Windows XP was released on August 24, 2001. It was officially retired by Microsoft two years ago on April 8, 2014. This makes WinXP almost 15 years old, which in operating system years is about 500 years old. Sophos reported:
Continue Reading →“Windows XP was still running on 10.9% of all desktops as of March 2016, according to stats compiled by Net Applications.
To put that in perspective, according to Net Applications’ figures, Windows XP is still ...
You took the red pill, and now you want to see how deep the rabbit hole goes. You spend a lot of time on computers, and use them for things that your friends think are odd. You are on your third Raspberry Pi project. You are running Linux on at least one computer. Now you want to learn the light and dark arts ...
Happy Friday the 13th. In honor of all the governmental and law enforcement agencies that want to deny the privacy and security of encrypted communications to the general public, today we will be looking at encrypted messaging apps for your smart phone.
When the bad guys can break into your digital assets and steal your information with impunity, encryption is a necessity. Encryption is the lock on your data. I am a ...
Continue Reading →
As we all know, Apple refused to assist the FBI in cracking the iPhone 5c of the San Bernardino “terrorist” killers. The FBI took Apple to court. Then the FBI dropped the case after successfully hacking the phone. Then they successfully hacked another phone in a different case in New York. Information appeared linking Israeli mobile security firm Cellebrite to the successful breach ...
I never liked the shortened URLs provided by services such as TinyURL, Bit.Ly, Google, and Microsoft. Part of my security mantra in every cybersecurity awareness training session I have given since I started training in 2002 is: never, ever click on a link in an email unless you know where it is going. Most of the time you can see the actual destination URL of a hyperlink by simply hovering the cursor over the link until the tool ...
Continue Reading →The fine people at WordFence Security have also recently published information on what happens when web sites get hijacked. They gathered this information by surveying their client and blog readers. The results are in the infographic below.
Taking a site down or site defacement makes up 25% of the malicious actions, which I found surprising. The other items on the ...
Continue Reading →I don’t often re-post other people’s web content, but the video below from Sucuri is worth the look if you are interested in learning why an attacker would want your website, and what they could possibly do with it, how that affects your reputation, and most importantly, what you could do to prevent it in the first place. If you have the time, take a look. The running time is 25 minutes. With the Q&A Session, it goes out to 40 ...
Continue Reading →
The US House of representatives passed the Email Privacy Act. Finally the Congress passes a bill that actually protects the public from warrantless search and seizure of email records. What makes this vote special is that it was unanimous – 419-to 0! When does that ever happen? Rarely, but considering this bill would protect our representatives too, maybe not all that surprising.
This ...
Continue Reading →
We have written before about the importance of properly securing your WordPress website. According to a recent post on the WordFence blog, the Mossack Fonseca breach, commonly known as the “Panama Papers,” was apparently made possible by an unpatched WordPress plugin, and also a mail program that stored user credentials in plaintext..
This again reiterates the importance of keeping your WordPress version up to date (version 4.5 as of ...
Continue Reading →
I read a couple of thought provoking articles recently on the subject of data security, and more directly, on how data destruction can serve to permanently “secure” the data that is destroyed. One article appeared in the Wordfence security blog, and the other article from security and encryption guru Bruce Schneier on CNN.com.
The Wordfence article was looking at improving WordPress website security by removing unused items and information, ...
Continue Reading →