluded. "Additionally, this incident exposes the global nature of cyber threats and the value of worldwide perspective—a cyber espionage incident targeting Russians can provide an opportunity to learn about and interdict crime against English speakers elsewhere." | https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2017/04/microsoft-word-0day-was-actively-exploited-by-strange-bedfellows/ |
Asus was the first company to bring 120Hz refresh rates to gaming laptops, and now it’s pushing even further for gamers who demand smooth performance at a fast clip. At IFA 2017, Asus revealed the ROG Chimera G703 laptop, a beast of a notebook with a blistering 144Hz, 1080p display made more buttery-smooth by Nvidia’s G-Sync technology.
Asus didn’t say much about what you’ll find inside the 17.3-inch laptop, but Laptop Mag reports that it includes an unlocked Intel Core i7-7820HK processor and Nvidia’s powerful GeForce GTX 1080, which should have no problem keeping that 144Hz display fed even if you crank up your game’s graphics settings.
Judging by the thickness of the laptop and that overclockable processor, the Chimera doesn’t appear to use Nvidia’s Max-Q technology. Laptops like the superb ROG Zephyrus ($2,699 on Amazon) utilize Max-Q to fit potent hardware like the GTX 1080 into slim designs, but at the expense of performance. Without it, the ROG Chimera can put the pedal to the metal and hit those lofty 144Hz speeds.
That ferocious firepower isn’t the only gaming-centric perk. By baking in G-Sync, the ROG Chimera eliminates ugly stuttering and screen-tearing. The laptop also supports Microsoft’s proprietary Xbox One wireless technology, so your cord-free controller ($45 on Amazon) should just plain work, no dongles or extra accessories required. A backlit mechanical keyboard rounds out the package.
Asus announced a €449 Windows Mixed Reality headset at IFA as well, and a PC this potent will be able to power it (or even the now-cheaper HTC Vive) without breaking a sweat.
Pricing and availability for the ROG Chimera G703 hasn’t been announced yet, but don’t expect the world’s first 144Hz G-Sync laptop to come cheap.
Note: When you purchase something after clicking links in our articles, we may earn a small commission. Read our affiliate link policy for more details. | https://www.pcworld.com/article/3220992/asus-rog-chimera-144hz-g-sync-specs-features.html |
In a rebuke to the anti-encryption campaign waged by the U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation--with Apple as a target--the U.S. House Judiciary Committee's Encryption Working Group issued a report today stating "any measure that weakens encryption works against the national interest."
In a bipartisan report, the group observed that "any measure that weakens encryption works against the national interest," citing representatives of the national security community who noted that "strong encryption is vital to the national defense and to securing vital assets, such as critical infrastructure."
A second finding of the report was that "encryption technology is a global technology that is widely and increasingly available around the world." That echoed an earlier study for Harvard University's Berkman Center for Internet and Society. "Any measure that weakens encryption works against the national interest"
Conducted by cryptography expert Bruce Schneier and colleagues Kathleen Seidel and Saranya Vijayakumar, that report from February surveyed the availability of encryption products worldwide and compiled findings that made it clear that U.S. laws to weaken domestic encryption wouldn't stop malicious users from obtaining foreign encryption but would put U.S. firms--such as Apple--at a competitive disadvantage.
The HJC report further suggested that "Congress should foster cooperation between the law enforcement community and technology companies," the same suggestion Apple's chief executive Tim Cook made in asking that the elected representatives of the U.S. Congress work on the issue rather than having it be pushed through under court orders facilitated by the state police, invoking fears of terrorism as a emotional ploy.
Good cop? Bad cop.
The prospect of legally requiring backdoors to bypass encryption has simmered in the background ever since digital encryption became affordable and practical for individuals in the 1990s. However, the matter came to a head in February of this year when a federal judge issued an order requiring Apple to work for the FBI in an attempt to bypass iOS security measures to allow access to decrypt data on an iPhone 5c.
Cook resisted the order, standing up not only to the FBI but also to initial media reports that criticized the company for supposedly "failing to help unlock a phone used by a terrorist."
That message was false; Apple had no ability to "unlock" the encrypted phone, and the federal government's police lacked the authority to dictate that Apple had to build them a security-compromised version of iOS.
FBI director James Comey pursued a charm campaign using FBI press releases to insist that "the San Bernardino litigation isn't about trying to set a precedent or send any kind of message," and subsequently repeated those comments in testimony to the U.S. House Intelligence Committee.
FBI director James Comey
However, Comey has a vast public record of desperately seeking to break encryption. In 2015, Comey unsuccessfully lobbied the Obama administration to press for laws empowering the police to force private companies to break their own encryption products.
Just days after claiming to the American people and to Congress that the FBI wasn't "trying to set a precedent," Comey let the truth slip in comments before the House Judiciary Committee, admitting that "of course" his agency would seek to use the precedent gained from a win in the San Bernardino to unlock other phones.
Comey has since embroiled himself and his agency in further controversy by creating the appearance of actively seeking to influence the U.S. Presidential election in favor of a candidate that had earlier jumped into the encryption debate unarmed with facts or even a rudimentary understanding of the issues involved, but with a strong "law and order" rhetoric that enflamed support for whatever Comey's FBI might demand.
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Each week presents a new opportunity for you and your team to learn the skills necessary to take on the next big challenge.
And, at LinkedIn Learning Solutions, we want to do everything we can to help make that happen.
So, each week, we add to our 9,000-plus course library. And this week was no different, as we added 31 new courses covering everything from Microsoft Excel essentials to IT security to photography. | https://learning.linkedin.com/blog/whats-new/excel--it-security--photography-and-the-other-28-new-skills-you- |
Samsung gets a lot of love for its solid-state drives, which pack super-fast storage into small packages thanks to the company’s V-NAND technology—but its new drives crank things to 11. On Tuesday, Samsung announced 950 Pro M.2 SSDs that marry V-NAND density with blazing fast NVMe speeds delivered over a PCIe 3.0 x4 interface.
Translation: It's really small, and really fast.
The new SSD-on-a-stick features 32-layer V-NAND and will come in 256GB and 512GB options priced at $200 and $350 respectively. The Pro 950 will be available in October, but you might want to wait a few months before opening your wallet.
In early 2016, Samsung plans to introduce a jaw-dropping 1TB Pro 950 that will use the company’s recently announced 48-layer V-NAND, according to PC Perspective. Basically, more V-NAND layers means denser storage capacity, which is why Samsung will be able to pack more storage into such a small package.
The 950 Pro features the Non-Volatile Memory express (NVMe) protocol, which Samsung says will translate into improved performance for laptops and workstations, as well as better battery life for clamshells. If you want a slightly longer explanation of NVMe, check-out our recent performance showdown between M.2 drives on the market today.
We haven’t got our hands on the 950 Pro yet, so we can’t say for sure what kind of speeds you can expect from this drive. On paper, Samsung says the 512GB version will offer roaring sequential read speeds of up to 2.5GB/sec with write speeds maxing out at 1.5/GBs.
The company didn’t offer details on speeds for the 256GB version, but if they're near equal to the 512GB version, both drives should offer speed boosts over the fastest SSDs you can buy today.
In our aforementioned M.2 showdown (link above), we scored the 256GB version of Samsung’s SM951 M.2 SSD with NVMe at sequential read speeds of roughly 1.8GB/s and write speeds around 1.2GB/s. This drive has a number of key features that match the Pro 950, including NVMe and PCIe 3.0 with four lanes, but lacks the Pro 950’s V-NAND, going with traditional planar technology instead.
The impact on you at home: A company’s speed claims almost never live up to the hype in real world tests, so it remains to be seen if the Pro 950 truly hits a 700 MB/s improvement in read speeds over the SM951. Nevertheless, the Pro 950 should still offer a nice bump compared to what you can get today. Both 950 Pro drives come with a 5-year limited warranty that expires after 200 terabytes written for the 256GB version and 400 TBW for the 512GB model.
Note: When you purchase something after clicking links in our articles, we may earn a small commission. Read our affiliate link policy for more details. | https://www.pcworld.com/article/2985226/samsungs-950-pro-ssd-marries-v-nand-and-nvme-for-ludicrously-fast-speeds.html |
New initiative offers five principles for greater IoT security.
Mozilla Foundation, the Internet Society, and eight other organizations have teamed up to push retailers to demand that Internet of Things manufacturers improve security in their devices. The initiative seeks to enlist retailers to use their greatest power — that of dropping products from distribution — to convince manufacturers that adhering to minimum security and privacy standards is good for business.
Strong, understandable privacy practices.
The requirements are echoed in a blog post from the Internet Society that calls on consumers to carry these demands to their favorite retailers.
In a statement provided to Dark Reading, Jeff Wilbur, technical director of the Internet Society's Online Trust Alliance, noted that connected devices today come with risks. "Consumer confidence is critical for this market to thrive and grow, yet many of today's offerings are rushed to market with little consideration for basic security and privacy protections," Wilbur said. "Fortunately, it's a solvable problem if everyone from manufacturers and policymakers to leading retailers just work together to make smart devices safe for consumers, and we're happy to join in the effort of the Mozilla Foundation to focus attention on this important issue."
The Mozilla Foundation has developed a Web page of Valentine's Day Gifts that may or may not meet all the security requirements laid out in the open letter. [Author's Note: The individual products featured on the page may or may not be suitable for workplace viewing.]
The recommended requirements for these IoT devices are a subset of their IoT Trust Framework, a best of requirements with four broad areas incorporating dozens of comprehensive security factors. | https://www.darkreading.com/iot/mozilla-internet-society-and-others-pressure-retailers-to-demand-secure-iot-products/d/d-id/1333890?print=yes |
With the rapid development of information technology, software is playing an important role in various aspects all over the world, such as the economy, military, society, etc. At the same time, software security is becoming an emerging worldwide challenge. Software vulnerabilities are one of the root causes of security problems. High skilled hackers can exploit the software vulnerabilities to do a lot of harmful things, such as stealing the private information of users, halting the crucial equipments and so on. According to the statistics released by the Common Vulnerabilities and Exposures (CVE) organization, the number of software vulnerabilities discovered in 1999 was less than 1600 while the number of vulnerabilities currently covered by CVE and National Vulnerability Database (NVD) almost nearly 100000 [1] . Facing massive software vulnerabilities, developers have neither sufficient time nor enough resources to fix all of them. So there is the question: which bugs are exploitable and thus should be fixed first [2] ? Given that, the primary task in software security is to find the security-critical bugs and fix them.
However, finding and patching software vulnerabilities are highly professional works. The number of developers who can handle these jobs is far from enough compared to the number of software vulnerabilities. Therefore, the need for automated, scalable, machine-speed vulnerability detection and patching is becoming urgent when there are millions of software systems launched every day today.
To this end, DARPA held the CGC in 2016, which not only showed us an impressive scene that machines are effectively hacking against each other, but also dramatically promoted the progress of automatic software vulnerabilities detection, exploitation and patching techniques. Meanwhile, with the tremendous development of artificial intelligence announced by Google [3] , we can see new opportunities that the software security problems can be solved by computing systems automatically and intelligently.
From this point, we give an extensive study of former representative works related to the underlying techniques of a CRS including vulnerability detection, exploitation and patching. Although some researchers like Brooks [4] has proposed a survey taken based on two CRS instances which are Mayhem and Mechanical Phish in this area, our work is different from theirs in several ways. First, we review these works from the perspective of both timeline and categorization. Second, as an important supplement, we then review several pioneer studies that explore the potential of machine learning technologies in this field. At last, our survey focuses on the state-of-the-art works. TABLE I gives an overview of these techniques.
P. Cousot and R. Cousot [9] proposed an Abstract Interpretation (AI) method based lattice theory in 1977 to simplify and approximate the calculation of fixed points. Essentially, it is to achieve a balance between computational efficiency and computational accuracy so that AI lays a theoretical foundation for static analysis with data modeling. AI implemented in the astree static analyzer, to a certain extent, can alleviate the state explosion problem.
In this field, we consider a popular and AI-based method named Value-Set Analysis (VSA). The key to VSA is that it exceeds the approximation of the values in memory. Therefore VSA can be used to make assumptions about targets of an indirect jump statement. The original design of VSA is proposed by Balakrishnan et al. [10] . Later LoongChecker [11] uses an accurate VSA to find out addresses to solve both indirect control transfers and alias problems as many as possible. Then, Josselin Feist et al. [12] present a static tool called GUEB, which uses VSA to reason each variable in the assignment and free instructions based on an abstract memory model to search for use-after-free vulnerabilities in binary programs.
Apart from VSA, another paradigm of static analysis with data modeling is patch matching, which refers to the similarity comparison between the original program and the program with patching to get the difference part. Patch matching is a popular method in recent years. It has significant theoretical and empirical support. For example, Li et al. [13] propose a mechanism that is syntax-based to perform well for code clone vulnerability. Sha et al. [14] present an automatic Patch-based Vulnerability Description (PVD), and it proved that all patch-related bugs can be described in PVD. Xu et al. [15] construct a patch analysis framework named SPAIN, which can automatically learn the security patch patterns and vulnerability patterns to identify and locate the vulnerability patches. Patch matching will narrow the scope of positioning, and thus it does not need to locate vulnerabilities throughout the whole program. It also has been widely used in various tools like Klockwork, Prefix, Coverity and Fortify, etc.
The most common characteristic of the above methods is that they can achieve a high code coverage of the program, which is the advantage of static analysis. While there is also an inherent flaw in the static analysis: the lack of necessary run-time information for the program. To achieve better runtime information utilization, dynamic analysis is put forward.
Fuzzing is an automated technique of black-box testing, which is a process of sending intentionally invalid data to a product in the hope of triggering an error condition or fault to determine whether there are potential security vulnerabilities [16] . Fuzzing does not require any program analysis so that it is fast and can generate multiple tests at the same time but with low coverage. As a representative of automated white-box testing, SAGE [17] is proposed by Microsoft Research to achieve a balance between code coverage and efficiency by repeatedly using the generational search algorithm with a coverage-maximizing heuristic design. Godefroid et al. [17] use it to discover more than 20 unknown vulnerabilities in large Windows applications to validate its effectiveness. But white-box fuzzing requires binary lifting and program analysis, which may result in bad efficiency. Hence researchers propose the grey-box fuzzing which lies in between the white box analysis and the black box analysis. Without the program analysis but with more information about the internal structure, grey-box fuzzing may be more effective than white and black box analysis [18] .
Grey-box fuzzing is considered as the state-of-the-art technology in vulnerability detection [19] . American Fuzzy Lop (AFL) is its popular implementation that has detected hundreds of high-impact vulnerabilities. One of the limitations of AFL is that its mutation engine is syntax-blind, so there are many technologies trying to extend AFL. For instance, AFLFast [18] and AFLGo [19] use the knowledge of Markov chain and simulated annealing algorithm respectively to extend AFL. And from the above extension of AFL, we can see a new trend that the methods based on machine learning are becoming popular and powerful in software security.
Ii-B2 Dynamic Taint Analysis
Taint analysis was first proposed by Denning in 1976 [20] . While the Dynamic Taint Analysis (DTA) was formally proposed in 2005 by James Newsome and Dawn Song [21] . DTA refers to tracking and analyzing marked information flow through the program as it executes. The reliability of DTA is verified by utilizing TaintCheck, and it is proved that DTA can detect most of the types of vulnerabilities. To improve the applicability and scalability of DTA, general frameworks are developed by researchers such as Dytan and TEMU. However, Schwartz et al. [22] point out that there are several fundamental challenges for DTA to achieve accurate analysis results. And the two main challenges are under-tainting and over-tainting.
Facing these problems, many optimization methods for DTA are proposed. For example, DTA++ [23] is put forward to resolve under-tainting without causing over-tainting by identifying a minimum set of implicit flows in the program that potentially cause under-tainting. DECAF [24] keeps track of taint labels at bit granularity in an asynchronous manner, which enables precise and lossless dynamic taint analysis. And also, Ma Jin-Xin et al. [25] pose a method based on offline indices of instruction trace to enhance DTA, and their method is verified to be efficiency. It is able to detect more vulnerabilities than TEMU, and is 5 times faster in average.
Dynamic analysis has higher accuracy than static analysis by analysing the runtime information but at the expense of less code coverage [4] . The combination of dynamic and static analysis (i.e., mixed analysis) hereby come up with the target to achieve better analysis.
Ii-C Mixed Analysis
The mixed analysis has almost become a necessity for all competitive teams in the CGC competition, which indicate that the mixed analysis is a powerful way in software security. There are many automatic methods proposed by researchers. DART [26] , CUTE [27] , EXE [28] , KLEE [29] and SAGE [17] are the typical representative of this area. The state-of-the-art technique, called concolic execution, is to have the concrete execution drive the symbolic execution. Concolic analysis maintains a concrete state and a symbolic state. It executes a program starting with some given or random inputs that act on conditional statements to gather symbolic constraints along the execution. Then it uses a constraint solver to infer variants of the precious inputs in order to steer the next execution of the program towards an alternative execution path [30] .
A key advantage of concolic analysis tools is that the use of concrete values can alleviate the imprecision caused by the interaction with external code or constraint solving timeouts. However they are still facing a serious challenge, that is, path explosion. There are two ways to solve the problem: The first one is to combining online and offline (concolic) execution to obtain the best of both worlds. Mayhem [31] is a hybrid symbolic execution system that uses this way. It can context-switch quickly between states during the online exploration, while extraneous states are swapped to disk and explored in a new exploration [2] . The second one is to using concolic analysis to assist Fuzzing analysis. For example, Istvan Haller et al. [32] develop Dowser, which proposes a new search algorithm with aiming to maximize pointer coverage to alleviate path explosion problem. And the typical and popular tool in this way is Driller proposed by Nick Stephens et al. [33] that combined AFL and concolic analysis to solve the path explosion problem. The above two ways attempt to go around path explosion by reducing the burden on the constraint solver. However it can not solve the problem fundamentally, and thus it would be a challenging topic for our future research.
Iii Automatic Vulnerability Exploitation
Due to economic reasons, there are only a limited number of patches that can be actually deployed. Choosing which vulnerability to address becomes a critical challenge [34] . So the most important issue in software security is to find the security-critical bugs and fix them as soon as possible, which automatic vulnerability exploitation is in charge.
Automatic vulnerability exploits generation is an important and effective means to discover and verify bugs in a program. The existing methods can be classified into three categories roughly: Patch-Based Exploit Generation, Control Flow Hijacking Exploits Generation and Data-Oriented Exploits Generation [35] . This section will describe these three methods in detail.
Techniques based on control flow hijacking have been proposed to overcome the APEG’s defect of patch dependency and the inability to construct control flow hijacking. Heelan [37] first implements the technique. The classic method is Automatic Exploit Generation (AEG) [38] proposed by Thanassis. AEG’s core principle is mainly divided into four steps: Firstly, locate the location of the vulnerability. Secondly, get run-time information of the program such as the stack layout information. Thirdly, generate exploits based on the above information. Lastly, verify the exploits. AEG is the first truly automated solution for exploiting control flow oriented vulnerabilities. There are some limitations with AEG such as dependence on the source code, the exploit samples being limited by compilers, and the dynamic operating environments.
