WyzGuys Tech Talk

As reported by Bruce Schneier back in May, one of the outcomes of the Snowden revelations is that some people are abandoning open source encryption tools for things they are brewing up on their own.  And while home-brewing may be great for beer, proper cryptography is many orders of magnitude more difficult to make than beer.  Al-Qaeda is one of the organizations reputedly creating three new “NSA-proof” encryption schemes.

Since 2007, Al-Qaeda’s use of encryption technology has been based on ...

Bad news business and vacation travelers, those free computers that are in many hotel business centers have been infected with keylogger malware.  This means that whatever you are typing while sitting at one of these publicly accessible computers is being sent to a cyber-criminal somewhere.  Hopefully you are savvy enough to NOT be doing online banking or checking your brokerage accounts on these systems, but even just checking your email can open you up to having that account hijacked and ...

In my last post I covered the nature of the crypto-ransomware exploit.  In this article we will discuss things you can do to help defend against this attack.

Avoidance

The best solution for preventing crypto-ransomware exploits is avoidance.  For this exploit to work, you have to help it happen.  Your risky online behavior makes it possible. 

• Never open an email attachment unless you know who sent it and are expecting to receive it.  Don’t be afraid to check; it never hurts to ...

The different variants of crypto-ransomware have become an area of significant concern for information technology professionals.  There has been a decline in their confidence in endpoint protection solutions such as typical Internet security software products.  This decline, from 96% to 59%, shows how serious the crypto-ransomware threat has become for most network administrators.

The variants of this exploit are known as CryptoLocker, CryptoWall, CryptoDefense, Cryptorbit, HowDecrypt, and similar names.  They all work the same way.  Usually the exploit starts with a ...

Thanks to Deb Vosejpka , who posted this article about synthetic ID theft from the KNX News Radio website.  An interesting read, it explained how synthetic ID theft is different from “true-name” identity theft.  Basically, in classical identity theft, the perpetrator secures your social security number and other personal information and opens accounts in your name, operating for all intents as a second you. 

In synthetic identity theft, a real social security number is married to information of ...

In Silicon Beat it has been reported that in the aftermath of the high profiles security breaches of major retailers such as Target, PF Chang’s, Neiman Marcus, and Michael’s, many wary shoppers are returning to cash as a more secure form of payment.  A recent survey showed that following a breach, 64% of people responding to the poll said they would be using cash in the future, with millennials being more likely to use cash than other demographic ...

Brian Krebs is probably my favorite security investigator, journalists and blogger.  Brian is the guy who uncovered the Target breach last winter, and I highly recommend his blog, Krebs on Security, as a great read if you are interested in the dark web and how cybercrime works.

In an interesting case of “hacker-fu” or my skills beat your skills hacking, last summer Brian was targeted by a hacker known alternatively as “Fly,” “Flycracker,” and “Muxacc.”  It started with taunts ...