November, 2018

article thumbnail

How Surveillance Inhibits Freedom of Expression

Schneier on Security

In my book Data and Goliath , I write about the value of privacy. I talk about how it is essential for political liberty and justice, and for commercial fairness and equality. I talk about how it increases personal freedom and individual autonomy, and how the lack of it makes us all less secure. But this is probably the most important argument as to why society as a whole must protect privacy: it allows society to progress.

Privacy 102
article thumbnail

How to Shop Online Like a Security Pro

Krebs on Security

‘Tis the season when even those who know a thing or two about Internet scams tend to let down their guard in the face of an eye-popping discount or the stress of last-minute holiday shopping. So here’s a quick refresher course on how to make it through the next few weeks without getting snookered online. Adopting a shopping strategy of simply buying from the online merchant with the lowest advertised prices can be a bit like playing Russian Roulette with your wallet, for the simple r

Security 269
Insiders

Sign Up for our Newsletter

This site is protected by reCAPTCHA and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply.

article thumbnail

How Cyber Insurance Is Changing in the GDPR Era

Data Breach Today

Privacy Breach Claims Are Rising, Says Thomas Clayton of Zurich Insurance Although the EU's General Data Protection Regulation only went into full effect on May 25, its mandatory privacy breach notifications are already having an effect on the cyber insurance marketplace, says Thomas Clayton of Zurich Insurance.

Insurance 266
article thumbnail

How to create a business continuity plan – with free template

IT Governance

Comprehensive BCM (business continuity management) measures are essential for responding effectively to a disruption and providing a minimum acceptable service during a disaster. A crucial aspect of BCM is the development of an effective BCP (business continuity plan). What is a business continuity plan? A BCP consists of the processes and procedures an organisation needs in order to continue operating during a disaster and recover as quickly as possible.

article thumbnail

How and Why Should You Be Tracking Geopolitical Risk?

Geopolitical risk is now at the top of the agenda for CEOs. But tracking it can be difficult. The world is more interconnected than ever, whether in terms of economics and supply chains or technology and communication. Geopolitically, however, it is becoming increasingly fragmented – threatening the operations, financial well-being, and security of globally connected companies.

article thumbnail

Google Services down due to BGP leak, traffic hijacked through Russia, China, and Nigeria

Security Affairs

Google services were partially inaccessible on Monday due to a BGP leak that caused traffic redirection through Russia, China, and Nigeria. A BGP leak caused unavailability of Google service on Monday, the traffic was redirected through Russia, China, and Nigeria. At the time it is not clear if the incident was the result of an error or a cyber attack on the BGP protocol.

Cloud 111

More Trending

article thumbnail

Information Attacks against Democracies

Schneier on Security

Democracy is an information system. That's the starting place of our new paper: " Common-Knowledge Attacks on Democracy." In it, we look at democracy through the lens of information security, trying to understand the current waves of Internet disinformation attacks. Specifically, we wanted to explain why the same disinformation campaigns that act as a stabilizing influence in Russia are destabilizing in the United States.

article thumbnail

U.S. Secret Service Warns ID Thieves are Abusing USPS’s Mail Scanning Service

Krebs on Security

A year ago, KrebsOnSecurity warned that “Informed Delivery,” a new offering from the U.S. Postal Service (USPS) that lets residents view scanned images of all incoming mail, was likely to be abused by identity thieves and other fraudsters unless the USPS beefed up security around the program and made it easier for people to opt out. This week, the U.S.

article thumbnail

Did China Spy on Australian Defense Websites?

Data Breach Today

One Answer Is Clear: Network Re-Routing Raises Suspicions For nearly 30 months, internet traffic going to Australian Department of Defense websites flowed through China Telecom data centers, an odd and suspicious path. Why the strange routing occurred is known. But the reasons why it persisted for so long aren't.

IT 255
article thumbnail

How to write a disaster recovery plan

IT Governance

All organisations experience disruptions, whether that’s from a cyber attack, IT failure, weather event or something else, and they need to be prepared. The longer it takes to address an issue, the more the costs will spiral and the harder it will be to recover. A disaster recovery plan gives organisations a process for responding to a variety of incidents.

Insurance 113
article thumbnail

7 Pitfalls for Apache Cassandra in Production

Apache Cassandra is an open-source distributed database that boasts an architecture that delivers high scalability, near 100% availability, and powerful read-and-write performance required for many data-heavy use cases. However, many developers and administrators who are new to this NoSQL database often encounter several challenges that can impact its performance.

article thumbnail

Experts detailed how China Telecom used BGP hijacking to redirect traffic worldwide

Security Affairs

Security researchers revealed in a recent paper that over the past years, China Telecom used BGP hijacking to misdirect Internet traffic through China. Security researchers Chris C. Demchak and Yuval Shavitt revealed in a recent paper that over the past years, China Telecom has been misdirecting Internet traffic through China. China Telecom was a brand of the state-owned China Telecommunications Corporation, but after marketization of the enterprise spin off the brand and operating companies as

Paper 111
article thumbnail

Germany: First data protection authority issues GDPR fine

DLA Piper Privacy Matters

The State Commissioner for Data Protection and Freedom of Information Baden-Wuerttemberg (LfDI) was the first German data protection authority to impose a fine under the GDPR. The fine of € 20,000 sanctions the violation by a social media company of its obligation to ensure data security of processing of personal data pursuant to Art. 32 (1) (a) GDPR (obligation to pseudonymise and encrypt personal data).