To address the above issues, Q [39] later serves as an exploit hardening system proposed. Based on the research of AEG and Return-Oriented Programming (ROP) [40] , Q is designed to bypass the memory protection mechanisms like W⨁X and Address Space Layout Randomization (ASLR), etc. PloyAEG [41] is proposed that can automatically generate multiple exploits for a vulnerable program. Rex [42] tracks formulas for all registers and memory values to create a Proof Of Vulnerability (POV), and it is implemented in Mechanical Phish which finished third in the CGC Final Event in 2016. All of them have improved AEG to some extent, making the automatic exploits generation technology more feasible. However, in the context of a broad deployment of defense solutions against control-flow hijacking attack, most of the attackers have turned their attention from control-oriented exploits towards data-oriented exploits.
Iii-C Data-Oriented Exploits Generation
Data-oriented attacks change the path of data flow instead of changing the basic control flow of the program. Data-oriented attacks are not well known so far and there are few corresponding defense solutions. Therefore, data-oriented exploit generation has better applicability and flexibility.
Under such research background, the team of Liang put forward a new technique called data-flow stitching that is implemented by the tool FlowStitch [43] . FlowStitch is the first scheme for automatic data-oriented exploits generation and verified to be feasible. However, it has some limitations, for example, there must be at least one known memory error in the program as a precondition. Later, they propose Data-Oriented Programming (DOP) [44] that implements the method to search, extract and program for the attack code blocks and the instruction scheduling assignment code blocks in the actual applications. DOP is Turing-complete as it can execute arbitrary code and bypass the system defenses like DEP and ASLR. Above all, automatic vulnerability exploitation always requires deep semantic understanding that is difficult. So it is a hot topic and more researches are needed to enhance the machine analysis of deep semantic in the future.
After patches are applied, the verification of the functionality of the patched software is required. Currently, the verification step is mainly conducted by software testing using a variety of test cases provided by the software designer or generated from software specification. After the occurrence of GenProg, this kind of verification technology becomes practical.
In terms of the way of vulnerability patching, this paper divides automatic patching methods into two categories, runtime state-based repair and detect-based repair. The following two subsections will describe these methods in detail.
To defense against the rapid spread of worms and other attacks, VSEF [46] combines automatic input filtering and binary-based full execution monitoring to achieve automatically patching of software.
DieHard [48] aims at repairing heap overflow vulnerabilities. It uses randomization, replication and other methods to build an approximate infinite heap. Similar to DieHard, Exterminator [49] addresses buffer overflows and dangling pointers by exploiting randomization to pinpoint errors and merging patches to generate a new patch.
ClearView [50] is proposed by jeff et al.. It repairs bugs of binaries by observing the normal execution of registers and memory locations on x86 systems automatically. When errors are found, it repairs errors through correcting the variables by comparing to normal runtime log. ClearView can alleviate memory write out of bounds vulnerabilities and invalid change of control flow vulnerabilities.
Iv-B2 Rollback
Rx [51] is an automatic repair method proposed by F.Qin et al., which is inspired by the method of allergy treatment for removing allergens. Based on this idea, Rx changes the execution environment of the program back to health when occurring faults. Then Rx will restart the program, and try to rollback it to the checkpoint-state.
Different from the previous methods, ASSURE [52] presents the concept of Rescue Point (RP). RP is the location of a program that detects known errors and needs to restart. ASSURE can be regarded as an exception handling. It uses virtual execution to simulate the runtime environment and explores the reasons to repair the errors such as a memory write out of bounds and illegally control the transfer, etc. REASSURE [53] is ASSURE-based with simplifying the deployment of ASSURE and improving its performance.
In recent years, researchers devote genetic programming to automatic patching methods. GenProg [54] is a success case, it uses genetic programming and extends it to repair program defects automatically without the need for formal specification, program annotations or special coding. It uses structural differencing algorithms and Delta debugging to further reduce the difference between the patched program and the original program, in order to achieve the automatic patching with minimal changes.
Pattern-based Automatic Program Repair (PAR) [55] , uses repair patterns by learning from existing manual patches. Researchers have checked over 60,000 manual patches and found several common repair patterns for PAR to generate patches automatically. Although a large amount of time has been spent on manually creating the repair-templates, researchers declare that these templates have high reusability, and can be used on different occasions.
AE [56] is based on GenProg, but it improves the performance of the healing process. Because AE formalizes repair cost in terms of test executions and uses many techniques such as syntax and data flow analysis to reduce patch search space. To improve the rate of success for patch generation, the order of tests should be adjusted. AE also sets the priority to patches which are the most likely to fail or to succeed.
Like AE, SPR [57] uses subsection repair and conditional synthesis to further reduce the search space and improve search efficiency. Propht [58] learns from manual patches to create correct probabilistic models. Based on these probabilistic models, the test strategy will sort patches to identify the best patch for defects or vulnerabilities.
Iv-C3 Statistical Debugging Metrics
Constraint solving has been applied to automatic patch technology in recent years. SemFix [59] is a semantic-based automatic repair method that combines the symbolic execution, constraint solving, and program composition. In this method, programs that need to patch are formulated as constraints through a given set of tests. And then, SemFix synthesizes patches through semantic program analytics with dynamic symbolic execution.
DirectFix [60] and Angelix [61] are based on SemFix. DirectFix differs from all existing repair methods, it combines the fault locating with the patch generating. DirectFix uses the MaxSMT solver to generate the minimized modification to the program. Angelix is based on the angelic forest. Compared with GenProg and SPR, Angelix is scalable with the ability of high-quality and multi-line.
Iv-C4 Standard Semantics
Because new errors will probably be added when repairing known errors, Gopinath et al. [62] propose a Specification-based code of conduct for automated patch technology, using regulation constraints to trim subsequent uncertainty and repair misstatements. They use the SAT-based Alloy tool-set to describe specification constraints and solve these constraints.
In terms of the above review, great progress has been made in automatic vulnerability patching. However, it cannot repair all types of bugs and it is challenging to fix zero-day vulnerabilities. As the most difficult part, automatic vulnerability patching requires better deep semantic understanding. Therefore the machine understanding of deep semantic can be regarded as the most challenging research topic, in which the machine learning will play an important role.
Since vulnerability detection is very different from the typical problems for which machine learning is motivated, such as image classification, speech tagging, etc. The most important issue for utilizing machine learning to detect software vulnerabilities is to bridge this intention gap. To this end, some pioneer works have been published in recent years.
Some researchers try to import outside information that is needed during program execution to assist the vulnerability detecting process. For example, Perl et al. [63] propose an approach that uses code repositories containing meta-data and code metrics to identify potentially vulnerable commits. They conduct a dataset consisting of 170,860 commits from 66 C/C++ GitHub projects, including 640 vulnerability-contributing commits mapped to the CVE IDs. Based on this dataset, heterogeneous features are extracted and jointly represented using a bag-of-words model. A Support Vector Machine (SVM) classifier is built on top of these features and trained using the dataset to detect the so-called vulnerability-contributing commits.
Some studies attempt to enhance deep semantic understanding. By extracting the semantic information from the program to detect vulnerabilities, Zhen Li et al. [64] implement a deep learning vulnerability detection system called Vulnerability Deep Pecker (VulDeePecker). Deep learning does not require the expert intervention to generate features, making the automation possible. However, applying deep learning to vulnerability detection still requires some guidance. The authors use a code gadget that has multi-block code lines (not necessarily consecutive) with semantic dependencies to represent the software programs. A Bidirectional Long Short-Term Memory (Bi-LSTM) neural network is built up on top of these code gadgets and trained using the first vulnerabilities dataset designed for deep learning to detect. VulDeePecker detects four vulnerabilities that are not reported in the National Vulnerability Database (NVD) that proves its effectiveness.
For vulnerability exploitation, the semantic information is also crucial. Wei You et al. [65] find a new method called SemFuzz to automatically generate a proof-of-concept exploit by collecting the vulnerability-related texts published by CVE and Linux Git log. Version information, vulnerability types, and vulnerability functions for the exploit are provided by CVE. Linux git logs provide a description of the vulnerability patch. SemFuzz is a semantic-based fuzzing technology that uses natural-language processing to extract semantic information by analyzing vulnerability-related text rather than the code itself. Using such information, SemFuzz creates a call sequence to access vulnerable functions and use seed mutation as inputs for fuzzing until the vulnerability is triggered. In order to test the validity of SemFuzz, the author collected more than 112 Linux kernel vulnerability reported by CVE over the past five years. 16% of the vulnerabilities were detected and even zero-day vulnerabilities and undisclosed vulnerabilities are discovered.
V-B Vulnerability Patching
The improvement of deep semantic information understanding is still at the core of vulnerability patching. Here are two main strategies: generate-and-validate approach and semantics-driven approach. Next, we briefly review the studies of machine learning applied to the vulnerability patching.
Ripon K. Saha et al. [66] propose a generate-and-validate technique for object-oriented programs called ELIXIR. The key to this technique is to use method calls extensively, to build repair expressions, and to synthesize patches. The authors use machine learning to rank the concrete repairs, and the ensuing expansion of the repair space can be filtered. The features come from the repair semantic information like the code around the repair location. The authors evaluate ELIXIR on two datasets: Defects4J and Bugs.jar. The results show that the number of fixed bug increased significantly under the condition of expanding the effective search and repair space.
Rahul Gupta et al. [67] propose a semantics-driven and deep learning-based programming error repair technique called Deepfix. Deepfix fixes multiple programming errors by repeatedly calling trained neural networks. The authors have set up two types of datasets including correct and erroneous programs. The authors use the Gated Recurrent Unit (GRU) model to test 6971 erroneous programs to verify their method.
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Give credit where it’s due by listing out the positive aspects of a paper before getting into which changes should be made.
Be specific in your critique, and provide supporting evidence with appropriate references to substantiate general statements.
Your comment should inspire ideas to flow and help the author improves the paper.
The better we are at sharing our knowledge with each other, the faster we move forward. | https://www.groundai.com/project/the-coming-era-of-alphahacking-a-survey-of-automatic-software-vulnerability-detection-exploitation-and-patching-techniques/ |
NEW YORK (AP) — Premera Blue Cross, a health insurer based in the Pacific Northwest, says it was the victim of a cyberattack that could affect 11 million people.
The company says hackers gained access to its information technology systems. The breach could have exposed members' information including names, dates of birth, Social Security numbers, mailing and email addresses, phone numbers, member ID numbers and bank account information.
It says claims information, including clinical information as well as the personal information of people who did business with Premera, could also have been exposed.
The Mountlake Terrace, Washington, company says it has not found evidence that data was removed from its systems or that customer information has been used inappropriately.
The attack occurred May 5 and Premera discovered it Jan. 29. | https://www.kitsapsun.com/story/money/business/business-journal/2015/03/17/premera-blue-cross-says-data-breach-could-affect-11m-people/95726496/ |
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Everything we do at Cognizant we do with passion—for our clients, our communities, and our organization. It’s the defining attribute that we look for in our people. | https://www.disabledperson.com/jobs/26160063-data-privacy-counsel |
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The past week will go down in history as a significant moment. It will be remembered as that point in time when we, the United States, realized the fine line between Nanny State and Police State in this country really doesn’t exist. And from a technology perspective, this week will mark the rebirth of the Cypherpunk culture.
I’ve always been a crypto geek. I actually read Applied Cryptography a decade or so ago. I remember closely following the NIST AES competition, rooting for Bruce Schneier’s Twofish only to see Rijndael be crowned the victor. I implemented DES and RSA for a smartcard terminal using C libraries via JNI for embedded Java because the client didn’t trust Java for the crypto. And I remember when PGP was treated as a more dangerous weapon than an AK47 by our government.
Then things calmed down. The wild west of the internet extinguished a lot of the flames fanning the cypherpunk fires. TCP/IP and HTTP don’t recognize international boundaries. The government and military were too busy learning how to take advantage of these technologies for themselves to worry much about spying on everyone else. For example, while in the Air Force, I was in one of the early kick-off meetings for Intelink. On the sign-in sheet, they had a column for email address. Barely 10% of the people in the room had one.
The days of the free-loving, wild west internet are coming to a close. We allow that businesses spy on us for advertising purposes, but now we’re learning how much Big Brother is doing it too. And we should be worried. There is a new generation of geeks, teamed with the gray-beards of the early movement, who will now be interested in empowering the secure, private exchange of ideas. A renaissance of cryptography is upon us.
Unfortunately, this new crop of cypherpunks is working at a major disadvantage. The collusion of government and industry working together means many popular technologies are insecure. Can anyone really trust Java, .NET and Windows, given it is completely certain that Oracle and Microsoft are willing partners of the government? And what about Apple with iOS and OS X? Are we to believe they took a stand and put their foot down?
This cryptography renaissance is going to be an Open Source renaissance. Desktop Linux will always be a niche, but I expect to see more developers using it. Open languages like Ruby, Python, SBCL, Haskell, and even C, will be the tools of this new generation.
The fight for privacy is going to be fierce. But as Dr. Ian Malcom said, life will find a way. In this case, I believe technology and privacy will find a way.
Previous PostProgramming ChoicesNext PostDear New Microsoft CEO 2 thoughts on “The Cryptography Renaissance” Erik says: June 15, 2013 at 11:49 am Your name was just added to a number of government watch lists. I do not know you. 😉
Tony says: August 22, 2013 at 10:37 am Great post. You basically need to assume the worst and roll your own code.
Relevant: https://www.eff.org/who-has-your-back-2013
Leave a Reply Cancel reply Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *Comment Notify me of followup comments via e-mail | https://www.sporcic.org/2013/06/the-cryptography-renaissance/ |
1. The threat landscape has changed a lot with new threat vectors such as cryptojacking and ransomware coming to the fore. How and why are the threats changing? What are the implications of this change for a CISO?
2. Earlier hackers mostly targeted the BFSI sector but now they are increasingly looking at manufacturing sector. What could be next on their target list?
3. How prepared are Indian CISOs in countering today’s threats? Where are the security gaps and lapses in enterprises?
4. How can CISOs stay ahead of hackers?
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What Google’s Quantum Breakthrough Means for… September 23, 2019 We’ve been warned for years that a quantum computing breakthrough…
we are all about Ethical Hacking, Penetration Testing & Computer Security. We share and comment on interesting infosec related news, tools and more. Follow us on RSS ,Facebook or Twitter for the latest updates. DigitalMunition is designed to help Auditors, Pentesters & Security Experts to keep their ethical hacking oriented toolbox up-to-date .
This website is made for educational and ethical testing purposes only。It is the end user's responsibility to obey all applicable local, state and federal laws. Developers assume no liability and are not responsible for any misuse or damage caused by this website. | https://www.digitalmunition.me/are-you-prepared-for-the-changing-cyber-security-threat-landscape-etciso-cyber-security-month/ |
On a regular HTTP site, your credit card information and passwords can be obtained, read and even changed by anyone connected to a website’s server. HTTPS encrypts that data and keeps it safe every time you enter these characters online.
HTTPS protects your browsing habits. Anything you read or do online that you don’t necessarily want anyone to know about is better protected when those sites use HTTPS.
HTTPS gives you peace of mind by assuring you that a website with that little padlock in the address bar is definitely who they claim to be. Websites need to get a certificate that cannot be faked in order to get that padlock.
HTTPS prevents anyone on your local network from tampering with the data, ensuring data integrity. Without HTTPS, someone can block parts of a webpage or even multiple pages on a domain.
Choosing not to use HTTPS on your website puts you in a position where malicious things could happen, such as fraud, identity theft or compromised data. Using a site with HTTPS adds another layer of protection against the vast and volatile threat landscape that we are all exposed to. | https://www.f-securecybersecurity.co.za/https-protecting-all-internet-users/ |
PCWorld Business Center's "In Your Bag" series takes an intimate look at the essential tech gear that small-business leaders carry with them.
Nearly half of small businesses still don't have a website, but David Rusenko aims to change that. He's the CEO of Weebly, a do-it-yourself website-building service that PCWorld named one of 2011's top 100 products.
More than 10 million people have created Weebly websites. Its WYSIWYG tools are popular among a variety of small businesses, like realtors, restaurants, photo studios, retail stores, as well as schools and nonprofit groups.
With 35 staff members, Weebly is a small business itself. Its earliest versions came out of a class project at Pennsylvania State University. After working on it part-time for close to a year, then securing funds from Y Combinator, Rusenko moved with co-founders Dan Veltri and Chris Fanini to San Francisco in 2007. On my recent visit to Weebly's new office in North Beach, Rusenko was especially proud of a decked-out, velvety-walled basement speakeasy room, accessbile only through a hidden panel in a wall.
iPhone 4S on AT&T, no case. Essential apps include Weebly's new app, the Gmail app, Greplin, YouMail, NewsRack, news:yc, Uber, TripIt, CardMunch, Softphone, and the rest of the usual suspects.
Fourth-generation Kindle (Wi-Fi) and iPad 2, Wi-Fi only. These days, my iPad is primarily used for the Luminair app, which controls DMX-based lighting systems over Wi-Fi using a protocol called Art-net. Macbook Air. | https://www.pcworld.com/article/251284/whats_in_your_bag_david_rusenko_weebly_ceo.html |
Enterprise data centers face constantly evolving application needs and complex traffic variance. Cisco’s application-centric infrastructure (ACI) provides the missing link that finally lets applications guide networking behavior.
Here’s why: ACI is based on tight integration between physical and virtual elements. When software-defined networking (SDN) depends on software only, networks can experience workflow bottlenecks since traffic has to flow through virtual routers and edge gateways.
ACI eliminates this dynamic since its workloads can reside anywhere on the network fabric, creating a network administrator’s dream: consistent, predictable network performance.
APIC also makes it possible to have third-party services integration for advanced security, load balancing, and monitoring from a variety of vendors and products that can easily integrate within administrator-defined policies with ACI architecture. This includes integration with different cloud environments via northbound APIs on the APIC.
By being based on a declarative and integrated overlay model, ACI can render policies across Nexus 9000 switch, an Open vSwitch (OVS), and/or to a GOLF device. This means less infrastructure, increased speed, availability, and visibility for data throughput across the network.
The Many Business Benefits of ACI
ACI delivers benefits that improve operational agility, cost structures, and growth. Most businesses can realize all the following benefits of a properly implemented ACI architecture:
Supports rapid application change by reducing complexity through a framework that can automate virtual and physical infrastructure provisioning and simplify resource management.
One of the biggest drawbacks of traditional non-SDN networks is that security requires implementation of hardware-based firewall solutions that gate access by IP addresses or other security policies. This means physical changes to the network environment will nullify the existing applied policies.
Firewall access control lists can have millions of rules. This makes it impossible to individually define and manage each device and user as well as configure the network for every application and IP address. As more users and devices become part of the network via IoT and branch locations, the business continues to evolve its business-critical applications, which calls for a completely new approach to security.
Besides there being many SDN architecture and security benefits, micro-segmentation (dividing the network into smaller protection zones) has become an important tool. Here is another area where ACI has ushered in a new approach to protecting groups through the use of automation and micro-segmentation. ACI also extends that ability across multisite environments so that policy-driven automation can be pushed out to multiple data centers for application mobility and disaster recovery.
Cisco’s micro-segmentation approach lets administrators set up groups of endpoints that can apply to a mix of virtual machines or physical servers. These can be grouped and named regardless of their IP address. Once the groups are defined, security and forwarding policies can be dynamically assigned.
