From the Google Science Fair:
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For the last eight weeks it has been my privilege to train twenty students in the fundamentals of computer and network support. I have been working as an independent instructor in association with A Critical Path, CompTIA, and their non-profit foundation Creating IT Futures. The eight weeks of instruction that I delivered is designed to provide lecture and hands-on instruction in computers, networks, protocols, operating systems, security, user administration, and the like. All of the instruction ...
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Usually my Sunday submission is a bit more genuinely humorous, but not so much today. Other titles I considered were “Your Tax Dollars At Work” and “Government Seeks to Tax Cyber-Crime Victims,” but the real title should be:
Congress to Enact Legislation To Make Bad Cyber Security Illegal
This is sort of the same as making being the victim of a mugging illegal. But ...
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Recent security updates to OSX and Safari closed some significant security holes in OSX 10.7, 10.8, 10.9 and Safari 6 and Safari 7. But it appears that support for OSX 10.6 “Snow Leopard” has been discontinued by the Cupertino firm. This update cycle included 27 patches that resolved issues that allowed drive by downloads, remote code execution (RCE), and “sandbox escape” exploits. Also included were a couple of recent ...
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Open SSL is an open-source Secure Sockets Layer library that is used by many secure web site. OpenSSL puts the “S” into HTTPS, and provides secure, encrypted communications for password protected websites, such as ecommerce, social media, and email services. The proof of concept exploit ...
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As reported on Silicon Beat, security firm Symantec has released its report on the state of cyber-security in 2013. The news is not good, with major increases in the number, scope, loss, and cost of cyber crime last year. The good ...
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Spec’s, a Texas based liquor store chain, the second largest wine merchant, with 165 stores in several states. Evidently, 34 of those location were breached in a 17 month long network and system penetration exploit. It appears that about 550,000 credit card records were stolen during that time. The breach ...
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If you read my earlier article about the end of support for Windows XP, it was missing an important fact. If you are running Microsoft Security Essentials on Windows XP, support for MSE is going to end for you as well. This is from the Microsoft website:
Continue Reading →As a result, after April 8, 2014, technical assistance for Windows XP will no longer be available, including automatic updates that help protect your PC. Microsoft will also stop providing ...
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Windows XP is thirteen year old, which is old for dogs, cats, and really old for computers. Evidently Windows XP systems still claim about 25% of the active operating systems worldwide. Several of my business clients still have at least some Windows XP systems running on their network, and a decent percentage of my residential clients as well. After thirteen years, official support for Windows XP ends Tuesday April 8, 2014. So what does that mean?
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One of the recommended procedures when disposing or recycling a computer or hard drive is to completely erase the existing data on the hard drive by reformatting, overwriting the data or using a drive wiping program. This works quite well on standard ATA, SATA, and SCSI drives that use spinning magnetic platters. Apparently, these techniques do not reliable remove data from solid state drives (SSDs).
There currently are no reliable methods to guarantee complete erasure of data on SSDs. The exception ...
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