GDPR 97
article thumbnail

Chip Cards Fail to Reduce Credit Card Fraud in the US

Schneier on Security

A new study finds that credit card fraud has not declined since the introduction of chip cards in the US. The majority of stolen card information comes from hacked point-of-sale terminals. The reasons seem to be twofold. One, the US uses chip-and-signature instead of chip-and-PIN, obviating the most critical security benefit of the chip. And two, US merchants still accept magnetic stripe cards, meaning that thieves can steal credentials from a chip card and create a working cloned mag stripe car

Sales 100
article thumbnail

Half of all Phishing Sites Now Have the Padlock

Krebs on Security

Maybe you were once advised to “look for the padlock” as a means of telling legitimate e-commerce sites from phishing or malware traps. Unfortunately, this has never been more useless advice. New research indicates that half of all phishing scams are now hosted on Web sites whose Internet address includes the padlock and begins with “[link].

Phishing 274
article thumbnail

Reimagined: Building Products with Generative AI

“Reimagined: Building Products with Generative AI” is an extensive guide for integrating generative AI into product strategy and careers featuring over 150 real-world examples, 30 case studies, and 20+ frameworks, and endorsed by over 20 leading AI and product executives, inventors, entrepreneurs, and researchers.

article thumbnail

Magecart Cybercrime Groups Mass Harvest Payment Card Data

Data Breach Today

Card-Scraping Code Has Infiltrated Over 100,000 E-Commerce Sites Over the past year, there's been a surge in so-called Magecart attacks, involving payment card data being stolen from e-commerce sites via injected attack code. Researchers say they are tracing at least six active Magecart groups, each with unique infrastructure, skimmers and targeting.

252
252
article thumbnail

List of data breaches and cyber attacks in November 2018 – 251,286,753 records leaked

IT Governance

Last month I thought I’d try something new, so I focused on three stories rather than putting together a long list of breaches. It wasn’t a very popular approach. So the list is back. I count this month’s total of known leaked records to be 251,286,753. No particular stories stand out this month, but one thing I did notice is that there weren’t as many healthcare breaches as there normally are.

article thumbnail

Nginx server security flaws expose more than a million of servers to DoS attacks

Security Affairs

Nginx developers released security updates to address several denial-of-service (DoS) vulnerabilities affecting the nginx web server. nginx is an HTTP and reverse proxy server, a mail proxy server, and a generic TCP/UDP proxy server, it is used by 25.28% busiest sites in October 2018. Nginx development team released versions 1.15.6 and 1.14.1 to address two HTTP/2 implementation vulnerabilities that can cause a DoS condition in Nginx versions 1.9.5 through 1.15.5.

Security 111
article thumbnail

EDPB Publishes Guidelines on Extraterritorial Application of the GDPR

Hunton Privacy

On November 23, 2018, the European Data Protection Board (“EDPB”) published its long-awaited draft guidelines on the extraterritorial application of the EU General Data Protection Regulation (“GDPR”) (the “Guidelines”). To date, there has been a degree of uncertainty for organizations regarding the scope of the GDPR’s application outside of the EU. While the Guidelines provide some clarity on this issue, questions will remain for non-EU controllers and processors.

GDPR 93
article thumbnail

Entity Resolution Checklist: What to Consider When Evaluating Options

Are you trying to decide which entity resolution capabilities you need? It can be confusing to determine which features are most important for your project. And sometimes key features are overlooked. Get the Entity Resolution Evaluation Checklist to make sure you’ve thought of everything to make your project a success! The list was created by Senzing’s team of leading entity resolution experts, based on their real-world experience.

article thumbnail

Buying Used Voting Machines on eBay

Schneier on Security

This is not surprising : This year, I bought two more machines to see if security had improved. To my dismay, I discovered that the newer model machines -- those that were used in the 2016 election -- are running Windows CE and have USB ports, along with other components, that make them even easier to exploit than the older ones. Our voting machines, billed as "next generation," and still in use today, are worse than they were before­ -- dispersed, disorganized, and susceptible to manipulation.

article thumbnail

USPS Site Exposed Data on 60 Million Users

Krebs on Security

U.S. Postal Service just fixed a security weakness that allowed anyone who has an account at usps.com to view account details for some 60 million other users, and in some cases to modify account details on their behalf. Image: USPS.com. KrebsOnSecurity was contacted last week by a researcher who discovered the problem, but who asked to remain anonymous.

article thumbnail

Romanian Hacker 'Guccifer' Extradited to US

Data Breach Today

Former Taxi Driver Receives Conditional Release From Prison in Romania The notorious Romanian hacker known as Guccifer, who revealed the existence of Hillary Clinton's private email server and admitted to hacking numerous email and social media accounts, has reportedly been extradited from Romania to begin serving his 52-month U.S. prison sentence.