The ability to define groups that share policy needs means they can be enforced everywhere. Group-based policy management, and the micro-segmentation it provides, is an increasingly important security measure. As applications, devices, and users become more distributed, threats become more sophisticated and debilitating. Segmentation via ACI can deliver numerous benefits including:
Today, enterprises have so many options with SDN and ACI; it can be difficult to know where to begin the integration process. Addressing this issue requires a partner with the expertise in traditional and new networking approaches. They can then support development of a clear plan for implementation and how to make it a reality.
Acadia Technology Group brings a proven track record in helping enterprises capitalize on the advantages of software-defined networking along with traditional networking technology. Contact us today to learn how we can partner with you to create tangible improvements in your enterprise operations through custom network design. | https://www.acadiatech.com/blog/new-sdn-solution-provides-greater-network-security-and-agility/ |
It's an interesting story and on the face of it seems quite bad and for their public relations it is but, when you look at what they did wrong, it's hard to identify anything tangible.
I have used the Facebook API quite a lot in the past and with one project I made use of friendships to delve down into user connections to cross-reference records and build a basic picture of a users friendship network in a rather basic attempt to make a website more appealing. It's been a few years since I have used it in that much detail and I get the impression things have tightened up a bit since then but it was always designed to replicate the normal Facebook site. If you could see something by browsing the site you could see it through the API, with suitable permissions of course.
When a user authorises a connection, the apps makers can pull down the users name and email address and, if allowed, a list of the users friends. With another permission, this can be expanded out to include things they have liked or followed which can go a long way to define a person's interests, beliefs and political persuasions. You can then combine this with information the user and their friends have decided to share publicly which helps to build up a picture of these people.
From one user connecting your app to their Facebook account you could get a very complete picture of well over 100 people.
If you spend your time in the code and look at each of these things separately there is nothing wrong with it; it's the users data that they have granted permission for it to be used by a 3rd party or decided to share publicly. When you sign up as a developer you have to agree to terms of use which include things about not saving or using data inappropriately but there is absolutely nothing that can stop a developer if they have ulterior motives.
At this point Facebook have done all they can, they have asked the user if they want the 3rd party to access the data and they have told the developers what they can do with it.
It's only when you take a step back do you see how this data can be augmented and used way beyond its intended purposes. As a developer it's quite hard take a broader look like this as when you're working with these APIs and lists of permissions everything is clean and simple and very black and white.
Capturing to much
The other thing to emerge recently is the capturing of phone call logs and sms messaging by the Facebook mobile apps installed on peoples phones. Again, this is easy to understand but a lot harder to explain away or justify.
Going back a few years the mantra (for better or worse) in large parts of the tech community was to capture as much data as possible incase it could be useful later. Storage was super cheap and data was valuable, you would be daft not to! This is made worse by the lack of granularity with permissions on mobile phones, for example if your building a video playing app you will probably need full access to the phone system in order to pause playback if a phone call comes in. The app doesn't do anything with phone calls but by gaining access for innocent reasons you immediately get access to call logs, then all it takes is a developer or project manager to say why not capture that phone data, it could be useful for... (insert some obscure reason here).
This type of behaviour has thankfully started to decline as people get a better grasp on the type of data and the increasing awareness of users legitimate privacy concerns, also within Europe the GDPR rules coming into force pushes people to capture as little as possible so if you wanted to capture lots of data like this you now need a very good reason.
In the end I don't think its fair the level of grief Facebook is getting for the Cambridge Analytica story but they are a very big company and have been for some time so have the skills to foresee these types of problems and inappropriate uses of the data and to come up with solutions, even if that means taking a step back and raising some walls around their garden. | https://arthurguy.co.uk/blog/2018/3/facebook-data-breach |
BAKERSFIELD, Calif -- In many ways Matt Bergin is your typical 21-year-old guy. During the day he works as a sales representative for a local grape exporter. But at night he's anything but typical. Bergin spends countless hours on his computer working to hack into network systems.
Over the past few months Bergin has clicked and typed his way through some of the most sophisticated software businesses have to offer.
It's a skill some in Washington D.C. noticed quickly, earning him a trip to the U.S. Cyber Challenge; an event put on by the White House and U.S. Navy. Users played on a game called 'Netwars.' It's designed to detect bright brains like Bergin's.
Bergin took 2nd place in the daylong competition and since then, he has been offered positions with two security companies.
Have something to say about this article? Comment below or share it with us on Facebook, Twitter or our LinkedIn Group. | https://thehackernews.com/2010/10/man-places-2nd-in-national-computer.html |
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After many months in development, LinuxSecurity is pleased to announce the public beta of our new site with more of the stuff we love best - the latest news, advisories, feature articles, interviews, and other content relevant to the Linux user.
While we work out any last-minute issues during this beta period, we would really appreciate your input. We need your help to identify any bugs or features we may have missed. See something you really like or don't like? Please share your thoughts!
with incomplete entities. An attacker could send specially crafted input to
applications that use HTML::Parser and cause a denial of service. | https://linuxsecurity.com/advisories/ubuntu/ubuntu-855-1-libhtml-parser-perl-vulnerability |
DNS Changer Check-Up: as you may have already heard, on Monday, July 9th, computers affected by the DNSChanger virus will no longer be allowed to use internet. You check for Malware and Virus before Monday 9th on: http://www.dns-ok.us/ and http://www.fbi.gov/news/stories/2011/november/malware_110911
DNS Changer started, in 2007, to redirect internet traffic to malicious sites. Some clean DNS servers have been created to keep visitors safe, however they will stop working on Monday. So now it is time to ensure there is no such malware on your computer. | http://www.amareway.org/holisticliving/07/dns-changer-check-up-how-to-check-for-malware-and-virus-before-monday-july-9th/ |
SAN JOSE, California – January 19, 2021 – NextGen Cyber Talent Inc. (“NextGen”), a nonprofit
organization training the next generation of cybersecurity professionals, announces its pilot cohort and its first Governing Board. NextGen seeks to provide an avenue into cybersecurity careers for women, minorities and other underprivileged segments through education and mentoring, while simultaneously attacking the skills shortage and lack of diversity in the cybersecurity industry today. The organization partnered with Bay Area community colleges to select its initial pilot cohort, and selected a diverse group of 20 students that will begin its online curriculum starting January 19th.
The Herjavec Group estimates that the number of unfilled cybersecurity jobs is expected to grow by 350%, from one million positions in 2013 to 3.5 million in 2021. In addition, (ISC)2 estimates that women account for less than a quarter of the overall cybersecurity workforce. NextGen has been working with veteran executives and industry leaders to attack these deficiencies via Chapter and Strategic Advisory Boards, and has finalized members for its initial Governing Board.
“We are excited to introduce our board of distinguished executives who will bring diverse expertise and insight in support of our mission,” said Founder & Co-Chair Krishnan Chellakarai. “Our work will address the lack of awareness of cybersecurity in younger generations and encourage them to consider building a career in this highly fulfilling field. The organization benefits from its deep network to ensure that NextGen’s board and leadership represents a variety of experts from technology, banking, health care, life sciences, and nonprofit backgrounds.” “I am thrilled to have Tony Blevins and Phil Cox join Krishnan and myself on the Board to help make the NextGen vision a reality. The program is seeded by the principle of connecting successful leaders from industry with tomorrow’s up and coming talent”, said Co-Chair and Board Member Gary Gauba. “We look forward to building a thriving network of alumni over the coming decade with the active participation and support of industry luminaries like Tony, Phil and our Chapter Board members.”
WEBSITE: https://www.nextgencybertalent.com
LINKEDIN: https://www.linkedin.com/company/nextgen-cyber/
Keep up with the latest cybersecurity threats, newly discovered vulnerabilities, data breach information, and emerging trends. Delivered daily or weekly right to your email inbox. | https://www.darkreading.com/cybersecurity-careers/nextgen-cyber-talent-announces-its-first-pilot-cohort-and-governing-board |
When cybercriminals join the online channel and "chats," the bot uses the data provided (cardholder name and information) to input and run transactions against the websites of charities and other non-profits in order to verify that the card data is correct and the account is active. The bot then reports the results and any transaction details back the crook.
The bot interacts as a user on an IRC (Internet Relay Chat) channel. Functions like card verification are handled through private messages between a moderator, the criminal service's customer, and the bot's own "user" ID on the same chat channel. These messages contain bot commands formatted using a specific syntax recognized by the bot. Using the private message feature allows the service's users to chat openly with each other but keep messages that contain things like valuable card data out of the hands of the other criminals on the channel.
The bot itself is a program implemented in the perl programming language. Although based on a design for IRC interactions that dates back many years, this bot uses specific modules and code customized for cybercrime purposes first seen in 2011. This particular strain of criminal tailored code is known for its use of Portuguese for comments and variable names.
The source code to those bots is available, but compared to those older bots that were coded for a single main purpose, the bot used in this case is larger and more complex, handling many different functions that cybercriminals may find useful. Indeed, in addition to automated card verification, this bot also includes modules for tasks such as:
This particular service has been advertised on certain closed underground forums that vet membership applicants in various ways rather than allowing members from the public to enroll themselves. The service has become so successful, however, that virtually all new business is acquired through word-of-mouth.
Once added by the service's administrator, the customer will receive information on how to authenticate to the service via chat. The channel is protected by a watchdog bot that watches for and bans or "kicks" any users it cannot authenticate.
Criminals must then earn or purchase "credits" to continue to use the service. Credits can be earned in a variety of ways:
Purchased with funds via wire or cash transfer, with virtual online currencies such as WebMoney, or with Bitcoin or a number of similar cryptocurrencies
In barter for other services or referrals to other services that help support the operators' criminal enterprise.
In exchange for helpful information such as reports of "rippers" or investigations.
As payment for completion of a specific task or mission, such as voting or vouching for someone's forums access or the delivery of the source code to a particular malware builder kit.
As a finder's fee for referring new members.
In exchange for stolen data, including account credentials for various online services and, of course, payment card data.
In some cases, customers of the service will exchange part of the stolen card data they've logged for credits. These are separated out and sent to the admin who may request certain card types from certain card issuers (based on the BIN/IIN part of the card number) or from certain geographic regions. Once the admin uses his own bot to verify the card data, the user is given a certain number of credits which can then be used to verify the customer's remaining stolen cards.
Assuming nicknames as customary, PhishLabs R.A.I.D. initiated conversations with two different channel moderators, and those responsible for running the service confirmed the following:
The carders, those stealing and trading in stolen card data, do not have to worry about managing their own compromised or clandestine merchant accounts.
The operators of charity and non-profit websites put as few obstacles in the way of making a donation as possible which makes it relatively easy for bots to run automated transactions.
These types of websites seem to have fraud detection profiles that result in a relatively low number of declined transactions for valid card data. The ability to verify small amounts from many different types of cards issued in many different countries seems to work more reliably for the criminals than, for example, retailer websites.
One moderator offered the absurd suggestion that letting the charities keep the funds used to verify the cards somehow compensated for damage done to the actual cardholders. Another moderator suggested that cardholders would be less inclined to report payments as fraudulent since they were sent to a charity or non-profit. However, once flagged for other fraudulent activity, the organizations behind the abused websites would suffer loss from charge backs and the time and effort it would take to identify related activity.
Identifying related fraudulent activity
It essential to spot the verification activity early to prevent additional losses and larger scale fraud later. The hallmark of this activity is the small, random amounts used in the verification checks. Amounts in the range of USD $1.00 to $5.00 are randomly chosen, so they will usually have some number of cents in the amount. This is done in an effort to thwart fraud detection systems that would flag consistent amounts from so many sources in such a short period of time; however, many people make smaller online donations in whole dollar amounts. It may seem odd to see a payment to a charity or non-profit in some partial dollar amount such as $1.09 or $4.86 on an e-receipt, conformation or account statement.
Operators of websites that may have been targets for abuse can also look for the same pattern in the amounts paid, especially in bursts of transactions each separated by some short period of time usually in the range of a few seconds to a couple of minutes. Additionally, website operators can correlate the IP addresses with payments and donations. Confidence that one has spotted this type of activity is raised if the geolocation look up on the IP address is ether of the following, especially when taken together:
All of these will require some changes to the website and some may introduce an additional step or two in the donation process. Most changes are relatively minor compared to retailer websites and on par with was a visitor to a blog must do to post a comment.
Operators of this criminal service's maintain a list of unprotected payment submission web pages and configure the bot for how to run transactions against each one. Those targets that have implemented one or more of these countermeasures have been pruned from the bot configuration.
Follow our blog for the latest cyber security news. | https://info.phishlabs.com/blog/cybercriminals-abuse-charities-to-verify-stolen-credit-card-data |
This unit applies to people who are part of a working group that develops treatment options during an emergency risk assessment with a community or part of a community. Such assessments are conducted at local, regional or state level by local governments, emergency management committees, public safety agencies, major event managers or other organisations that need to understand emergency risk to a community.
The emergency risk management process used will be developed in close cooperation with the community and consistent with the National Emergency Risk Assessment Guidelines and AS/NZS ISO 31000:2009 Risk management—Principles and Guidelines. | https://www.futurewest.com.au/emergency-risk-assessment-course.html |
Controlling access to your Statesboro facility is critical to the safety of your employees (or students) as well as the protection of your assets. Brewer Technology Solutions, Inc. offers access management solutions and card access control systems for all small and medium-sized business as well as large campuses and multiple sites.
In Statesboro, Card Access Control Systems by Team BTS are the quick and easy way to help you limit the access to high-risk or sensitive areas of your facility. Security access control allows you to limit employee access, manage schedules, and know who’s going where and when.
With recent events such as mass shootings and acts of terrorism, increased security and restricted access is no longer a luxury, it’s a necessity. In an instant, you would have the capability of completely locking down your Statesboro facility. Brewer Technology Solutions, Inc. can help you increase safety and reduce liability by allowing you to limit or restrict access to different users.
Many technologies are available, from card access control to biometric readers such as facial recognition and iris scan readers. For an optimized system, your commercial security system and video surveillance system can be integrated with your access control system to provide that extra layer of protection. You can count on our team of professionals to help you choose and implement the type of access control system solutions that are right for your needs. | http://team-bts.com/card-access-control-systems/southeast-georgia/bulloch-county/statesboro/ |
To keep personal items safe items like but it can go deeper than that and help you stay in touch with powerful essays: cyber crime and cyber. Keeping young people safe cyber crimes cyber crime & internet safety this section provides up to date tips on how to stay safe while communicating. Get 6 easy tips that will keep you safe from cyber crime so you can shop securely, avoid id theft, and never put your personal finances in jeopardy. Cyber crime data breach the modern guide to staying safe online how security researchers stay safe online is dramatically different from a consumer. The only motive of this place is to help everyone by sharing essays cyber crime but i prefer to call it cyber to stay ahead of cyber criminals.
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This wikihow will give you a few tips on how to be safe on the internet ↑ http://wwwstaysafeonlineorg/stay-safe-online/protect-your. Cyber criminals may try to gain unauthorised access to your computer or bank account follow these tips to ensure you can keep yourself safe.
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Chat rooms can be very dangerous, so watch what you say and do some general tips on staying safe while chatting are to never, under any circumstances, give out your. The new stranger danger: how to stay safe online in the age of cyber crime. | http://fbtermpaperwbwd.artsales.biz/staying-safe-from-cyber-crime-essay.html |
Guy Langford: The TH&L sector faces unanticipated risks from external events such as natural disasters, terrorist attacks and biological outbreaks, which can significantly impact travel behavior, as well as food safety and other types of safety, which can be detrimental to consumer confidence and shareholder value. There are also internal threats that are created by, for example, the proliferation of digital and mobile technologies, which are putting much more power and versatility into the hands of the consumer while they open new cyber and digital risks for companies to manage. As a result, response planning to these and other developments through testing of enterprise risk management is going to become mandatory throughout the industry to compete effectively. Relationships between travel brands and their customers are heavily built on trust, so companies that operate in the sector need to protect that delicately balanced relationship, and strong enterprise risk management can help preserve that trust.
Tamika Tremaglio: While the stage seems set for a successful year ahead, 2017 was a stark reminder of the vulnerability of our large, but delicate, travel ecosystem as Guy notes. External events—the severe hurricanes, wildfires and earthquakes wreaking havoc in the United States, Mexico, and the Caribbean, to the horrific attacks in Barcelona and Las Vegas, have the potential to cause a ripple effect of disturbances across the industry. Moreover, traditional players should consider the risks of sticking with traditional strategies. Brands that fail to innovate and adopt new technologies could risk losing market share.
Guy Langford: I think the sector is getting better at incorporating the need to innovate within its risk oversight rather than keeping the two far apart. Historically, the industry has been a bit of a laggard in driving innovation and interweaving this kind of culture of risk management. With the growth of mobile services, which present new challenges for security and reputation, innovation and risk will continue to grow closer together. The individual who manages and oversees risk seems to be increasingly at the table around innovation. So I think it’s trending in the right direction.
Risk management, like innovation, is most effective when it is implemented across functional siloes. Recognizing that the risks in today’s world are inherently linked to growth and innovation is critical. Earlier I discussed the example of the proliferation of new technology leading to a rise in an organization’s cyber risk profile. This inherent linkage between innovation and risk leads to another related trend, which is the rise of the chief risk officer (CRO) role at companies like Hilton. I think other organizations will consider this approach, with the goal of making the CRO integral to the travel company and its culture by breaking down functional lines to facilitate that critical balance between risk and innovation. Having a CRO in place can send a powerful message about delivering on your brand promises and compliance requirements, and that can resonate with shareholders, customers, business partners and employees.
Q: How are TH&L organizations incorporating analytics and new technologies within risk management?
Tamika Tremaglio: From a technology standpoint, we’re starting to see greater incorporation of analytics, embedded in the business units themselves and not just in risk. Rather than having a dedicated analytics group, I see analytics embedded into day-to-day activities. It is prudent, however, to have a dedicated group of people who are able to extract data from various systems within the organization to avoid overtaxing the IT group with data requests. Within the risk management group, we’re seeing more use of predictive analytics, where organizations are using the data they collect for analytics that can start to predict trends, for better risk sensing. This emerging use of technology is especially helpful around innovation, including the Internet of Things.
Guy Langford: The role of analytics is critical, putting it in the right part of an organization so that it can be used not only as a tool to understand trends in the business and consumer behaviors, but also as a risk-sensing tool. There might be certain trends visible in the analysis of data related to airlines or hotels or restaurants, which might cue in a CRO to increasing risks. For example, if there is an increase in slip-and-fall incidents, usually that comes through the legal office. But there might be feedback that could be provided at the field level on accidents, or returns or refunds of food in a restaurant, which might call into question the food safety element. | https://deloitte.wsj.com/riskandcompliance/2018/01/22/a-sharper-focus-on-risk-management-for-the-travel-hospitality-and-leisure-sector/ |
The cyber space has experienced many advances since its introduction to the corporate environment, creating many gaps in technical awareness within the workplace.
To fill these gaps, cybersecurity awareness programs that impart best practices and enforce cyber-aware behaviour are essential. Developing policies and procedures that increase employee awareness of the existence and impact cyber threats hold, can protect your organisation in the digital space.
