CAPTCHA, or Completely Automated Procedures for Telling Computers and Humans Apart, was a system first theorized by cryptographer Alan Turing in 1950. We find these little “I am not a robot” challenges popping up all over the place, especially when creating a new account, registering for a web service the first time, or sometimes as form of poor man’s two-factor authentication. (Something ...
Everything you can think of and many things you have never dreamed of are being manufactured with little Linux operating systems and wireless Internet connections. Or in simpler terms, a brain, storage, and communications ability. This is the Internet of Things (IoT). Lots and lots of “smart” devices talking to each other and phoning home to some data collection or dissemination point. If only the people who are designing these ...
Yes, I have. A “breach” is an computer security incident where a website’s data has been illegally accessed by cyber-attackers and released publicly.
I know that my main email account has been compromised in the past, and used for sending Spam, because my hosting provider disabled my email account and hosting account until I had an opportunity to change my password.
I know that all my websites are under continuous automated password guessing attack, ...
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We can’t talk about robots without thinking about robots running amok as in the Terminator movies. But it turns out that most of the robots that are available today can be easily hacked by humans.
Robots are showing up in industrial settings, in hospitals, on our roads as autonomous vehicles, in secure facilities as guards, and in our homes, as carpet cleaners, children’s companions. Soon they will be everywhere, assisting, working, ...
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Last Friday’s post was a milestone that we have been anticipating for a while. We have written and published a thousand articles! We started this web log on October 26, 2006, and have been writing for over a decade.
We got off to a slow start, and it took us a while to find our voice, and to specialize in cybersecurity. In the beginning, we were a general computer technology blog. ...
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We heard about a new twist all the Income Tax refund scam that is popular with cyber-criminals this time of year. A March 27th email from the Minnesota Society of CPAs, warns about a scam that is appearing on the east coast, but could spread anywhere in the US.
Continue Reading →“…the email scam claims a tax preparer has been victimized [or breached] and asks users to open a ...
When you work in a cybersecurity organization that serves other business entities, every now and again you see something really unique. This one crossed my desk on March 28th. A client of ours received a letter by postal mail that threatened to shut them down with a distributed denial of service attack. They are probably trying to avoid the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act, but extortion by postal mail is ...
Users of the Apple iOS 10.3 phone operating system are being offered two-factor authentication (2FA) for their Apple IDs. This offers an additional layer of security for iCloud data, too.
As we have discussed in previous posts, the benefits of 2FA are that your account cannot be breached with only a stolen password. In addition to the password, a one-time passcode is required ...
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