252
252
article thumbnail

How Cyber Essentials can help secure against malware

IT Governance

The Cyber Essentials scheme is a world-leading assurance mechanism for organisations of all sizes to help demonstrate that the most critical cyber security controls have been implemented. To highlight the importance and usefulness of the Cyber Essentials scheme, we’ve produced a series of blog posts summarising each of the five security controls that, according to the UK government, could prevent “around 80% of cyber attacks”.

Security 108
article thumbnail

Strategic CX: A Deep Dive into Voice of the Customer Insights for Clarity

Speaker: Nicholas Zeisler, CX Strategist & Fractional CXO

The first step in a successful Customer Experience endeavor (or for that matter, any business proposition) is to find out what’s wrong. If you can’t identify it, you can’t fix it! 💡 That’s where the Voice of the Customer (VoC) comes in. Today, far too many brands do VoC simply because that’s what they think they’re supposed to do; that’s what all their competitors do.

article thumbnail

Symantec shared details of North Korean Lazarus’s FastCash Trojan used to hack banks

Security Affairs

North Korea-linked Lazarus Group has been using FastCash Trojan to compromise AIX servers to empty tens of millions of dollars from ATMs. Security experts from Symantec have discovered a malware, tracked as FastCash Trojan , that was used by the Lazarus APT Group , in a string of attacks against ATMs. The ATP group has been using this malware at least since 2016 to siphon millions of dollars from ATMs of small and midsize banks in Asia and Africa.

article thumbnail

When Accounts are "Hacked" Due to Poor Passwords, Victims Must Share the Blame

Troy Hunt

It's just another day on the internet when the news is full of headlines about accounts being hacked. Yesterday was a perfect example of that with 2 separate noteworthy stories adorning my early morning Twitter feed. The first one was about HSBC disclosing a "security incident" which, upon closer inspection, boiled down to this: The security incident that HSBC described in its letter seems to fit the characteristics of brute-force password-guessing attempts, also known as a credentials stuffing

article thumbnail

The Pentagon is Publishing Foreign Nation-State Malware

Schneier on Security

This is a new thing : The Pentagon has suddenly started uploading malware samples from APTs and other nation-state sources to the website VirusTotal, which is essentially a malware zoo that's used by security pros and antivirus/malware detection engines to gain a better understanding of the threat landscape. This feels like an example of the US's new strategy of actively harassing foreign government actors.

article thumbnail

SMS Phishing + Cardless ATM = Profit

Krebs on Security

Thieves are combining SMS-based phishing attacks with new “cardless” ATMs to rapidly convert phished bank account credentials into cash. Recent arrests in Ohio shed light on how this scam works. A number of financial institutions are now offering cardless ATM transactions that allow customers to withdraw cash using nothing more than their mobile phones.

Phishing 232
article thumbnail

The Big Payoff of Application Analytics

Outdated or absent analytics won’t cut it in today’s data-driven applications – not for your end users, your development team, or your business. That’s what drove the five companies in this e-book to change their approach to analytics. Download this e-book to learn about the unique problems each company faced and how they achieved huge returns beyond expectation by embedding analytics into applications.

article thumbnail

Radisson Suffers Global Loyalty Program Data Breach

Data Breach Today

Hotel Giant Has Yet to Disclose Total Number of Affected Victims Radisson Hotel Group has suffered a data breach that resulted in the theft of data for its global loyalty program members. The company, which operates 1,400 hotels, says the breach touched data for "less than 10 percent" of all Radisson Rewards members, but it hasn't released a victim count.

article thumbnail

The GDPR: Everything you need to know about data controllers and data processors

IT Governance

Data controllers and data processors are an integral part of the GDPR. This article explains what those roles involve and helps you understand if you are a controller, processor or both. The terms ‘data controller’ and ‘data processor’ have been around for years, but it’s only since the EU GDPR (General Data Protection Regulation) took effect that they’ve been scrutinised.

GDPR 107
article thumbnail

Experts demonstrate how to exfiltrate data using smart bulbs

Security Affairs

Security researchers with Checkmarx developed two mobile applications that abuse the functionality of smart bulbs for data exfiltration. Security researchers with Checkmarx developed two mobile applications that exploit smart bulbs features for data exfiltration. The experts used the Magic Blue smart bulbs that implement communication through Bluetooth 4.0.