Routinely maintaining training sessions and updating policies that include the most recent threats and treads that could impact organisations would have your workforce aware and vigilant to any suspicious activity.
This Microcredential aligns to BSBXCS402 Promote workplace cyber security and best practices.
Microcredentials are certifications of assessed competency in high-demand skills and knowledge areas that are industry-recognised and can be achieved in shorter timeframes than other AQF award qualifications. Built from the individual units of Vocational Qualifications, AIM Microcredentials give you the opportunity to focus your study and upskill only in the area aligned to your goals.
Your Microcredential can stand alone as an independant credential or be used as recognition towards an AIM Vocational Qualification.
This microcredential is delivered fully online through the myAIM learning platform to provide interactive learning content, support forums, and access to live virtually delivered seminars, drop-in coaching sessions, and assessment workshops, all completely online.
Designed to accommodate the schedule of fulltime working professionals, this Microcredential is highly accessible and provides a self-paced learning experience for participants.
Within the AIM assessment model, competency is demonstrated through answering knowledge questions and completing workplace-based practical assessment tasks.
These tasks may include the need to utilise workplace-based activities involving others or participation in role plays.
Our Vision: To maintain our position as the most relevant leadership development organisation and future skills trainer in Australia.
Our Purpose: To use our 80 years of experience to prepare Australia for success in a rapidly changing environment and empower people with the skills and confidence to seize the future. | https://www.aim.com.au/technology/courses/microcredential-in-best-practice-cybersecurity |
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Automatic Protection. Ensures agile VM deployment and security by automatically and immediately protecting newly created VMs | https://info.5nine.com/download-5nine-cloud-security-azure |
Therefore, online banking users are asked never to click on a link on social media websites, in text messages or in email messages to sign into their accounts. They should instead, go directly to their banks’ website by typing the bank’ website name in the address bar of their web browsers, or search for it using a popular search engine.
Online Banking users or customers, who think they were tricked into visiting fake websites, and who have submitted their information on the same fake websites, are asked to change their Online Banking account passwords, check their accounts for discrepancies, and report the discrepancies found to their banks.
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A former network engineer for oil and gas company EnerVest has been sentenced to four years in federal prison after pleading guilty in January to sabotaging the company's systems badly enough to disrupt its business operations for a month.
Ricky Joe Mitchell of Charleston, West Virginia, must also pay US$428,000 in restitution and a $100,000 fine, according to an announcement this week from U.S. Attorney Booth Goodwin's office.
In June 2012, Mitchell found out he was going to be fired from EnerVest and in response he decided to reset the company's servers to their original factory settings. He also disabled cooling equipment for EnerVest's systems and disabled a data-replication process.
Mitchell's actions left EnerVest unable to "fully communicate or conduct business operations" for about 30 days, according to Booth's office. The company also had to spend hundreds of thousands of dollars on data-recovery efforts, and part of the information could not be retrieved.
"Imagine having your company's computer network knocked out for a month," Goodwin said in a statement. "In this day and age, that kind of attack is devastating."
Mitchell's actions cost EnerVest well over $1 million, according to the indictment against him.
Mitchell had faced up to 10 years in prison as well as three years of supervised release, but could serve less than the four years thanks to federal guidelines providing up to 54 days off per year for good behavior.
He's not the only IT professional in recent memory to take revenge on an employer, although Mitchell's actions caused more economic damage than others.
In 2009, a former IT staffer at Baltimore Substance Abuse Systems hacked into a PowerPoint presentation the CEO was giving to a group of city officials, causing porn to suddenly appear on a large screen.
Walter Powell received a two-year suspended sentence and was ordered to perform 100 hours of community service as punishment for the stunt.
Chris Kanaracus covers enterprise software and general technology breaking news for The IDG News Service. Chris' email address is [email protected] | https://www.cio.com.au/article/545749/us_it_pro_gets_prison_time_sabotaging_ex-employer_system/ |
More information about Reimage and Uninstall Instructions. Please review Reimage EULA and Privacy Policy. Reimage scanner and manual repair option is free. An advanced version must be purchased.
More information about Intego and Uninstall Instructions. Please review Intego EULA and Privacy Policy. Browsers are struggling to perform even simple actions.
As longs as app's developers do not double check the trustworthiness of every site they promote, WebSaver adware can redirect the user to dubious-looking websites. Notice that such pages might contain potentially dangerous content. Once clicked, a dubious link might start the installation of a PUP or other serious infection. Moreover, numerous adverts overload your computer screen and intrude your browsing activity. You might struggle to carry out various search requests due to the big amount of ads.
You need to take care of the WebSaver removal due to all beforementioned reasons. Nevertheless, ad-supported programs have an annoying feature to collect browsing-activity related data and use it for beneficial reasons. Adware gathers details such as IPs, bookmarks, pages visited, pictures viewed, and similar.
Use Reimage Cleaner Intego to remove WebSaver virus permanently. Be aware next time – you need to know that ad-supported programs and similar PUPs spread through regular software or questionable websites. Avoid clicking on dubious content and perform other precautionary measures that have been explained in this article below.
WebSaver - adware which might redirect you to potentially dangerous websites.
Adware infiltration does require users' interaction
Normally, such programs as PUPs use third-party software for their distribution. According to IT specialists[3], this distribution technique is named bundling because various ad-supported programs travel bundled with freeware as extra attachments. Always choose the Custom or Advanced installation option rather than the Quick/Recommended one. This decreases the risk of various PUP infiltrations.
Keep in mind, if your PC is unprotected and you have no anti-spyware program installed, you are like a sitting duck for such cyber intruders. Try to check every single program that you are going to install. Find as much information as possible about your desired applications. If you are not attentive enough, various infections can easily slip thru your defense and enter your computer without your permission.
Eliminating WebSaver from the system. The easiest guide
If your screen is always overloaded by ads and you are facing questionable redirects, you need to remove WebSaver virus from your computer and clean browsers. This is necessary to ensure your system's security. You can proceed with such action by following our below-given instructions or by installing anti-malware.
We recommend performing the WebSaver removal with the help of strong security software. These programs can fastly deal with all kinds of threats. If you complete the process without rushing any steps, the adware infection will be eliminated without leaving leftover files. Remember to refresh browsers that were affected by the ad-supported application after you proceed with the removal.
You may remove virus damage with a help of Reimage Cleaner Intego. SpyHunter 5Combo Cleaner and Malwarebytes are recommended to detect potentially unwanted programs and viruses with all their files and registry entries that are related to them.
If you failed to remove virus damage using Reimage Intego, submit a question to our support team and provide as much details as possible.
Reimage Intego has a free limited scanner. Reimage Intego offers more through scan when you purchase its full version. When free scanner detects issues, you can fix them using free manual repairs or you can decide to purchase the full version in order to fix them automatically.
Here, look for WebSaver or any other recently installed suspicious programs.
Uninstall them and click OK to save these changes.
If you are using OS X, click Go button at the top left of the screen and select Applications.
Wait until you see Applications folder and look for WebSaver or any other suspicious programs on it. Now right click on every of such entries and select Move to Trash.
Click on the gear icon (menu) on the top right corner of the browser and select Internet Options. Stay in General tab.
Here, remove malicious URL and enter preferable domain name. Click Apply to save changes.
Launch Microsoft Edge app and click More (three dots at the top right corner of the screen).
Click Settings to open more options.
Once Settings window shows up, click Choose what to clear button under Clear browsing data option.
Here, select all what you want to remove and click Clear.
Now you should right-click on the Start button (Windows logo). Here, select Task Manager.
When in Processes tab, search for Microsoft Edge.
Right-click on it and choose Go to details option. If can’t see Go to details option, click More details and repeat previous steps.
When Details tab shows up, find every entry with Microsoft Edge name in it. Right click on each of them and select End Task to end these entries.
Resetting Microsoft Edge browser (Method 2):
If Method 1 failed to help you, you need to use an advanced Edge reset method.
Note: you need to backup your data before using this method.
Find this folder on your computer: C:\Users\%username%\AppData\Local\Packages\Microsoft. MicrosoftEdge_8wekyb3d8bbwe.
Select every entry which is saved on it and right click with your mouse. Then Delete option.
Click the Start button (Windows logo) and type in window power in Search my stuff line.
Here, select WebSaver and other questionable plugins. Click Remove to delete these entries.
Reset Mozilla Firefox
Click on the Firefox menu on the top left and click on the question mark. Here, choose Troubleshooting Information.
Now you will see Reset Firefox to its default state message with Reset Firefox button. Click this button for several times and complete WebSaver removal.
Here, select WebSaver and other malicious plugins and select trash icon to delete these entries.
Click on menu icon again and choose Settings → Manage Search engines under the Search section.
When in Search Engines..., remove malicious search sites. You should leave only Google or your preferred domain name.
Reset Google Chrome
Click on menu icon on the top right of your Google Chrome and select Settings.
Scroll down to the end of the page and click on Reset browser settings.
Click Reset to confirm this action and complete WebSaver removal.
Open Safari browser and click on Safari in menu section at the top left of the screen. Here, select Reset Safari....
Now you will see a detailed dialog window filled with reset options. All of those options are usually checked, but you can specify which of them you want to reset. Click the Reset button to complete WebSaver removal process.
Do not let government spy on you
The government has many issues in regards to tracking users' data and spying on citizens, so you should take this into consideration and learn more about shady information gathering practices. Avoid any unwanted government tracking or spying by going totally anonymous on the internet.
You can choose a different location when you go online and access any material you want without particular content restrictions. You can easily enjoy internet connection without any risks of being hacked by using Private Internet Access VPN.
Control the information that can be accessed by government any other unwanted party and surf online without being spied on. Even if you are not involved in illegal activities or trust your selection of services, platforms, be suspicious for your own security and take precautionary measures by using the VPN service.
Backup files for the later use, in case of the malware attack
Computer users can suffer various losses due to cyber infections or their own faulty doings. Software issues created by malware or direct data loss due to encryption can lead to problems with your device or permanent damage. When you have proper up-to-date backups, you can easily recover after such an incident and get back to work.
It is crucial to create updates to your backups after any changes on the device, so you can get back to the point you were working on when malware changes anything or issues with the device causes data or performance corruption. Rely on such behavior and make file backup your daily or weekly habit.
When you have the previous version of every important document or project you can avoid frustration and breakdowns. It comes in handy when malware occurs out of nowhere. Use Data Recovery Pro for the system restoring purpose.
Use the QR scanner to get instructions on your mobile device.
You can quickly scan the QR code with your mobile device and have WebSaver virus manual removal instructions right in your pocket. | https://www.2-spyware.com/remove-websaver-virus.html |
<p>NORTH SYDNEY, March 19th, 2004 – The final 2H 2003 (July – December) total Australian scanner market figures have recently been released by IDC. The total scanner market recorded a year-on-year decline of 47.3%, and an even 30.0% sequential drop in unit shipment terms. The low-end scanner market experienced the most marked decline with a 72.5% fall off from the same period last year.</p> <p>IDC Analyst Michael Sager commented, “The decline in the low-end scanner market is indicative of a technology that is on its way to being a legacy technology. The growth in the digital still and video camera markets has been pronounced over the past year and this has perpetuated the decline in flatbed scanner sales. An additional factor is the growth of Multi-Function Printers (MFPs) that has an integrated scanner in addition to printing, copying, and faxing capabilities. The growth in these respective technologies is eating into the consumer scanner market, however there is still share to be had in the mid to high-end scanner market.”</p> <p>“The 2H 2003 flatbed scanner market was attacked on many fronts and it suffered accordingly. Canon continued to lead the market with 57.6% share of units shipped during the second half of 2003. HP was able to grow by 1.6 points from 1H 2003 to grab 18.2% share. Epson rounded out the top three with 11.3% share” Mr Sager added.</p> | https://www.cio.com.au/article/122753/australian_flatbed_scanner_market_plummeting_finds_idc/ |
Windows recieve more antivirus courses than we can count, and none are quite ideal. Direction Mini Maximum Security possesses an easily navigable program, great proper protection, and the price is best suited. CNET says Bitdefender Ant-virus Free is refreshingly free of the ‘extra’ features and equipment that make a lot of apps unwieldy and confusing”. A great rated antivirus program definitely will typically cost a little bit, but will get nothing in contrast to the cost of the loss of your files along with your i . d. No cost variations can be superb to try an unique program or pair of features, but will do not give the same a higher level protection — and your program most undoubtedly will not likely contain internet secureness software. K7 Venture protection insulates organizations from spyware dangers to.
You can receive maximum security at reasonable prices in Pattern Very fine Antivirus+ Protection. Various items increase that protection to as well lead users away from falsified websites, phishing sites that try to take get access recommendations designed for monetary sites and also other very sensitive sites. A comparison may help you figure away which is the best full version of antivirus program for everyone, or whether you will need to opt for the free of charge or paid out adaptation. This article records only about free malware products that received at least a superb rating in our reviews-three personalities or better. We’ve completed extensive reviews on 7 of the most current front runner antivirus security protection software suites right from Bitdefender, ESET, F-Secure, Kaspersky Lab, McAfee, Norton, Banda Reliability and Trend Micro.
The term spy ware stands for vicious software, and that makes reference to entirely any course or procedure whose purpose is harmful, even criminal arrest. Which smart; encoding before House windows comes with completely booted up means no disturbance right from or spyware. You need a Bitdefender package to get file encryption, nevertheless the safe and sound deletion Document Shredder is definitely present also in the antivirus software. Pertaining to one factor, certain of these products are free simply for non-commercial employ; if you want to patrol your organization, you have to pony up for the paid out edition. McAfee Total Safety has a sturdy lineup more features, including a data file shredder, file security, a network scanning device and five entitlements intended for the superb True Important security administrator.
Tendency Micro Antivirus+ Security has become the few others with a multi-layer approach. The important point: The new Sophos Home Superior security place brings consumers powerful security technology signed in the provider’s Enterprise-level products, including ransomware proper protection, keylogger rejection, make use of minimization, plus more. Any time you’re running Windows almost 8 or 12, you may well have realized that your program already seems to have pre-installed antivirus and trojans security program known as Glass windows Defender. That also provides a Turbo Setting if you want to realise the best efficiency of the PC. Furthermore, it has a Current Outbreak Cover to warn you of potential brand-new risks coming.
Every single time that detected malwares sample looking to launch, Avast recommended a boot-time search for thorough cleaning. And therefore this goes in each of our free antivirus security software category in which we shortened the options to Avira and BitDefender. Their powerful proper protection is designed on the data gained via more than five-hundred mil Bitdefender users – methods assess the data to expose mysterious risks and also to discover unique threats just now hitting the net. Antivirus application is nearly mainly because crucial as being a PC’s operating system. Using an AV Evaluation, we’ve unearthed the most reliable anti virus equipment that can bolster the via the internet protection of businesses.
Though hot debate swirls around the Russian-made software’s claimed links to spy firms, top authorities continue to suggest it seeing that the best full version of antivirus software for home users. It will take the lead amongst the counterparts since it incorporates the best of the innovation — the Defense+ technology, containment techniques, sandboxing and what not to assurance free strain safeguard that is 100 % helpful. The three can result in a superb mixture, and it implies the London-based developer’s anti-virus program ratings remarkably about our list. Bottoms Line: The results of a ransomware panic will be scary, consequently supplementing the anti virus which has a second layer of protection like Cybereason RansomFree is a wonderful idea. | http://www.hotelmosul.cl/2018/08/23/free-of-charge-antivirus-substitution/ |
Autorun can be enabled or disabled for all Removable media types, such as a floppy or Zip disk. Windows systems are configured to enable CD Notification, other removable media are by default disabled.
The System Properties User interface only exposes the CD Enable or Disable selection. The setting reflected in this dialog makes an entry in the System Registry. It is in this same location that other media types are configured.
Notes:
Modifiying the Registry is not for the inexperienced user. Anyone will tell you, be VERY careful.
The modifications made in this case use Hex not Decimal numbers. If you are unfamiliar with the Registry or the characteristics of base numbering and Hex, studying these topics prior to making these modifications is advisable.
The default value for the setting is 95 0. Change the first byte to 91. To do this double click on the "NoDriveTypeAutoRun". You should then be presented with a screen like this:
Select the value and change it to 91. Restart the computer to make the new setting take effect. You may have to right-click on the floppy/removeable media and choose AutoPlay from the menu to see the AutoPlay behavior. | https://gladiator-antivirus.com/forum/index.php?s=849752034bf61fd9d27a6e6a598a1e2a&showtopic=75189 |
Rampant vendor consolidation, the rise of SaaS (software as a service) and other factors have prompted Forrester Research to add 11 entries to its "Enterprise Software Licensee's Bill of Rights," a list of privileges the analyst firm believes customers should be entitled to throughout the software selection, implementation and production lifecycle.
One of the new rights focuses on SaaS, which has become an increasingly popular deployment option among enterprises.
For one, SaaS vendors should be providing customers with adequate escrow protections, wherein a third party retains a copy of the application's source code, user data and related information, according to Forrester.
[ Further reading: The best media streaming devices ] "This whole issue of SaaS escrows is going to get more and more important, especially as SaaS companies get taken over or go bankrupt," said the report's author, Forrester analyst Ray Wang, in an interview. The warning is underscored by developments like SaaS BI (business intelligence) vendor LucidEra's recent announcement it would be closing its doors.
Vendors should also get more specific about which product features will work out of the box, according to the report. Features "should be classified as 'no modifications required,'minor configuration' and 'major configuration,'" Wang wrote. "Custom capabilities not included in a standard deployment should be called out."
Other added rights cover contract negotiations and the day-to-day relationship between vendors and customers.
For example, vendors should add up and report how much money they are receiving overall from customers for licenses, maintenance and other expenses. This "total account value" should "play a role in determining discount levels and preferential treatment," Wang wrote.
In addition, the report stresses that customers should be allowed the option of procuring maintenance services from third-party companies, and insists that vendors provide customers with a single, executive-level point of contact who is responsible for ensuring the implementation is successful.
Overall, Forrester's recommendations would clearly tip the scales in favor of users. But the economic recession has already prompted a series of conciliatory gestures from vendors, ranging from price cuts to flexible maintenance and upgrade options.
Indeed, now is the time for customers to make the case for and lock in such measures, given the fact that vendors are struggling to make new license sales but also continuing to enjoy highly profitable maintenance revenue streams, Wang said.
To comment on this article and other PCWorld content, visit our Facebook page or our Twitter feed. | https://www.pcworld.com/article/168083/article.html |
Orcus is a Remote Obtain Trojan with some distinct traits. The RAT permits attackers to create plugins and presents a strong core aspect set that makes it very a unsafe destructive system in its course.
RAT is quite a stable kind that often makes it to the top rated.
ANY.RUN’s top rated malware types in 2022
That is why you can expect to certainly occur throughout this kind in your exercise, and the Orcus family members specifically. To simplify your examination, we have gathered 3 lifehacks you should really just take advantage of. Listed here we go.
What is Orcus RAT?
Definition. Orcus RAT is a kind of destructive software program method that enables remote obtain and regulate of personal computers and networks. It is a kind of Distant Accessibility Trojan (RAT) that has been utilized by attackers to acquire entry to and handle computer systems and networks.
