Three ways formal methods can scale for software security
Security is not like paint: it can’t just be applied after a system has been completed. Instead, security has to be built into the system design. But how can we know that a system design is secure against a particular attack? And how can we know that the system implements that design correctly? The key…
How to block malicious JavaScript files in Windows environments
There have been several recent reports of fake updaters that spoof Google Chrome, Mozilla Firefox, and Internet Explorer landing pages. When the user clicks on the upgrade option, a JavaScript file is downloaded and executes malware. You have several options to block or change the default behavior to better protect workstations. Block JavaScript at the…
Mac Attackers Remain Focused Mainly on Adware, Fooling Users
The year 2020 kicked off with reports that Mac cyber threats had taken off, with machines encountering twice as many threats as Windows systems. But as the year came to a close, the average user of the Mac OS continued to see fewer malware and ransomware threats than Windows users, security experts say. In February…
SaaS security in 2021
The migration toward subscription-based services via the SaaS business model isn’t new this year — it’s part of a larger shift away from on-premises datacenters, applications, etc., that has been underway for years. The pandemic accelerated the shift, boosting SaaS subscriptions as companies looked for virtual collaboration and meeting tools. What is new on a…
How to cyber security: Software security is everyone’s responsibility
Remember group projects in school? Teachers love them because they have less grading to do; in a class of 25 students, they might only need to look at 5 projects. For team members, team projects can be difficult, usually when individual motivation levels don’t match up. On the other hand, team projects can be rewarding…
Open source contributors spending no time on security
The Linux Foundation’s Open Source Security Foundation (OpenSSF) and the Laboratory for Innovation Science at Harvard (LISH) announced the release of a report which details the findings of a contributor survey administered by the organizations and focused on how contributors engage with open source software. The FOSS (Free and Open Source Software) contributor survey and…
Face recognition software making progress at recognizing masked faces
A study of face recognition technology created after the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic shows that some software developers have made demonstrable progress at recognizing masked faces. The findings, produced by NIST, measure the performance of face recognition algorithms developed following the arrival of the pandemic. A previous report from July explored the effect of…
macOS Big Sur 11.0.1 Patches 60 Vulnerabilities
macOS Big Sur 11.0 was officially launched on November 12 and on the same day Apple released its first update, version 11.0.1. The company has advised customers to update to this version — macOS Big Sur 11.0 comes preinstalled on certain Mac models — but there have been reports that the Big Sur update is…
Review: Specops Password Policy
Specops Password Policy is a powerful tool for overcoming the limitations of the default password policies present in Microsoft Active Directory environments. To be fair, Microsoft did revise and upgrade the default password policy and introduced additional, granular fine-tuning options over the years, but for some enterprise environments that’s still not enough, so Specops Password…
Windows 10 security: Are you on the right version?
A recent Microsoft Ignite session reminded me about how much Windows 10 has changed over the years. We often forget that when we don’t update to newer versions, we miss out on the improved security features in each release. It’s easy to forget the advances and security features that Windows 10 has added over the…
