Lyft customers face potential hack from recycled phone numbers
Giving up an old cell phone number for a new one may seem harmless. But for Lyft customers, it can potentially expose their accounts to complete strangers. That’s what happened to Lara Miller, a media relations specialist living in California. Earlier this month, she discovered two credit card charges made in Las Vegas, over 400…
Chinese firm recalls camera products linked to massive DDOS attack
A Chinese electronics component maker is recalling 4.3 million internet-connected camera products from the U.S. market amid claims they may have played a role in Friday’s massive internet disruption. On Monday, Hangzhou Xiongmai Technology said it was recalling earlier models of four kinds of cameras due to a security vulnerability that can make them easy to…
Black Hat Europe 2016 S: How Artificial Intelligence Will Liberate Security
T. Kuhn’s The Structure of Scientific Revolution outlined an episodic model in which periods of “normal science” were interrupted by periods of “revolutionary science.” It challenges us as a society to consider new paradigms, to change the rules of the game, our standards and our best practices. The advent of applied Artificial Intelligence (AI), also…
Cybercrime not slowing down anytime soon
In Q3 2016, cybercriminals were increasingly more ingenious, using innovative technologies and new tools to spread their wares. This is confirmed by the 18 million new malware samples captured by PandaLabs in this quarter alone, an average of 200,000 each day. Measuring cybercrime is very complex. Cybersecurity professionals who combat these threats on a daily…
Global City CIOs Launch New Organization to Promote Best Smart City Practices
Major city chief information officers (CIO) have banded together to launch their own club in the interest of trying to move the bar on urban IT projects. The club, called the Council of Global City CIOs, includes city IT managers from San Francisco, Washington, D.C., Chicago, New York City, The Hague, Dubai, Boston and Seattle….
SMB security: The evolving role of SaaS and IT outsourcing
SMBs need to bridge the gap between smaller IT security budgets and a shortage of expertise to face the very real and growing threat of cyber attacks, according to Kaspersky Lab. Over half (54 percent) of SMBs believe that their IT security will be compromised at some point and that preparation is essential, with 40…
GM Bot: Alive and Upgraded, Now on Android M
IBM X-Force Research detected a recently updated version of the GM Bot mobile banking malware designed to deploy on Android 6 operating systems and bypass new security applied to the platform. Android officially released this Marshmallow OS, code-named M, in October 2015. The GM Bot version we analyzed can work on all Android versions up…
Software updates are critical, so automate them
Why do we need to update our software, anyway? Well, the first thing to understand is that there are different kinds of updates. Some of them add new features or improve existing ones. Others make your software compatible with other programs, different protocols, new or updated operating systems, and so forth. With greater compatibility you’ll…
IoT security: Defending a young industry from attack
As the IoT industry matures, it’s safe to say we’re well past “early adopter” phase and seeing broader development and deployment. While the prospect of a more established and stable IoT environment is exciting, we’re not there yet. What we are seeing is that the space is showing its youth, and along with it, its…
Hackers changing tactics, techniques and procedures
Organizations need to conduct better penetration testing to combat continual changes in hackers’ tactics, techniques and procedures (TTPs), according to NTT Security. “Our Q3 2016 report confirms that hackers are relentless and constantly employing new means to penetrate networks to steal confidential data,” said Rob Kraus, Director, Security Research and Strategy, NTT Security. “Organizations’ first…