Abilities. Once downloaded on to a laptop or network, it commences to execute its destructive code, allowing for the attacker to obtain and management. It is able of thieving data, conducting surveillance, and launching DDoS attacks.
Distribution. The malware is generally spread by using malicious e-mail, websites, and social engineering attacks. It is also frequently bundled with other destructive software package programs, such as Trojans, worms, and viruses.
Lifehacks for Orcus RAT malware assessment
The malware is made to be difficult to detect, as it often takes advantage of subtle encryption and obfuscation strategies to reduce detection. And if you have to have to get to the main of Orcus, the RAT configuration has all the information you will need.
And there are several lifehacks that you really should pay out consideration to while carrying out the analysis of Orcus RAT.
Right now we investigate the .NET sample that you can obtain for absolutely free in ANY.Operate database:
You ought to commence with examining malware courses the place you can get the concealed program’s characteristics. A bunch of information that lessons include is specifically what will be beneficial for your investigate.
An Orcus.Config namespace has these lessons:
Consts: Orcus’s information and directories details, e.g. the route to the file where consumer keystrokes are saved or to the directory exactly where the plugins made use of by a sample reside.
Configurations: have wrapper solutions for decrypting the malware configuration and its plugins.
SettingsData: is a static course only with the encrypted malware and plugin configuration fields.
Our treasure hunt goes on, as configuration data is encrypted.
Orcus RAT encrypts knowledge working with the AES algorithm and then encodes the encrypted details using Base64.
Malware assessment is not a piece of cake, it surely requires time and energy to crack a sample. That’s why it is really constantly excellent to minimize the line: get all at once and in a shorter time. The respond to is straightforward – use a malware sandbox.
ANY.Operate malware sandbox instantly retrieves the Orcus RAT configuration. It truly is a substantially easier way to evaluate a malicious item. Try out it now – the provider has presently retrieved all details from this Orcus sample, so you can take pleasure in smooth research.
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Summary
The Orcus RAT masquerades as a legit remote administration tool, even though it is distinct from its options and operation that it is not and was by no means meant to be. Investigation of the malware can help to get information for the cybersecurity of your corporation.
Safeguard your organization from this threat – carry out a comprehensive security system, coach personnel to recognize and stay away from malicious e-mails and sites, and use trustworthy anti-virus and ANY.Run malware sandbox to detect and analyze Orcus.
Located this short article fascinating? Follow us on Twitter and LinkedIn to examine additional unique content we submit. | https://thecybersecurity.news/general-cyber-security-news/3-lifehacks-while-analyzing-orcus-rat-in-a-malware-sandbox-24263/ |
Above photo is Home Safety Evaluation Checklist Pictures To Pin Onposted byHeimanhomes.com on 18/03/18. The picture was taken and seen by 3 User and has been downloaded and reviewed 754 Times. You can use the image as background for your computer desktop and laptop screen, because this image has a size of has 357 x 462 jpeg 45kB Pixel. If you want to save to a personal computer, you can download this image in full size. Please click "Download picture in full size" at the end of the article, then, your device automatically saves these images into a directory on your disk space. If you want to download more images from our collection, please click on the image below and do the same steps, the full size download.
Change the picture in the color display with Home Safety Evaluation Checklist Pictures To Pin On is the right thing to get rid of your Home Security Assessment on desktop computers, pc, computer, laptop, you use every day to work or just plain, perform daily activities. An image has an aura, which penetrates the feeling of someone, for example images, sees that motivation by you evoke the image then the image that there was joy, and even images, feelings of sadness to create.
Well we have collected this time some ideas work, can change the atmosphere of your Office or computer screen. You can several downloaded and stored in the computer's memory, or you can download all photos from our website free of charge. If you Home Security Assessment to download, you should now work in full-screen mode, see this article, until the end of.
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Thanks for submitting your Sitemap. Join the Bing Webmaster Tools to see your Sitemaps status and more reports on how you are doing on Bing. | http://heimanhomes.com/home-security-assessment/home-safety-evaluation-checklist-pictures-to-pin-on.html |
Data Security: Data centres house a treasure trove of sensitive information, from personal data to corporate secrets. Improper decommissioning can result in data exposure, leading to privacy violations, identity theft, and reputation damage.
Legal Compliance: Regulatory bodies like GDPR (General Data Protection Regulation) demand stringent data protection measures. Neglecting secure decommissioning can result in non-compliance, leading to hefty fines and legal consequences.
Environmental Responsibility: Ethical disposal of data centre equipment is crucial for sustainability. Unchecked disposal can harm the environment due to hazardous materials contained in electronics.
S2S Group: Your Trusted Partner in Data Centre Decommissioning
S2S Group is a leading name in secure data centre decommissioning, offering tailored solutions to meet the unique needs of each client. Their services encompass:
Secure Data Erasure: Utilising advanced techniques, S2S Group ensures data is completely wiped from all devices, leaving no room for recovery.
Certified Destruction: For devices where erasure is not possible, S2S Group employs secure physical destruction methods to render data unrecoverable.
Asset Recycling: S2S Group is committed to environmental responsibility, recycling hardware in compliance with all regulations to reduce e-waste.
Detailed Reporting: Clients receive comprehensive reports documenting the decommissioning process, essential for regulatory compliance and transparency.
Legal Compliance: S2S Group understands the legal landscape and ensures that all decommissioning processes align with data protection laws.
Morgan Stanley’s Costly Lesson in Data Centre Decommissioning
Morgan Stanley, a global financial giant, faced the repercussions of inadequate data centre decommissioning. In a recent case, the company was fined a substantial sum due to data security breaches during the decommissioning process. The incident serves as a stark reminder of the legal and financial risks associated with improper data centre decommissioning.
For more information on the Morgan Stanley case, you can read in more detail using this link.
In conclusion, the importance of secure data centre decommissioning cannot be overstated. It is a critical process that not only safeguards sensitive information but also ensures compliance with data protection regulations. S2S Group stands as a reliable partner in this endeavour, offering risk-free Data Security Best Practices when decommissioning which are tailored to your specific needs. Don’t let inadequate decommissioning jeopardise your data and reputation; choose S2S Group for a secure, responsible, and legally compliant decommissioning process. | https://s2s.uk.com/news/data-security-best-practices/ |
Encryption is firmly in the limelight thanks to the emerging battle between Apple Inc. and a federal court that has ordered the tech giant to build software to hack the security features on an iPhone of interest.
This particular battle is new. The issue is old. For years, lawmakers have grappled with how to balance individual privacy protections and law enforcement’s need for access to encrypted communications. They haven’t gotten very far.
That could change, thanks to a bipartisan partnership forged between House Homeland Security Chairman Michael McCaul (R-Texas) and Senate Intelligence Committee member Sen. Mark Warner (D-Va.).
Earlier this year, the pair floated an idea for a lengthy but doable way to satisfy both privacy and security concerns. At first blush, their proposal looks like a tame non-answer to the problem. But it may be the only way to bridge the gap between government-wary technophiles and security hawks.
McCaul and Warner want to set up a commission made up of members of the tech community, privacy advocates, and the law enforcement and intelligence communities to hash out a solution. That commission would be tasked with review of what law enforcement officials face when they are denied access to encrypted communications, even with a court order. The group would then draft recommendations for what to do about it.
It was a sleeper issue that roused attention only with tech geeks. But now it may have new legs. Sources familiar with the proposal say McCaul and Warner have spoken on the phone since the court issued its order to Apple. They are now thinking about how build momentum for their bill, which has yet to be introduced. McCaul and Warner’s staffs have also been in daily contact (often multiple times a day) to work on it.
The duo will have an opportunity this Wednesday at an event about encryption at the Washington-based Bipartisan Policy Center where they will discuss the legislation.
McCaul and Warner’s greatest strength in the assembly of their proposed commission is their joint credibility. McCaul serves as chairman of Homeland Security and has a strong law enforcement background. He served as chief of counterterrorism and national security in the U.S. attorney’s office in Texas prior to his time in Congress. He has also headed the Joint Terrorism Task Force in the Lone Star State.
Warner brings tech chops to the table. Before entering public service, Warner worked for more than 20 years in telecom. He was an early investor in Nextel, which later merged with Sprint. He made a big name (and big bucks) in the business.
Mixing the counterterrorism expertise of the conservative McCaul with the tech experience of the Democratic Warner could bring legitimacy to their proposal by appealing to people from both law enforcement and tech. When the two previewed their bill last month, they said it’s most imporant for the two communities that disagree so intensely over encryption to sit down and discuss how to move forward.
“The problem thus far is getting the experts in a room together. It’s been very difficult for the tech community to sit down with the FBI and vice versa, and with the Homeland [Security] and the Intelligence community,” McCaul said at the time.
Both Warner and McCaul said those most familiar with the issue (and therefore most passionate about their points of view) should be the ones that attempt to find a compromise.
The duo represents just the kind of convergence they are proposing on a broader scale. Tech shouldn’t just say no to law enforcement, they believe. They should engage on the issue and find an answer. With tech firmly lined up behind Apple on the encryption standoff, that’s a tall order. Warner’s presence could show the tech world that this effort won’t be another veiled attempt at creating a “backdoor” that could compromise the security of encrypted messaging platforms. If McCaul trusts Warner, the thinking goes, so should they.
“Encrypted technology is something that protects Americans’ privacy, but also is used by American enterprise, American defense, American intel,” Warner said in January. “Encryption was developed for both privacy and for security, so this notion that these two interests are pitted against each other, I think, is a false choice.”
Tech companies such as Google, Facebook and Twitter have already come out in support of Apple’s stance that creating a backdoor to encrypted communications sets a dangerous precedent. It is unclear whether Warner’s assurances could get them onboard with finding a compromise, but he also may offer the best shot at a way through the problem.
Warner and McCaul’s measured approach has been dismissed as a delay tactic, but it is more likely to succeed in Congress than ongoing efforts from Warner’s Senate Intelligence Committee leaders: Sens. Richard Burr (R-N.C.) and Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.). Burr and Feinsten want legislation to require companies to give law enforcement a way to decode encrypted messages when there is a court order. Tech companies argue that there are no “one-time only” ways to do that. To let law enforcement “in” once could create an avenue that bad actors could later manipulate. They are likely to fight hard against such proposals.
Still, Feinstein renewed her call for such legislation on CNN after the court ruled. “I believe that as a government, we have every responsibility and duty to see that Apple provides that information,” Feinstein said. “I believe very strongly that Apple should voluntarily agree to it.”
Feinstein added that if Apple does not agree, she and Burr “are prepared to put forward a law which essentially would require that.”
Burr made remarks at a Senate Intelligence open hearing a few weeks ago that corroborate Feinstein’s claims. “I look at encryption and say, ‘We need to provide a tool for you to have the access to that information when the courts give you permission to do it.’ I could care less how that’s accomplished,” Burr said. He added they both want it to be voluntary, but will pursue the matter “in any fashion [they] can.”
Burr and Feinstein were the architects behind legislation signed into law in December that provides legal liability protections to private companies that share data with federal agencies to help protect against cyberattacks. That bill went through a tough fight, with three separate attempts on the Senate floor. The encryption bill is an even tougher sell for privacy and tech advocates. While tech was divided on cybersecurity, tech advocates say any measure that would weaken encryption is highly unlikely to receive any outside support from their world. | https://morningconsult.com/2016/02/21/michael-mccaul-mark-warner-encryption-bill/ |
Software-defined, hyper converged and cloud storage are the fast becoming the widely accepted norms of the IT space and according to Data Core, while hyper converged is making inroads, organizations are struggling while software-defined storage is seeing a greater number of use cases.
Although Data Core's primary business line is through software-defined the study conducted by them polled 400 IT professionals who were using or evaluating software-defined storage, hyper converged and cloud storage, and found plenty of interesting statistics to consider.
While 60% felt that automating frequent or complex storage operations was a key business driver for implementing these storage technologies overall, 56% voted for simple storage management and another 56% pitched in for extended life of existing storage assets.
Performance was the key driver for hyper converged, whereas automation and reduced complexity was for software-defined storage. Public cloud, failed in terms of delivering higher performance, in turn falling out of the considered choices.
Business continuity and data protection were the primary capabilities expected from storage infrastructure by 74% of those polled.
hyper converged and software-defined storage diagram 37% participants had standardized on software-defined storage than other technologies. All-flash array was the next most popular having 29% of the votes much ahead of HCI which bagged 21%, hybrid getting 18%, public with 17% and containers receiving the least number of votes by 10%. All-flash however got plenty of votes when it came to future deployment – one in three respondents said they were strongly considering it but had yet to deploy. 42% of those polled said they had no interest in public clouds and containers respectively due to lack of sufficient storage tools or data management services, a slowdown in application response time and a lack of persistent storage for key applications.
Software-defined storage was considered a useful tool with regards to vendor lock-in within storage by 42% of those polled. With hyper-converged, the key concerns were lack of integration, lack of scale and price – the study recommends what it calls ‘hybrid-converged’ technology, which amounts to being able to deploy various storage options from a unified management plane. | https://mindfireit.com/thoughts/cyber-security-news/exploring-the-benefits-and-challenges-of-hyper-converged-and-software-defined-storage/ |
Never effect the payment for this badware. Under no circumstances open your private information, your banking details. If by some reasons the payment is already effected, contact your bank or other payment processing company and dispute all charges incurred by you for the benefit of these criminals. What one should do (if his/her machine is infected with this parasite) without lingering is to remove Smart Protection 2012 scam immediately, at the very first detection. We recommend you to use GridinSoft Trojan Killer for this purpose. If you have questions please contact us any time. We are always at your command.
It is not a secret for anybody that Internet is the place where people make money: somebody sales, somebody buys. Somebody make money in fair way, somebody in unfair. So remain vigilant all time while surfing in the Web. Hackers, who have chosen dishonest method of raising money, develop devices to wind trustful users round and rip them off. They employ up-to-date root kit techniques to attack the computer. They do not miss any opportunity to catch the potential victim in their traps. They promote their badware anywhere: on malicious websites, even on decent web pages, which have been hacked before. New malicious products appear almost every day and tend to infect as much computers as it is possible. So we would recommend you to be very attentive what links you click and what programs you install.
Play.leadzuaf.com redirects browser constantly. How to stop Play.leadzuaf.com process? March 16, 2018
RGMUpdater.exe virus – how to delete? | https://trojan-killer.net/smart-protection-2012-malware-uninstall-guide/ |
Abstract: Cybersecurity has become an increasingly important concern in the digital age, with organizations and individuals facing a wide range of threats from hackers, cybercriminals, and other malicious actors. This article provides an overview of cybersecurity, including common threats and vulnerabilities, the importance of risk management, and best practices for securing networks and data. We explore different types of cyberattacks, such as social engineering, malware, phishing, ransomware, and Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS), and provide countermeasures to mitigate these risks. We also discuss the importance of developing a cybersecurity culture and the role of policy, education, and awareness in reducing the risk of cyberattacks. Finally, we examine emerging technologies and trends in cybersecurity, such as artificial intelligence, cloud security, and the Internet of Things (IoT).
Introduction: As the world becomes increasingly connected, cybersecurity has become a pressing concern for governments, businesses, and individuals alike. The rise of digital technologies has led to unprecedented opportunities for communication, collaboration, and innovation. However, it has also created new vulnerabilities and risks that threaten the security and privacy of sensitive information. Cybersecurity is the practice of protecting digital devices, networks, and data from unauthorized access, theft, and damage. In this article, we provide an overview of cybersecurity, including common threats and vulnerabilities, best practices for securing networks and data, and emerging trends and technologies in the field.
Threats and Vulnerabilities: Cybersecurity threats come in many forms, from sophisticated attacks by nation-states to simple phishing scams sent to unsuspecting individuals. Some of the most common types of cyberattacks include:
Social Engineering: Social engineering is a tactic that involves manipulating individuals to divulge sensitive information. Common examples include phishing emails and phone scams, where the attacker poses as a legitimate entity to trick the victim into providing login credentials or personal information.
Malware: Malware is a type of software that is designed to cause harm to a computer system. This can include viruses, worms, and Trojan horses, which can be spread through infected emails, websites, or software downloads.
Phishing: Phishing is a form of social engineering where an attacker poses as a trusted entity, such as a bank or social media platform, to trick the victim into providing sensitive information or clicking on a malicious link.
Ransomware: Ransomware is a type of malware that encrypts a victim’s data and demands payment in exchange for the decryption key. This can result in significant data loss and financial damage for individuals and organizations.
Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS): DDoS attacks involve overwhelming a target server or network with a flood of traffic, rendering it inaccessible to legitimate users. These attacks can be carried out using botnets, which are networks of compromised devices controlled by a malicious actor.
Countermeasures: Mitigating cybersecurity risks requires a comprehensive approach that includes technical, administrative, and physical controls. Some of the most effective countermeasures include:
Risk Management: Risk management is the process of identifying, assessing, and prioritizing potential threats to an organization’s security. This includes developing policies and procedures to mitigate risks, as well as conducting regular security audits and testing.
Security Awareness: Developing a culture of security awareness is critical to mitigating cybersecurity risks. This includes providing training and education to employees and users on best practices for securing data and networks, as well as implementing strong password policies and access controls.
Endpoint Security: Endpoint security involves securing individual devices, such as laptops and mobile devices, from cyber threats. This can include installing antivirus software, firewalls, and intrusion detection systems, as well as keeping software and operating systems up to date with the latest patches and updates.
Cloud Security: As more organizations move their data and applications to the cloud, securing cloud environments has become increasingly important. Cloud security involves implementing strong access controls, data encryption, and continuous monitoring of cloud infrastructure to detect and respond to threats.
Emerging Technologies and Trends: As cyber threats continue to evolve, new technologies and trends are emerging to help organizations stay ahead of the curve. Some of these include:
Machine learning algorithms can analyze vast amounts of data to identify patterns and anomalies, making it easier to detect and respond to cyber threats in real-time.
Internet of Things (IoT): IoT devices, such as smart homes and connected cars, are becoming increasingly common. However, these devices can be vulnerable to cyberattacks if they are not properly secured. Blockchain: Blockchain technology can be used to enhance cybersecurity by providing a decentralized, tamper-proof ledger of transactions. This can be used to secure digital identities, prevent fraud, and improve the transparency of transactions.
Conclusion: Cybersecurity is an ever-evolving field that requires constant vigilance and adaptation. By understanding common threats and vulnerabilities, implementing effective countermeasures, and staying up to date on emerging technologies and trends, organizations and individuals can minimize the risk of cyberattacks and protect their sensitive data and networks. However, this requires a culture of security awareness and a commitment to ongoing education and training. As technology continues to advance, cybersecurity will remain a critical concern for all stakeholders in the digital age. | https://www.supportbook.com/cybersecurity-an-overview-of-new-threats-and-new-countermeasures/ |
For high-security installations such as at government facilities, border stations or military bases, these Delta Scientific bullet-resistant guard booths are tested and certified to conform to Underwriters Laboratories standard UL 752. These booths currently protect locations such as the Pentagon in Washington, DC, the Ontario Airport and U.S. embassies. Custom-designed bullet-resistant guard booths are in use at U.S. Ports of Entry including at the San Ysidro Landed Port of Entry, the busiest land port in the world (pictured).
