Continuing where we left of last week, let’s take a look at the security of network connected medical devices. As we discussed in an earlier post, the Mayo Clinic recently sponsored a hackathon of sorts, inviting a number of security practitioners to their campus in Rochester Minnesota to see how hard it would be to hack the medical equipment. ...
So how would it be if you found out that the key to your house also worked at your neighbor’s house. What if it turned out the builder in your subdivision used the exact same lock on every house they built, and your key could get you into every house in your neighborhood?
This is essentially the situation that security researchers at SEC Consult discovered with a host of Internet ...
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I know it’s April Fool’s Day, but this is a straight up serious post. If you own, operate, host, support, or develop WordPress sites, this article is for you.
We have written a few articles covering the subject of WordPress security. I recently received an email from John Stevens over at HostingFacts.com, inviting me to review their excellent tutorial, 28 ...
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We recently reviewed the bad state of affairs in the world of edge devices, routers, cable and DSL modems, and wireless access points. I just read an article on CSO the talked about the dangers that exist with the routers that router traffic and basically run the Internet. The problem is that these routers are running a Linux kernel in their core that ...
We haven’t seen macro viruses for a while, but they are back. HawkEye a new variant of the resurgent use of unpatched vulnerabilities in Microsoft Word and other office documents. Using macros, written in Visual Basic, attackers are using Word document attachments to run code on victim computers.
Last week we wrote about the Locky ransomware exploit that encrypts your ...
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How would you feel if, in order to gain access to a known terrorist’s house, the government passed a law that required every lock manufacturer to create a master key that would unlock every locked door anywhere? What if the police promised that they would only use the key on the one house? What if they promised to keep the key safe and secure so it could never get into the ...
At the end of December last year Juniper Networks discovered that some malicious actors had added code to the firmware and software that run their routers, creating a back door that would allow attackers to access the router remotely, assume administrator privileges, and view and decrypt VPN traffic running through the routers. As the story unfolded, it turns out that Juniper was using a random number generator from NIST, and that the ...
Quick answer: Yes it can! A recent article in Bloomberg goes deeply into this subject, and reveals the experiences of a white hat hacker named Billy Rios. Billy and many others in the profession had been hired by the Mayo Clinic in Rochester Minnesota in 2013 to try to hack all the medical devices in the hospital that were connected to the network. ...
Adobe’s Flash program has been a security nightmare. A favorite among malware writers for ages, Flash is useful for doing things like creating fake security pop-up alerts and conning computer users into buying security programs that don’t work and carry malicious content. And it seems that there is another “zero-day” vulnerability discovered every three days.
Do we really need Flash? No we don’t. iPhones and ...
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Using BASIC or Visual BASIC programming scripts can add automation and other functions to documents created in the Microsoft Office productivity suite of products. Unfortunately, this feature can be used by cyber-attackers to send malware exploits in otherwise innocuous looking documents that most people would open without a second thought.
The macro virus goes back to 1995, the most infamous being the Melissa email macro virus that $80 million in damages to ...
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