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B. Monitoring employees’ temperatures
C. Plexi-glass dividers between workstations
D. 6-foot social distancing markers on floors
E. Increased building disinfecting
F. Continued remote work for employees | https://www.securitymagazine.com/articles/89740-provides-bullet-resistant-security |
Audit policies allow you to audit up to 99% of inbound messages and send findings to Amazon CloudWatch, Amazon Kinesis Data Firehose, and Amazon S3.
For example, you can create an audit policy to evaluate whether any of your systems are inadvertently sending or receiving sensitive data. If your audit results show that systems are sending credit card information to systems that don’t require it, you can implement a data protection policy to block the delivery of the data.
The following example audits 99% of the messages that flow through the topic by looking for credit card numbers and sending the findings to CloudWatch Logs, Kinesis Data Firehose, and Amazon S3. | https://docs.amazonaws.cn/en_us/sns/latest/dg/sns-message-data-protection-examples.html |
Cybersecurity has scaled the ladder that couldn’t have been unimaginable a decade ago. From being a part of Information Technology domain, it has successfully branched out of it--making cybersecurity an independent industry sector.
According to a study by the Center for Cyber Safety and Education, by 2022, there will be a shortage of 1.8 million information security workers. It makes much sense for today’s graduates to prepare themselves to enter the workforce and grab the vast available employment and career opportunities the sector has on offer. In a bid to provide solid data and information about those money-minting prospective careers, we’ve compiled a list of job positions that you can ready yourself up to.
Much like the forensic experts of the law department, the computer forensics experts also analyze the evidence gathered off of computers, networks, and other data storage devices in an effort to investigate incidents of computer crime. It may require that these employees should be in constant contact with the legal experts. Interested candidates must be familiar with several programming languages and operating systems, as well as with cryptography principles, eDiscovery tools, and forensics software.
All these job positions are lucrative and provide great compensation when compared to other IT jobs. Thus, IT employees must keep an eye on these incredulous careers and grab them before they run out. | https://cyware.com/news/top-lucrative-careers-in-cybersecurity-that-you-cant-ignore-531d2bfc/ |
cephx_lockbox_secret : The authentication key used to retrieve the dmcrypt_key. It is named lockbox because ceph-disk used to have an unencrypted partition named after it, which was used to store public keys and other OSD metadata.
The naming convention is strict because Monitors supported the naming convention of ceph-disk, which used these key names. In order to maintain compatibility and prevent ceph-disk from breaking, ceph-volume uses the same naming convention although it does not make sense for the new encryption workflow.
After the common steps of setting up the OSD during the “prepare stage” ( with bluestore), the logical volume is left ready to be activated, regardless of the state of the device (encrypted or decrypted).
At the time of its activation, the logical volume is decrypted. The OSD starts after the process completes correctly.
Summary of the encryption workflow for creating a new OSD
OSD is created. Both lockbox and dmcrypt keys are created and sent to the monitors in JSON format, indicating an encrypted OSD.
All complementary devices (like journal, db, or wal) get created and encrypted with the same OSD key. Key is stored in the LVM metadata of the OSD.
Activation continues by ensuring devices are mounted, retrieving the dmcrypt secret key from the monitors, and decrypting before the OSD gets started. | https://docs.ceph.com/en/reef/ceph-volume/lvm/encryption/ |
Click here for a more detailed description of Rapid Release and Daily Certified virus definitions.
When Spyware. EliteKeylogger is installed, it does the following:
%System%\csvdea\Links\Mail to support.url %System%\csvdea\Links\Program's home page.url
%UserProfile% is a variable that refers to the current user's profile folder. By default, this is C:\Documents and Settings\[CURRENT USER] (Windows NT/2000/XP).
%System% is a variable that refers to the System folder. By default this is C:\Windows\System (Windows 95/98/Me), C:\Winnt\System32 (Windows NT/2000), or C:\Windows\System32 (Windows XP).
so that it runs every time Windows starts.
Records online chat conversations and saves them to %System%\csvdea.rep. The logs can then be sent to a predefined email address.
The following instructions pertain to all Symantec antivirus products that support security risk detection.
Note: This applies only to versions of Norton AntiVirus that support security risk detection. If you are running a version of Symantec AntiVirus Corporate Edition that supports security risk detection, and security risk detection has been enabled, you will only see a message box that gives the results of the scan. If you have questions in this situation, contact your network administrator.
Exclude (Not recommended): If you click this button, it will set the risk so that it is no longer detectable. That is, the antivirus program will keep the security risk on your computer and will no longer detect it to remove from your computer.
Ignore or Skip: This option tells the scanner to ignore the risk for this scan only. It will be detected again the next time that you run a scan.
Cancel: This option is new to Norton Antivirus 2005. It is used when Norton Antivirus 2005 has determined that it cannot delete a security risk. This Cancel option tells the scanner to ignore the risk for this scan only, and thus, the risk will be detected again the next time that you run a scan.
To actually delete the security risk:
Click its file name (under the Filename column).
In the Item Information box that displays, write down the full path and file name.
Then use Windows Explorer to locate and delete the file.
If Windows reports that it cannot delete the file, this indicates that the file is in use. In this situation, complete the rest of the instructions on this page, restart the computer in Safe mode, and then delete the file using Windows Explorer. Restart the computer in Normal mode.
Delete: This option will attempt to delete the detected files. In some cases, the scanner will not be able to do this.
If you see a message, "Delete Failed" (or similar message), manually delete the file.
Click the file name of the risk that is under the Filename column.
Important: If you are unable to start your Symantec antivirus product or the product reports that it cannot delete a detected file, you may need to stop the risk from running in order to remove it. To do this, run the scan in Safe mode. For instructions, read the document, How to start the computer in Safe Mode . Once you have restarted in Safe mode, run the scan again.
After the files are deleted, restart the computer in Normal mode and proceed with the next section.
Warning messages may be displayed when the computer is restarted, since the risk may not be fully removed at this point. You can ignore these messages and click OK. These messages will not appear when the computer is restarted after the removal instructions have been fully completed. The messages displayed may be similar to the following:
Title: [FILE PATH]
Message body: Windows cannot find [FILE NAME]. Make sure you typed the name correctly, and then try again. To search for a file, click the Start button, and then click Search.
3. To delete the value from the registry
Important: Symantec strongly recommends that you back up the registry before making any changes to it. Incorrect changes to the registry can result in permanent data loss or corrupted files. Modify the specified subkeys only. Read the document: How to make a backup of the Windows registry . | https://ae.norton.com/online-threats/spyware.spyarsenallog-2005-072112-1717-99-writeup.html |
President Joe Biden looks at a quantum computer as he tours the IBM facility in Poughkeepsie, New York, on October 6, 2022. (Photo by MANDEL NGAN/AFP via Getty Images)
Late last year, President Biden signed the Quantum Computing Cybersecurity Preparedness Act (QCCSP) into law. The act directs the U.S. Office of Management and Budget to prioritize the challenging and resource-intensive task of migrating federal IT systems to quantum-resistant cryptography and to send Congress a report outlining its strategy to do so by December 2023. Though the legislation was passed without much fanfare, it represents a significant step toward securing our nation’s future.
While it may be some time before quantum computers are able to break today’s encryption protocols, this is not a future problem–it’s already here. Nation-states and other adversaries are conducting what are known as “Store Now, Decrypt Later” attacks — stealing encrypted data and housing it on their own servers to decrypt and exploit later. These attacks target U.S. and allied government agencies as well as companies in vital industries such as defense contracting, technology, financial services, telecommunications, healthcare, pharmaceuticals, energy, and more.
Any organization that relies on data security to fulfill its mission should feel a sense of urgency. At risk are critical infrastructure and the personal data of everyday consumers, including passwords, personal health, and financial information. Specifically for the Department of Defense, data at risk could include classified intelligence, the details of treaty negotiations, military strategy and decision-making processes, weapon designs, training protocol, personnel information, or the names and locations of high-value targets and operatives.
It will be too late if the U.S. waits for more capable quantum computers before taking significant steps to address this threat to secure cryptography. Once scaled quantum computers are stable, they will be able to crack nearly all existing security codes and protocols in hours, if not minutes. Most national security data without quantum-resistant cryptographic protocols that are stored by bad actors today will have enduring value even if encrypted a decade or more from now. To protect against this, The National Security Agency set a 2035 deadline for the adoption of post-quantum cryptography (PQC) in national security IT systems, an ambitious goal that the Defense Information Systems Agency will be responsible to execute.
The process of implementing PQC protocols across the DoD is complex and will take time, but the effort is attainable thanks to unprecedented public-private cooperation. In 2022, NIST’s National Cybersecurity Center of Excellence (NCCoE) introduced its Migration to Post-Quantum Cryptography project, which includes an international consortium of 17 companies to help organizations transition to PQC. While that is reason for optimism, many hurdles remain that prevent DOD’s timely adoption of PQC.
First, DOD leaders are contending with an increasingly complex security environment that includes the rise of adversaries with capabilities and capacity we’ve not seen for generations–and some capabilities we’ve never seen. The multipolar world is here and an important aspect of maintaining America’s place in global affairs will be setting the pace with emerging and revolutionary technologies–such as evolving data encryption standards–that have far-reaching implications for national security, including warfighting.
Another challenge is that many emerging disciplines such as quantum technology remain poorly understood and daunting to tackle. The security implications also remain nebulous. Those in DOD who are fully aware of the threat quantum computers present are also overwhelmed when considering where their PQC migration should begin.
An executable and productive way ahead is to reframe PQC migration efforts as a set of problems that can be solved in stages. Many experts recommend the first stage in any PQC migration should be a cryptographic inventory and vulnerability assessment, which would require more modest amounts of initial funding to begin. This discovery process takes several months or more but is essential before migration, policy management, and enforcement can begin. Many industry players, such as those identified by NCCoE, stand ready to partner with DISA to tally cryptographic inventories, develop migration road maps, and project annual costs. These are steps that can be taken right away.
Lastly, DOD IT leaders must remember that “cryptographic agility” — the ability of a cybersecurity system to rapidly adapt new cryptographic algorithms — will be an important element of PQC migration since the process of securing data from quantum threats will be continuous and dynamic. Applying the modular, stepped approach outlined above would help achieve and maintain the agility needed to address future cyber threats. An agile IT architecture must maintain an inventory of cryptographic components and update them as necessary to stay current with the latest standards and best practices.
Strong DOD leadership has made great strides toward Zero Trust IT architectures that continuously validate each stage of digital interactions. This is a good start, and part of achieving cryptographic agility is that Zero Trust will need to integrate and complement PQC.
But as the QCCSP Act highlights, there is still an urgent need for DOD and all organizations that depend on data security to begin the PQC migration process to protect critical data and infrastructure — now. The NSA anticipates new cryptography will take 20 years or more to be fully deployed across national security systems. We must do better than that. We’re not alone here — China already claims to have a practical quantum computer and an algorithm that can break public-key encryption. | https://defensescoop.com/2023/05/17/dont-look-now-the-next-generation-of-cybersecurity-threats-is-already-here/ |
iv = bytes([random.randint(0, 0xFF) for i in range(16)]) params["out_stream"].write(struct.pack('<Q', params["in_size"])
either 16, 24 or 32 bytes long. Longer keys are more secure. If the data to encrypt is in bytes, the key must be given in bytes too.
uses to read and encrypt the file. Larger chunk sizes can be faster for some files and machines.
chunksize must be divisible by 16. | http://www.xavierdupre.fr/app/pyquickhelper/helpsphinx/_modules/pyquickhelper/filehelper/encryption.html |
Baidu-International 3.5.1.41473 PUP.Win32.Search.searchlson.com
ESET-NOD32 8894 Win32/Search.searchlson.com
Qihoo-360 1.0.0.1015 Win32/Virus. RiskTool. Search.searchlson.com
Krok 1. Krok 2. Odstrániť Search.searchlson.com z vášho prehliadača
Krok 1. Odinštalovať Search.searchlson.com a súvisiacich programov | http://www.4-cybersecurity.com/sk/ako-odstranit-search-searchlson-com/ |
linux-image-generic-lpae 4.8.0.54.66 linux-image-lowlatency 4.8.0.54.66 linux-image-powerpc-e500mc 4.8.0.54.66 linux-image-powerpc-smp 4.8.0.54.66 linux-image-powerpc64-emb 4.8.0.54.66 | https://www.xatrix.org/advisory/ubuntu-linux-kernel-vulnerability-27747/ |
Error type: "Forbidden". Error message: "The request is missing a valid API key." Domain: "global". Reason: "forbidden".
Did you added your own Google API key? Look at the help.
Check in YouTube if the id youtube belongs to a username. Check the FAQ of the plugin or send error messages to support. | https://ten10racing.com/topics/how-to-disable-quick-heal-antivirus-74a476 |
The is a misleading ‘ad’ web page that created to scare you into thinking that your system have a lot of heavy. So call to Microsoft Support unnecessary anyway. A telephone, which is given in the message is a fake MS Tech Support.
If Ransomware Attack Warning alert popping up in your browser then this might be a sign that your computer is infected with adware (sometimes named ‘ad-supported’ software). It is a type of malicious programs that designed to display tons of unwanted pop up ads. Unlike viruses, the ad supported software will not delete or infect your files, but its actions will cause some problems with your web browser. This is because, it’ll infect your system, get full access to your browsers like Google Chrome, Firefox, Microsoft Internet Explorer and MS Edge and be able to change their settings. Of course, it did not ask you for permission and do it secretly as possible. Once your web-browser settings will be replaced, you will be rerouted to unwanted advertisements, some of which can lead to harmful or misleading web pages. For this reason, we suggest that you begin the clean up of your machine ASAP and thereby remove fake pop up from your web-browser.
Most often, the ad supported software affects the most common browsers such as the Google Chrome, Internet Explorer, Mozilla Firefox and Edge. But such the malicious software as well may infect another web browsers by changing its shortcuts (adding an argument such as ‘http://site.address’ into Target field of a web-browser’s shortcut). So every time you open the web-browser, it’ll redirect to the annoying page. Even if you setup a new start page, an unwanted web-site will be the first thing you see when you open the Chrome, Firefox, Microsoft Internet Explorer and MS Edge.
We recommend you to delete adware and clean your computer from popups as quickly as possible, until the presence of the adware has not led to even worse consequences. You need to follow the few simple steps below that will help you to completely get rid of the reroute to undesired page, using only the built-in MS Windows features and a few of specialized free malicious software removal utilities.
. Type ‘Control panel’and press Enter as shown in the figure below.
When the ‘Control Panel’ opens, click the ‘Uninstall a program’ link under Programs category as shown below.
You will see the ‘Uninstall a program’ panel below.
Very carefully look around the entire list of programs installed on your personal computer. Most likely, one or more of them are responsible for the appearance of popup ads and internet browser redirect to the annoying site. If you have many programs installed, you can help simplify the search of harmful software by sort the list by date of installation. Once you have found a suspicious, unwanted or unused program, right click to it, after that press ‘Uninstall’.
Windows XP, Vista, 7
First, click ‘Start’ button and select ‘Control Panel’ at right panel below.
After the Windows ‘Control Panel’ opens, you need to press ‘Uninstall a program’ under ‘Programs’ below.
You will see a list of software installed on your personal computer. We recommend to sort the list by date of installation to quickly find the applications that were installed last. Most likely they responsibility for the appearance of popup advertisements and internet browser redirect. If you are in doubt, you can always check the program by doing a search for her name in Google, Yahoo or Bing. When the application which you need to delete is found, simply click on its name, and then click ‘Uninstall’ as shown on the screen below.
Fix web browser shortcuts, modified by ad supported software
Important to know, most anti-malware software which are able to remove adware, but unable to detect and recover modified shortcuts. So, you need to fix the desktop shortcuts for your Mozilla Firefox, Google Chrome, Internet Explorer and MS Edge web browsers manually.
Right click to a desktop shortcut for your internet browser. Choose the “Properties” option. It will open the Properties window. Select the “Shortcut” tab here, after that, look at the “Target” field. The ad-supported software can modify it. If you are seeing something like “…exe http://site.address” then you need to remove “http…” and leave only, depending on the web browser you are using:
) button. Next, click “Internet Options” below.
In the “Internet Options” screen select the Advanced tab. Next, press Reset button. The Internet Explorer will display the Reset Internet Explorer settings prompt. Select the “Delete personal settings” check box and press Reset button.
You will now need to restart your system for the changes to take effect. It will remove fake pop-up, disable malicious and ad-supported web browser’s extensions and restore the Microsoft Internet Explorer’s settings such as newtab, home page and search engine by default to default state.
) . It will display the drop-down menu. Next, click to “Settings” option.
Scroll down to the bottom of the page and click on the “Show advanced settings” link. Now scroll down until the Reset settings section is visible, like below and click the “Reset settings” button.
Confirm your action, click the “Reset” button.
In the Help menu, select the “Troubleshooting Information” option. Another way to open the “Troubleshooting Information” screen – type “about:support” in the internet browser adress bar and press Enter. It will open the “Troubleshooting Information” page like below. In the upper-right corner of this screen, click the “Refresh Firefox” button.
It will show the confirmation prompt. Further, click the “Refresh Firefox” button. The Firefox will begin a task to fix your problems that caused by the ‘ad supported’ software that causes browsers to display misleading pop-up. When, it is complete, click the “Finish” button.
Remove unwanted Scheduled Tasks
Once installed, the ad-supported software can add a task in to the Windows Task Scheduler Library. Due to this, every time when you launch your personal computer, it will show intrusive web-site. So, you need to check the Task Scheduler Library and get rid of all malicious tasks which have been created by malicious software.
Press Windows and R keys on your keyboard simultaneously. It will display a dialog box which called Run. In the text field, type “taskschd.msc” (without the quotes) and press OK. Task Scheduler window opens. In the left-hand side, click “Task Scheduler Library”, below.
Task scheduler, list of tasks
In the middle part you will see a list of installed tasks. Select the first task, its properties will be open just below automatically. Next, press the Actions tab. Necessary to look at the text which is written under Details. Found something such as “explorer.exe http://site.address” or “chrome.exe http://site.address” or “firefox.exe http://site.address”, then you need get rid of this task. If you are not sure that executes the task, then google it. If it is a component of the malicious program, then this task also should be removed.
Further click on it with the right mouse button and select Delete as shown below.
We recommend using the Zemana Anti-malware that are completely clean your PC system of the adware. The tool is an advanced malicious software removal program made by (c) Zemana lab. It’s able to help you get rid of potentially unwanted applications, hijackers, malware, toolbars, ransomware and adware that causes pop up on your internet browser.
Download Zemana Anti-Malware on your PC by clicking on the link below. Save it on your desktop.
After the downloading process is finished, close all windows on your computer. Further, start the install file named Zemana. AntiMalware. Setup. If the “User Account Control” prompt pops up like below, press the “Yes” button.
It will open the “Setup wizard” which will help you install Zemana Anti Malware on the PC system. Follow the prompts and do not make any changes to default settings.
Once installation is finished successfully, Zemana Anti-Malware will automatically run and you can see its main window as shown below.
Next, click the “Scan” button . This will start scanning the whole system to find out ad supported software that causes multiple misleading alerts and popups. This procedure can take some time, so please be patient. While the tool is checking, you can see count of objects it has identified either as being malware.
Once the scan is finished, it will display a list of all items found by this tool. You may move threats to Quarantine (all selected by default) by simply press “Next” button.
The Zemana Anti-Malware will start to delete ad-supported software that shows misleading pop up scam on your machine. When the task is done, you can be prompted to restart your computer.
After the downloading process is done, close all applications and windows on your machine. Open a directory in which you saved it. Double-click on the icon that’s called mb3-setup as shown below.
When the install begins, you will see the “Setup wizard” that will help you install Malwarebytes on your machine.
Once installation is finished, you will see window like below.
Now click the “Scan Now” button . This will start scanning the whole personal computer to find out ‘ad supported’ software that causes multiple misleading alerts and pop ups. This process can take some time, so please be patient. When a malicious software, ‘ad supported’ software or PUPs are found, the number of the security threats will change accordingly. Wait until the checking is done.
When the scanning is finished, the results are displayed in the scan report. All detected threats will be marked. You can delete them all by simply press “Quarantine Selected” button.
The Malwarebytes will now start to get rid of adware which shows pop-up on your PC. Once finished, you may be prompted to reboot your PC system.
The following video explains step-by-step guidance on how to remove browser hijacker infection, adware and other malicious software with Malwarebytes Anti-malware.
Double-check for potentially unwanted applications with AdwCleaner
AdwCleaner is a free removal utility that can be downloaded and run to remove ad supported software that causes browsers to display popup, browser hijacker infections, malware, PUPs, toolbars and other threats from your computer. You can use this tool to detect threats even if you have an antivirus or any other security program.
Download AdwCleaner tool by clicking on the link below. Save it to your Desktop so that you can access the file easily.
After the download is finished, open the directory in which you saved it and double-click the AdwCleaner icon. It will launch the AdwCleaner utility and you will see a screen as shown below. If the User Account Control dialog box will ask you want to show the program, press Yes button to continue.
Next, click “Scan” . This will begin scanning the whole computer to find out ‘ad supported’ software which cause popup to appear. While the application is scanning, you can see number of objects it has identified as threat.
When it has finished scanning is complete, it will show a list of all threats detected by this tool below.
Next, you need to click “Clean” button. It will open a dialog box. Click “OK” button. The AdwCleaner will get rid of adware that causes browsers to show pop-up error. After disinfection is finished, the tool may ask you to reboot your PC. After restart, the AdwCleaner will open the log file.
All the above steps are shown in detail in the following video instructions.
How to block pop-up
Use an ad blocking tool like AdGuard will protect you from harmful advertisements and content. Moreover, you may find that the AdGuard have an option to protect your privacy and block phishing and spam sites. Additionally, adblocker software will allow you to avoid intrusive pop-up advertisements and unverified links that also a good way to stay safe online.
Download AdGuard program from the following link.
Once the download is finished, launch the downloaded file. You will see the “Setup Wizard” program window. Follow the prompts.
After the installation is complete, click “Skip” to close the installation program and use the default settings, or click “Get Started” to see an quick tutorial that will assist you get to know AdGuard better.
In most cases, the default settings are enough and you do not need to change anything. Each time, when you start your machine, AdGuard will launch automatically and block advertisements, web-sites such , as well as other malicious or misleading web sites. For an overview of all the features of the program, or to change its settings you can simply double-click on the icon named AdGuard, which is located on your desktop.
Now your personal computer should be clean of the adware that designed to display popup within your browser. Uninstall AdwCleaner. We suggest that you keep AdGuard (to help you stop unwanted pop up ads and undesired harmful web sites) and Zemana Anti-malware (to periodically scan your personal computer for new browser hijackers, malicious software and adware). Probably you are running an older version of Java or Adobe Flash Player. This can be a security risk, so download and install the latest version right now.
If you are still having problems while trying to remove pop up error from the Google Chrome, IE, FF and MS Edge, then ask for help in our Spyware/Malware removal forum.
(1 votes, average: 5.00 out of 5)
How to get rid of Search-engin-ext.com redirect from Chrome, Firefox, IE, Edge
How to remove Poc-news2.club pop-ups (Virus removal guide) | https://www.myantispyware.com/2017/07/05/ransomware-attack-warning-alert-pop-up-how-to-remove-chrome-firefox-ie-edge/ |
Columbus State Community College and the Information Systems Technology Department are proud to announce the Cybersecurity Center. The Cybersecurity Center is committed to improving the practice of protecting information and training the next generation of cybersecurity professionals.
Specifically, Columbus State seeks to support the growth and advancement of Cybersecurity professionals through cutting-edge curriculum, active industry partnerships, community involvement, and instructional best-practices and trainings. The Cybersecurity Center website also includes valuable resources for you to learn more about starting and advancing your career in Cybersecurity.
Columbus State’s Cybersecurity Center was launched in partnership with a National Science Foundation, Advanced Technological Education Program Grant titled Ohio Region Cybersecurity Technician Training Pipeline (DUE: 1501194). For more information about this project please visit the project dissemination website.
Stay up to date with the latest alerts from the United States Computer Emergency Readiness Team (US-CERT). These alerts provide timely information about current security issues, vulnerabilities, and exploits.
This material is based upon work supported by the National Science Foundation under Grant No. 1501194. | https://www.cscc.edu/academics/departments/computer-it/cybersecurity/index.shtml |
With its many benefits for any modern-day man, the internet has now become a tool for criminals to breach regional laws and regulations and commit hefty crimes. These crimes include cyber robberies, exploitation of personal data of individuals which is provided online, and disabling the online content of organizations and individuals by viruses and bugs.
Professor Oleksii Novikov, the vice rector of Kyiv Polytechnic Institute, presented seven cyber security softwares created by KPI. These softwares are meant to be used in various environments to tackle different cybercrimes.
With an everyday increase in internet users worldwide, a drastic increase has been noted in cybercrimes. According to the 2012 Norton Cybercrime report, more than 1.5 million people fall victim to cybercrimes every day. According to another report, the amount of such attacks has doubled in the last three years.
The cyber security systems proposed in the meeting included:
* Intrusion Detection Systems (IDS) and fraud prevention in banking systems.
* Active protection in banking software and systems.
* Automatic detection, assessment and analysis of software vulnerabilities.
* Analysis and synthesis software for legal interception.
* Software for detection of information operations in social networks.
* Educational programs in the field of information security.
These programs are designed to detect attacks on the software infrastructure of banks; protect governmental, scientific and industrial enterprises form malware attacks; monitor and analyze the information environment of electronic and social media to detect insecure information flows.
The bachelor and master programs in the field of information security at KPI train students in “modern mathematics, physics and IT technologies,” said Prof. Novikov.
Prof. Novikov urged investors to collaborate with the research team at KPI, implement the proposed systems and help reduce the ever-increasing threat of cybercrimes. “Kyiv Polytechnic Institute, as the leading technical university in Ukraine, is ready and interested in working with you to strengthen information systems in all spheres of life and economy: personal, financial, offices and hospitals, industrial and manufacturing,” he said.
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Privacy & Cookies: This site uses cookies. By continuing to use this website, you agree to their use. | https://witnewyork.wordpress.com/2013/09/25/developing-cyber-security-systems-thematic-presentation-and-discussion/ |
and universities to name but a few.
It also applies to ‘qualifying events’; spaces that aren’t public premises but are used to access events. For example, a queue between a railway station and public premises.
Training to be given to all “relevant workers”. This means people who work at, or in connection with, the premises or event, with responsibilities that make it appropriate for them to receive terrorism protection training.
It does not matter whether the relevant worker is an employee, works full-time or is paid for their work at, or in connection with, the premises or event.
The terrorism risk assessment must be kept up-to-date. A review of the risk assessment is to be made each time a material change to the risk assessment is likely and at least 12 month from last assessment.
If there’s a qualifying event then the assessment must be 3 months before event or as soon as reasonably practicable after details are first made available to public and before the event begins.
Because Martyn’s Law is draft legislation, its final form and date for implementation have yet to be decided.
Find out what premises and events Martyn’s Law applies to here. | https://getsirv.com/2023/05/enhanced-terrorism-risk-assessment/ |
This weekend I intentionally left my laptop behind (a difficult separation for me) so I wouldn’t be “distracted”. That didn’t help. At the hot springs resort I stayed, I was drawn to a computer in the common room. The system was a disaster and not something you should enter any personal information through. I gave the system a very quick look over and found multiple problems. The problems include: the anti-virus product was out of date (which means it is not receiving new detection files and will miss all new threats), the browser had two rogue toolbars capable of scraping off your search results and sending them to unintended web servers, the operating system was not up to date and vulnerable to (additional) infections, and there were a variety of suspicious processes running I could not analyze on site (they appeared to be trojans). The system also contained an enormous amount of personal information from previous users, like login credentials for Facebook and webmail accounts (I saved these people some embarrassment and gave the system a scrubbing after I was done investigating).
Also, the system allowed everyone to login as administrator. I didn’t have time to fully inspect the computer, but it, like all publicly accessible computers, could easily have contained keylogger software. Keylogger software is readily available and very powerful (learn more: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Keystroke_logging). It is named “keylogger” because it allows the attacker (the person who installed it) to log all keystrokes entered and websites visited and forward this information to the remote attacker. Once installed, the software can run quietly in the background capturing passwords, bank logins, etc. It is scary how easy this can be done.
The computer I used at the café was in better shape – showing no sign of malware infection. It was running shared access software. No strange toolbars or suspicious processes running, but still, not something I would enter personal information into.
Here are a few tips on how to use a public computer safely: Tip 1: Avoid entering personal information. In general, avoid using a public computer for online banking, logging into your webmail account, logging into blogs, social networking sites, filling out online forms or any other site that asks for personal information..
Tip 2: Do not save login information. Login information can be stored by the Windows operating system, websites and through other means. When using a public computer, avoid storing this information by clicking ‘do not save’. In addition, whenever you login into a site, be sure to formally logout using the “logout” button provided.
Tip 3: Delete browser history (more information here), cookies (more information here), and temporary internet files (more information here). Before you logoff the computer, use the browser to delete this information.
Tip 4: Be aware who is around you. I am not encouraging paranoia, but just like when you use an ATM, be aware of anyone around you that might be able to note the information you are entering.
Tip 5: Check for shared access software. Shared access software is designed to give each user of a public computer a clean system without spyware and viruses, block users from installing programs, and erase you personal information once you logoff. This software helps keep your personal data private and future computer users from having access to it. For example, Windows offers SteadyState for free http://www.microsoft.com/windows/products/winfamily/sharedaccess/default.mspx).
Tip 6: Do you trust the owner? Again, not to sound too paranoid, but the security of public computer you are using is good only to the extent you trust the administrator of it. Anyone with administrator rights can install a keylogger that runs in the background and harvest every bit of personal information you enter.
Tip 7: Avoid shopping online. Shopping online either requires you enter your credit card or log into a website you previously signed up for (and stored credit card information). | https://benjamingoogins.com/computer-security-blog/caution-when-using-public-computers/ |
If you visit Start>All Programs>Accessories>System Tools, you will find several nifty tools there to help save space on your pc, and back it up in the event of a crisis.
Disk Cleanup will help you delete files and programs that aren’t being used and have some hard disk space back.
Disk Defragmenter defragments your hard drive to produce your machine improve your performance plus more efficiently.
Backup is a nice program that backs up your overall files on your personal computer in case there is an urgent situation.
More plus more computers currently all have anti-virus programs in it, rendering it harder than ever to get a virus. But I know you’re determined to get around this, so I thought I would share a little story along to inspire you.
Recently an associate of mine called complaining about his slow computer. I looked over it, also it took 5 minutes to load Internet Explorer. 5 minutes! This is not an exaggeration. Upon further investigation, I discovered:
In short, my buddy was hosed! After spending time researching his issue on another computer, I was capable to resolve it, nevertheless, it took several hours and some heartache. It involved developing a special boot disk, buying a program to take out rootkits, determining the way you use all this, and then implementing it. Since he was great at getting this virus (he hardly even tried!), I thought I would share this best method along. So without further ado… Here are a few methods guaranteed to offer you a virus!
Open or preview your emails without regard to the sender. In most email programs you have a preview in the emails before you open them – don’t use this feature! Disable it! Merely previewing a note can trigger a virus, although you may provide an antivirus installed! Click on the Internet ads with hot chicks or hot guys! This is a no-brainer guarantee that at some point some of those sexy come-on ads will require you to an internet site that can provide you with a virus! Along with this one, avoid any porno sites altogether. Forget what your mother may think! Protect yourself. Open attachments inside your emails from people you don’t know. Again, it seems so innocent, but attachments to emails can and quite often do contain viruses!
So, my pals, I trust at this point you know precisely making sure you can acquire a computer virus attached to your pc, guaranteed! Use these three easy techniques along with your system will probably be clogged … | https://happywheelsgamefull.com/tag/computer-virus-scanner |
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Undertakes basic risk management activities.
Maintains documentation of risks, threats, vulnerabilities and mitigation actions.
Carries out risk management activities within a specific function, technical area or project of medium complexity.
Identifies risks and vulnerabilities, assesses their impact and probability, develops mitigation strategies and reports to the business.
Involves specialists and domain experts as necessary.
Plans and implements complex and substantial risk management activities within a specific function, technical area, project or programme.
Implements consistent and reliable risk management processes and reporting to key stakeholders.
Advises on the organisation's approach to risk management.
Plans and manages the implementation of organisation-wide processes and procedures, tools and techniques for risk management.
Considers organisation-wide risk and mitigation activities within the context of business risk as a whole and the organisation’s appetite for risk.
Provides leadership on risk management at the organisational and business levels.
Establishes organisational strategy for risk management.
Defines and communicates the organisation's appetite for risk.
Provides resources to implement the organisation's risk strategy.
Delegates authority for detailed planning and execution of risk management activities across the organisation. | https://sfia-online.org/en/sfia-9/skills/risk-management |
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Additionally when you make a purchase or attempt to make a purchase through the Site, we collect certain information from you, including your name, billing address, shipping address, payment information (including credit card numbers, email address, and phone number. We refer to this information as “Order Information.”
When we talk about “Personal Information” in this Privacy Policy, we are talking both about Device Information and Order Information.
We share your Personal Information with third parties to help us use your Personal Information, as described above. For example, we use Google Analytics to help us understand how our customers use the Site--you can read more about how Google uses your Personal Information here: https://www.google.com/intl/en/policies/privacy/. You can also opt-out of Google Analytics here: https://tools.google.com/dlpage/gaoptout.
Finally, we may also share your Personal Information to comply with applicable laws and regulations, to respond to a subpoena, search warrant or other lawful request for information we receive, or to otherwise protect our rights.
As described above, we may use your Personal Information to provide you with targeted advertisements or marketing communications we believe may be of interest to you. For more information about how targeted advertising works, you can visit the Network Advertising Initiative’s (“NAI”) educational page at http://www.networkadvertising.org/understanding-online-advertising/how-does-it-work.
Additionally, you can opt out of some of these services by visiting the Digital Advertising Alliance’s opt-out portal at: http://optout.aboutads.info/.
If you are a European resident, you have the right to access personal information we hold about you and to ask that your personal information be corrected, updated, or deleted. If you would like to exercise this right, please contact us through the contact information below
Additionally, if you are a European resident we note that we are processing your information in order to fulfill contracts we might have with you (for example if you make an order through the Site), or otherwise to pursue our legitimate business interests listed above. Additionally, please note that your information will be transferred outside of Europe, including to Canada and the United States. | https://www.solvar.com/more_from_solvar/data-privacy.html |
The course will be taught through a mixture of interactive workshops, lectures and seminars that aim to engage students with real life and virtual technical issues, enabling the study of key aspects of security and cloud computing. The lectures and workshops are designed to convey the broad outlines of knowledge pertinent to each module. The seminar sessions are built around student activity in response to a set of prepared tasks that require students to apply knowledge, discuss and analyse information security problems. Students will also have the opportunity to practise and apply knowledge through simulations focussing on security scenarios. Formal contact time will on average make up 30% of total study time, the remainder consisting of self-study or directed activities.
A Problem Based Learning (PBL) approach will be used in a number of workshops designed to foster student centred learning and engagement. This approach enables students to analyse and discuss core principles and provides opportunities for students to present their work and obtain formative feedback. Within the PBL context, task exercises will be used to focus on student-centred learning requiring synthesis and analysis of key issues generated through student research.
· Ensure that the students have access and exposure to the latest innovations and technology in computer networks, architecture and security systems.
· Equip students with the skills and knowledge necessary to pursue a successful career in a variety of areas such as IT, computer networks, security and telecommunications industries.
· Gain familiarity with a wide range of computer network deployments and database applications. Studies will cover networks used in such diverse areas as banking, utilities, hospitals, public telecoms and all aspects of industry from small to large enterprises.
· Develop students with Computer Forensics skills which involves the analysis and interpretation of digital evidence from computers and associated devices.
· Prepare students for direct employment or postgraduate study.
· Develop and improve interpersonal and communications skills, particularly writing formal reports and giving presentations, as these skills are essential in the information security industry.
· Equip students with the knowledge necessary to understand the ethical and environmental issues they will encounter in industry in general. | https://www.cybersecuritytrainingcourses.com/course-details/1077/bsc-information-security-assurance/ |
Every month, it seems there are reports in the news about another major business falling victim to some form of cyber-attack. The biggest breaches can affect millions of customers, and be hugely costly for companies, both in terms of financial losses and reputational damage.
This is not only a threat that's reserved for the largest organizations. For instance, Verizon's 2017 Data Breach Investigations Report found that 61 percent of firms that fall victim have under 1,000 employees. Therefore, it's vital for businesses of all sizes to have a comprehensive security plan in place to protect them from these growing threats.
For many companies - especially less sizeable enterprises, a central pillar of this plan will be antivirus software. This is often seen as the first line of defense against threats, but are businesses relying too heavily on this alone? If you are securing your house, there's no point adding a high-security lock to the front door if you leave the windows wide open - yet this is exactly what businesses will be doing if they don't have a comprehensive security plan.
There are many dangers out there that traditional antivirus won't be able to stop, so if businesses are placing all their faith in these tools, they may be leaving themselves exposed. Here are five key threats antivirus won't protect you from. | https://www.insightsforprofessionals.com/it/security/things-your-antivirus-wont-protect-you-from |
Network security should be a number one priority for businesses in Austin. With ransomware, hacks, attacks, vulnerabilities and data theft affecting companies all around the world on a daily basis, it’s just a matter of time before your business is hit. IT in a Pinch's goal is to provide you with the best network security protection possible, while also keeping your unique needs and budget in mind.
These days, hackers, attackers, and even automated web bots are all trying to gain access to your network and ultimately access your private customer and business information. When successful, the attackers can lock down your data or worse they can release your customer information to the world.
With the sheer number of cybersecurity threats faced by companies, it is important to evaluate the vulnerabilities that may affect your business. Lost revenues due to downtime or large fines due to data breaches may not be an option and could affect the overall health of the organization. | https://www.itinapinch.com/services/cybersecurity-austin/ |
In the previous post, you learned about how to build an RFID based access control system using Arduino. The system only gave access on scanning the right tag and on scanning the wrong tag, it denied access. There was a master tag that was used to add/remove other tags.
Now we are going to add the Sim900 GSM module in it to make it an RFID based access control and alert system using Arduino. The system will send us messages when the access will be granted or denied. We will also be able to open the door lock or halt the system by sending the message to Arduino. The system will come back to normal mode by scanning the master tag or by sending the ‘open’ message to Arduino.
On starting the project for the first time, it will ask you to define a master tag and whichever tag you will scan will be your master tag. The master tag will act as programmer and you can use it to add or remove other tags.
After defining the master tag, you will have to add other tags that you can use to open the door. To do this, scan the master tag and it will take the system into program mode.
In the program mode, scanning the tags will add/Remove these from the system. Scan the tags that you want to use to open the door and system will store the UID’s of these tags in the EEPROM. Scan the tag again to remove it from the EEPROM. To exit the program mode, scan the master tag.
Now scan the tags that you have added in the system to open the door and on opening the door lock, it will send us the confirmation message. On scanning the wrong tag, the door will remain closed and it will send us alert message.
We will also be able to halt the system by sending the ’close’ message to Arduino. During this time, the system will only look for master tag and messages.
To reset the system, press the reset button of Arduino and then long press the wipe button for 10 seconds. This will remove all the data from the EEPROM including the master tag.
Circuit Diagram and Explanation
The RFID reader communicates with the Arduino through the SPI protocol and different Arduino boards have different SPI pins.
To test if the RFID reader is working properly or not, upload the “dumpinfo” from the examples in the Arduino and see if it is showing the information of the tags on the serial monitor or not. If you are new to RFID, then follow this tutorial | RFID basics and RFID module interfacing with Arduino
The I2C LCD communicates with the Arduino through the I2C protocol. Different Arduino boards have different I2C pins. The I2C pins on Arduino Uno and Arduino Nano are A4, A5.
For powering the SIM900 module, the recommended power to use is 5V, 2A but I have used the 5V, 1.5A power adapter and it worked fine.
Once you have powered the SIM900 module, the power light will light up and on pressing the power key, the status led should light up and the netlight should start blinking. At this point, make a call from your mobile to the sim you have placed in the SIM900 module. If you are successful in making the call, then your sim is working fine with the SIM900 module.
In the end, connect the power source to the Arduino. I have used three 18650 cells. We can give 6 to 12V to the Arduino through the barrel jack.
for (uint16_t x = 0; x < EEPROM.length(); x = x + 1) { //Loop end of EEPROM address if (EEPROM.read(x) = 0) { //If EEPROM address 0 | https://www.raspberrypi.hackster.io/muhammad-aqib/rfid-based-access-control-and-alert-system-using-arduino-c2f724 |
MIRM: transform your career prospects in just one year! Some of the most important insurance groups train, select and support participants.
Master in Insurance and Risk Management is one of just a handful in Europe, for the training of insurance, finance andrisk management professionals.
It is a certified and recognised path for those seeking to develop a career in insurance, finance and consultancy at a national and international level.
The specialized skills acquired during the course are much sought after on the job market.
The employment opportunities range from the Insurance (actuaries, analysis, statistics, financial services, marketing) to Risk Management (operative, financial, industrial), to Financial Consultancy and Business Development, Auditing, Rating, Banking and Fiscal Strategy and Consulting.
The most talented candidates are awarded significant scholarships.
The Master (full-time, 12 months) trains young professionals with the most advanced skills, tailored to the specific needs of partner Companies. | https://www.masterinfo.eu/master/5367-master-insurance-risk-management/?utm_source=INCIPIT&utm_medium=www.masterinfo.eu&utm_content=4667&utm_campaign=237 |
Dr. Leo S. Mackay, Jr. is senior vice president of Internal Audit, Ethics and Sustainability at Lockheed Martin. Before joining the corporation, Dr. Mackay served as Deputy Secretary of Veterans Affairs. The former Navy fighter pilot graduated from the United States Naval Academy and has a master’s degree and Ph.D. in public policy from Harvard University. Dr. Mackay is also a member of the U.S. Naval Institute, Council on Foreign Relations and Aspen Strategy Group.
Matthew Swibel is director of enterprise risk and sustainability. He leads an integrated team, reporting to Dr. Mackay, responsible for enterprise risk management and sustainability program strategy, implementation and stakeholder engagement. Prior to joining Lockheed Martin, Swibel spent almost a decade as a business journalist, most recently as Associate Editor of Forbes, where he was recognized by the Overseas Press Club for his business reporting from abroad. He is a graduate of the American University and has an MBA from the University of Maryland.
Christopher P. Skroupa: To what extent should enterprise risk activities focus on avoiding risk versus managing acceptable tolerances of risk?
Dr. Leo S. Mackay: I think the latter is important and sometimes overlooked. The key to being a successful business is to modulate risk and to monetize that, so we look at risks and opportunities as two sides of the same coin. I think considering risk and sustainability together is part and parcel as sustainability, in grand, strategic terms, is about realizing business resilience. It’s also an opportunity to enhance transparency and partnership. In many respects, it can be, and in our context should be, a first resort in the mitigation toolbox. It’s a part of shaping our future operating environment, our corporate perception and, in a concrete fashion, building resilience and efficiency into the business. Those things are operationalized as risk mitigation, modulation of risk and exploitation of opportunity.
Skroupa: Given the complementary tools of enterprise risk management and sustainability to achieve strategic objectives, how are you organized to harness capabilities in these areas?
Mackay: We recently aligned the organizations so those two functions at Lockheed Martin – enterprise risk and sustainability – are under a common reporting senior, Matt Swibel. Both ERM and sustainability are principally focused on the identification and prioritization of risk. They also enjoy a pretty good community of tools with which you attack either subject intellectually. One way to think about sustainability is as a first among equals in terms of the mitigation strategy. Putting those two together where they can share tools, leverage people and also develop a working partnership made sense to us. One prominent area of leverage is that in both we see a primacy on internal reporting, external disclosure and transparency.
One of the organizational wrinkles is that any disclosure and reporting capability is shared between those two so that we are looking at both sides of the coin as we do things like make inputs to our 10k, and as we interface with NGOs and other organizations that judge the corporation on the quality of its risk management and sustainability program.
There are some strategic issues, some intellectual coherence issues and some sort of meat and potatoes issues around business tools and the employee skills sets that at least, in our mind, recommend those as not joint, but interacting and interweaved capabilities.
Swibel: I’ll just comment on two dimensions: the first is corporate governance. Strictly from building and retaining investor confidence, it’s helpful to see that there is a “sibling process” that ultimately finds its way into board engagement on reviewing the critical business risks and opportunities that ought to be considered in the context of the business strategy. Rather than have siloed discussions or disaggregated thinking around what are the existing and emerging risks that would be effective to manage and disclose, that now is a coordinated effort.
The second dimension is the tie to strategic planning. Whereas organizations could have two earnest teams, one in sustainability and one in enterprise risk management, both trying to aid the monitoring and managing of different risks of strategy – now both in the design of issues assessment to the tracking of mitigation plans – there is a singular entity that has a robust perspective on the critical business issues in the context of strategy. I think those are two advantages that a firm can benefit from if they’re organized where there’s a central reporting structure.
Skroupa: Would you agree that organizing that in that fashion allows for sustainability technologies or operational practices to be fully leveraged and embedded into the enterprise?
Swibel: I think it’s still early days for us, but I can see where that would be an accelerant.
Mackay: Matt mentioned one of the real payoffs being the interface with strategic planning. As the corporation looks out three to five years and what it needs to get done and what opportunities it has in front of it, you have to do that with some reference to these critical issues that are either risks for the enterprise or opportunities to build resilience. It is a necessary lens for planning.
Strategic planners also benefit from methods like materiality assessment, transparency and issues identification that are done in a rigorous fashion in a sustainability context. These too are critical for good strategic planning. These are practices and disciplines that are emphasized in sustainability, and are informative for strategic planning.
Swibel: I just want to describe a real-world example at a high level. In the instance that we’re looking at security and supply, and this would apply to organizations that have a fair amount of supplier content, but in this context there may be a supplier performance aspect that when investigated also illustrates a reliance on or exposure to a longer-term environmental risk. It helps both crystallize what the environmental factors that ought to be prioritized in the product design and lifecycle stage are, and it is also generating a more resilient supply chain management approach, but it’s all happening in the same business process, they feed off of each other.
Mackay: Sustainability surface externalities can become material costs to the business. The best example is environmental remediation. It addresses choices around supply-chains, choices of chemicals and certain materials and how they’re folded in and how they’re used, and what the true long-term cost of those are. I dare say there are a lot of corporations that would make different decisions about the use of certain processes, substances or chemicals had they surface externalities at the time of adoption.
Skroupa: Would you please describe your pursuit of integrated assurance?
Mackay: I don’t think anyone thinks it’s uncommon or unusual for all of the legal affairs of a corporation to be gathered under a general counsel – even though attorneys are particularly quick to tell you what they don’t specialize in. A property attorney would not deign to give you advice about a merger and acquisition or about labor relations or environmental law. They are very particular and very specialized in the areas of the law in which they have expertise. Yet, no one thinks it’s odd that they all then report to a general counsel that has some background across a number of those disciplines, but certainly not all of them.
Similarly with a chief financial officer. A chief financial officer may have been a treasurer, may have been in finance and business operations, may have done some time in contracts, may be an expert in investor relations, but almost assuredly no CFO is an expert in all of those jobs. Yet, no one thinks that all of the financial affairs of a corporation shouldn’t be gathered under a common reporting senior to give them coherence. I think what a lot of companies are now realizing- and some of them get “helped” to this realization when they have an escape and the federal government fines them or sends them a monitor – is that assurance activities may benefit from such a coherent organization. The question goes something like, “if I’m the chief executive or a member of the audit committee, how am I going to know and who is going to assure me that this corporation, in its processes and procedures and business interactions/operations, is observing all of the laws and regulations that pertain to it?” As a lesser issue, how about all of the company polices that we’ve outlined that apply to the several areas that we operate and the processes that we have? I think what people are doing, in different manifestations and slightly different lash-ups, is creating jobs that are broadly similar to mine, and it’s around this issue of assuring compliance to law and regulation. | https://skytopstrategies.com/risk-management-and-sustainability-two-sides-of-the-same-coin/ |
Apple on Monday said a new “private relay” feature designed to obscure a user’s web browsing behavior from internet service providers and advertisers will not be available in China for regulatory reasons. From a report: The feature was one of a number of privacy protections Apple announced at its annual software developer conference on Monday, the latest in a years-long effort by the company to cut down on the tracking of its users by advertisers and other third parties. Apple’s decision to withhold the feature in China is the latest in a string of compromises the company has made on privacy in a country that accounts for nearly 15% of its revenue.
In 2018, Apple moved the digital keys used to lock Chinese users’ iCloud data, allowing authorities to work through domestic courts to gain access to the information. China’s ruling Communist Party maintains a vast surveillance system to keep a close eye on how citizens use the country’s heavily controlled internet. Under President Xi Jinping, the space for dissent in China has narrowed, while censorship has expanded. Apple’s “private relay” feature first sends web traffic to a server maintained by Apple, where it is stripped of a piece of information called an IP address. From there, Apple sends the traffic to a second server maintained by a third-party operator who assigns the user a temporary IP address and sends the traffic onward to its destination website.
SpywareNews.com is a free community forum where people like yourself come together to discuss and learn how to use their computers. Using the site is easy and fun. As a guest, you can browse and view the various discussions in the forums, but can not create a new topic or reply to an existing one unless you are logged in. Other benefits of registering an account are subscribing to topics and forums, creating a blog free.
This site has been updated, and re-launched, so we welcome all new malware removal questions and requests. | https://spywarenews.com/index.php/2021/06/09/apples-new-private-relay-feature-will-not-be-available-in-china/security-world-news/admin/?doing_wp_cron=1623853687.5249919891357421875000 |
The Singapore Government announced earlier this year that a new, standalone Cybersecurity Act will be tabled in Parliament in 2017. On 26 October 2016, the Minister for Communications and Information, Mr Yaacob Ibrahim, provided a further glimpse of the impending laws. The Minister was speaking at the Financial Times Cyber Security Summit Asia Pacific held in Singapore.
The new Cybersecurity Act will institute standards for incident reporting, audits and risk assessments. It will also facilitate the sharing of cybersecurity information, and mandate the participation of critical information infrastructure operators in cybersecurity exercises.
Importantly, the Government envisions that the new Act will complement the existing Computer Misuse and Cybersecurity Act, which will continue to govern cybercrime investigation.
The Minister also observed that businesses need to spend more on cybersecurity, to keep pace with increased digitisation. At present, the Government is the largest contributor of cybersecurity expenditure. It plans to further increase its cybersecurity spending to 8% of its information technology budget.
The Minister’s speech follows Singapore Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong’s recent announcement that the country will embark on a new cybersecurity strategy, which seeks to construct a more robust cyber environment for Singapore.
The Government’s latest policy initiatives come in the wake of increased cybercrime in Singapore. Recently, local telecommunications provider Starhub suffered two broadband service outages that were the result of malicious distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attacks on Starhub’s domain name servers (DNS). As a result, some customers temporarily faced intermittent broadband access.
In view of the growing threat of cybercrime, more companies in Singapore are looking to obtain cyber insurance coverage. Local insurance companies report a marked increase in enquiries on cyber insurance policies. Given the high financial and reputational costs of remedying cybersecurity breaches, this surge in demand comes as no surprise.
While the actual take-up rate of cyber insurance policies remains modest, it is likely that the adoption of such policies will become ubiquitous as companies strengthen their cybersecurity frameworks.
It will be interesting to see if the Government provides further information on the impending Cybersecurity Act, such as whether critical information infrastructure operators will be subject to mandatory reporting obligations, and the extent to which these obligations, if any, may extend across all business sectors. | https://www.globalcompliancenews.com/2016/11/15/peek-new-cybersecurity-act-20161107/ |
McAfee 5.600.0.1067 Win32.Application.Search.approvedresults.com
Baidu-International 3.5.1.41473 PUP.Win32.Search.approvedresults.com | http://www.4-cybersecurity.com/pl/jak-usunac-search-approvedresults-com/ |
Greater St. Louis is a major center for cybersecurity and information technology.
There were over 48,000 computer and mathematical workers in Greater St. Louis in 2018, a 17 percent higher concentration than the national average. Yet, these workers’ average wages are 92 percent of the U.S. average level, making St. Louis an attractive IT labor market for business.
Major companies like MasterCard have established major data centers in the region. MasterCard processes over 50 billion annual global financial transactions here. MasterCard’s credit card security division, also in St. Louis, is responsible for monitoring, detecting and fighting potential fraud at every step of the purchasing process.
Additionally, CyberUp was formed as the Midwest Cyber Center of Excellence in 2015 by Webster University, Southwestern Illinois College, the Leadership Council of Southwestern Illinois, and Aegis Strategies.
CyberUp provides workforce development and public awareness services to support the growth of cybersecurity employment at Scott AFB and the Greater St. Louis market. Specific programs include certification training and youth education.
SixThirty has recently created a new accelerator fund for cybersecurity, SixThirty CYBER. This new fund invests up to $200,000 per team in 6-8 early-stage Cyber Security startups per year. Program participants will complete a 14 week accelerator program in St. Louis with training, mentoring, and development support. | https://alliancestl.com/work-smarter-in-stl/key-industries/cybersecurity/ |
Proofpoint has filed a lawsuit against Facebook arguing that it should be allowed to use domains that imitate the Facebook and Instagram brands to test customers’ ability to avoid online scams.
Cybercriminals often imitate popular brands’ sites, including Facebook and Instagram, to dupe unsuspecting users, then pilfer their credentials or distribute malware. Proofpoint is one of several security companies that provides customers with phishing training that includes look-alike domains of popular brands in order to test clients’ wits on avoiding common cons.
By sending messages that appear to be from “Instagrarn” rather than “Instagram,” for instance, Proofpoint and other email security firms test clients’ ability to detect attacks. Social media sites, particularly Facebook and Instagram, are typically among the top most imitated in criminals’ so-called typo-squatting schemes, according to Palo Alto Networks research published in September.
The suit, filed Tuesday in an Arizona district court, is a countersuit to Facebook’s effort to seize domain names that Proofpoint has been using to imitate the Facebook and Instagram brands for its tests. Facebook began its effort to transfer the domains in November under the auspices of a Uniform Domain-Name Dispute-Resolution (UDRP) request, in which it argued the domains are confusingly similar to the brands’, according to court documents.
Proofpoint argues it is not confusing, noting in the suit that it has used the domain in “good faith” and for legitimate purposes. Proofpoint notes it alerts customers to the fact that the look-alike domains are just a test, not actual company domains and that the customers are not actually being targeted in a criminal scheme.
“Consumer confusion is unlikely because Proofpoint clearly states on the websites to which the Domain Names are pointed: ‘Hi! This web site belongs to Proofpoint Security Awareness Training. This domain is used to teach employees how to recognize and avoid phishing attacks,’” the suit states.
The domain names in question include “facbook-login.com,” “facbook-login.net,” “instagrarn.ai,” “instagrarn.net” and “instagrarn.org,” according to the suit.
The case highlights an age-old question for the information security community — will their efforts to make the ecosystem safer be interpreted as malicious, slights of hand or hijinks?
In an unrelated case in December, Tribune Publishing apologized for sending employees a phishing test that promised employees a Christmas bonus.
Before that, in 2019, two professionals working for security firm Coalfire Labs who were hired to test an Iowa courthouse’s defenses were jailed and charged with burglary for breaking into the courthouse. The charges were later dropped.
For companies like Proopoint that are in the business of testing customers’ ability to spot and avoid scams, UDRP requests like Facebook’s should not apply, Proofpoint argues. The service Proofpoint offers is making both customers and Facebook safer, Proofpoint lawyers argue in the filing.
“By using domain names similar to those of well-known companies, Proofpoint is able to execute a more effective training program because the workforce is more likely to learn to distinguish typo-squatted domains, which are commonly abused by bad actors to trick workers, from legitimate domain names,” Proofpoint said in court documents, adding that its registration of the domains in question was lawful.
“This protects both the employer that provides this training to its workforce as well as the owners of legitimate domain names, including social-media companies like Defendants,” it went on.
Typo-squatting schemes crop up in everyday scams, but criminals also leverage news cycles to dupe users — last year criminals seized on the presidential election to mimic websites in an effort to run political influence operations, according to the Department of Homeland Security’s Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency. The Department of Justice worked to shut down several domains that imitated pharmaceutical giants Moderna and Regeneron, which are developing treatments for the coronavirus.
An arbitrator appointed by the World Intellectual Property Organization Arbitration and Mediation Center has already ordered that the domain names in question be transferred to Facebook and Instagram, according to the suit. Namecheap, a domain name registrar based in Arizona, has ten business days to transfer the domains to Facebook under the UDRP, according to the suit.
Proofpoint is seeking declaratory relief from the judge in Arizona noting that it has not caused confusion by using the domains, that they did not register them in bad faith and that they have not infringed trademark rights of Facebook. Proofpoint claims in the suit that without a court decision on the matter, it “will suffer immediate and irreparable harm.”
Proofpoint and Facebook did not immediately return request for comment. | https://f1tym1.com/2021/02/11/proofpoint-sues-facebook-over-dummy-sites-used-for-anti-phishing-training/ |
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