Hackers Targeting WooCommerce Users To Steal Credit Card Information
WooCommerce is a WordPress-based, free plugin that makes it incredibly easy to sell just about anything online. With more than five million installations, it’s clearly a favorite on the web. Unfortunately, its popularity also makes it an easy target. Ben Martin and Willem de Groot are researchers with Sanguine Security. They found a new attack […]
Spread Of COVID-19 Data Available From Google And Apple
Big tech firms are lining up to help us get a better handle on the data concerning this pandemic. Data includes who has Covid-19 and how fast and far the virus is spreading around the country (and around the world). Recently, tech giants Apple and Google announced a partnership that will focus on the use […]
Ransomware Targets Company Working On A COVID-19 Vaccine
It’s common knowledge that hackers are highly opportunistic and certainly not above targeting children, the sick and the dying if there’s money to be made. Even so, attacking a drug company currently doing research to find a vaccine for COVID-19 has to be counted as a new low, even for hackers. Sadly, that exact scenario […]
Over Half Of All Calls People Receive Are Spam Calls
If you’re like most people, you probably get a lot of calls over the course of a week. They’re probably calls that you’d just rather not get at all. How many of those calls do you get, exactly? Have you ever sat down and taken notes to track it? If you did, you might be […]
Zoom Is Working On Security But May Be Too Late
The popular messaging tool called Zoom is having a tough time. According to a recently released memo that circulated through Elon Musk’s “SpaceX” company, the company is banning Zoom’s use because of “significant privacy and security concerns.” In response, Zoom’s development team recently announced that they’re freezing all feature development for a period of 90 […]
Private Twitter Files May Have Been Cached In Firefox
Are you a regular Twitter user? More specifically, are you a regular Twitter user who also prefers the Firefox web browser? If so, be advised that Twitter recently disclosed a new bug with potentially dire implications for you. Apparently, a flaw in the design of the platform itself caused it to store private files inside […]
Over 5 Million Marriott Customers Vulnerable In Latest Data Breach
Are you a frequent guest at Marriott hotels? If so, be advised that the company has recently reported a massive data breach that could impact up to 5.2 million guests who have stayed at the hotel. According to the official statement the company released regarding the matter: “At the end of February 2020, we noticed […]
Huge Increase In Phishing And Malware Attacks Using Coronavirus
Around the world, hundreds of millions of people are terrified of the current pandemic that’s raging. Most of those are currently self-quarantining at home and limiting their social contacts. Everyone is hungry for news and information. Sadly, hackers, scammers and other assorted criminals have wasted no time preying on this massive captive audience. According to […]
Google Data Shows Impacts Of Covid-19 Shelter In Place Precaution
Google is using the massive footprint in the smartphone ecosystem to help people understand the impacts that social distancing is having in the face of the global pandemic. Their new global Community Mobility Reports are both revealing and eye-opening. The graph was created from the first reports, which covers 131 countries and regions around the […]
Crowded WiFi Networks Could Get Better Pending FCC Vote
Wireless connectivity is becoming a victim of its own success. Every year, the appetite for bandwidth grows, but of course, there’s only so much to go around. The recent shelter in place orders that have been issued by countries around the world has only added to the increasingly crowded spectrum. Even without that, based on […]
Office 365 Making Changes To Accommodate Millions Working From Home
Recently, Netflix announced that it was scaling back its streaming speeds to better handle the increased load brought on by millions of people around the world sitting at home due to the threat of the Corona Virus. Netflix isn’t the only company making such moves. Recently, Microsoft announced a raft of new and temporary changes […]
Some HP Devices May Fail After 30,000 Hours Of Use
Late last year, Hewlett Packard Enterprise (HPE) issued a warning about some of the Solid State Drives they manufacture. The warning was that unless users downloaded a patch to the drive’s firmware, their drive could fail after more than 33,000 hours of running. Now, the company is back with a similar warning. A new flaw […]
How To Quickly Shift To A Work-From-Home Business Model To Maximize Productivity In Today’s Coronavirus Environment
As a business owner today, you are now facing unprecedented challenges to help deal with the coronavirus pandemic. You are asked to self-isolate and practice social distancing to “flatten the curve.” You are asked to allow your employees to work from home to reduce possible exposure and slow the spread of COVID-19. These are all […]
Cybercriminals Are Counting On You Letting Your Guard Down During This Global Pandemic – Here’s How To Stop Them
The world is slowing down during this COVID-19 pandemic. Wall Street is being hit hard. People are no longer going out. We’re told to quarantine or self-isolate and not engage in groups. You can bet there’s one group that’s not slowing down at all. In fact, they’re probably working overtime while the rest of us […]
5 Steps To Rise Above The Fear Of COVID-19 And Focus On Growing Your Business
In a matter of just a few short weeks, we have gone from living how we’ve always lived to changing just about everything we do. Schools are out for weeks if not months. Cruises have stopped sailing, and air transportation may be next. Bars and restaurants are closing, sporting events are nonexistent and so many […]
iOS Update Includes iPhone And iPad Features And Fixes
If you don’t normally prioritize updating your iPhone and iPad OS, you’re probably going to want to shift gears and grab version 13.4 as soon as possible. The latest versions of both OS variants contain a number of important bug fixes and convenience features that are simply too big and too significant to miss out […]
Employees Working From Home Turn To VPN During COVID
It’s no secret that the global pandemic we’re all living through has changed a great many things about both work and home life. For one thing, work and home life are often the same now, with large numbers of people sheltering in place and working from home. Unfortunately, home networks aren’t anywhere near as secure […]
Be On The Lookout As Astaroth Malware Makes A Comeback
Are you familiar with Astaroth? If you’re a data security professional, you’ve probably at least heard the name. The group gained some notoriety last year when it came to light that they had developed a means of spreading “fileless malware” using legitimate Windows tools to infect machines around the world. The Windows Defender ATP team […]
Apple Update Blocks Safari Third Party Cookies By Default
In May of 2019, a Google blog post encouraged all web browsers to adopt the approach of blocking third-party cookies by default. Google announced their own plans to do so, outlining a development strategy that would see Chrome and all Chromium-based browsers defaulting to that by 2022. The TOR browser was the first to make […]
Windows 10 Announces One Billion Active Devices
Windows 10 is on a lot of devices around the world. In part, that’s because it’s a significantly better and more modern operating system than its predecessors. In addition, it’s partly because Microsoft has been aggressively pushing people to upgrade to Windows 10. While it took the company a bit longer to reach the magic […]
Computers Might Be Able To Smell In The Near Future
Word has recently leaked out about an interesting project that’s ongoing at Intel’s research labs. The company has apparently built an algorithm that mirrors the brain’s activity to detect and identify smells. The company developed a computer chip for the project. Called a “neuromorphic” chip, it was designed to allow a computer to process information […]
Financial Institution Worker Put User Information At Risk
Noam Rotem, a researcher for vpnMentor, recently made a startling discovery. A database connected to a now defunct app called MCA Wizard was found unsecured on the web. It contained a staggering 425 GB of sensitive corporate financial data. The app, developed via a partnership between Argus Capital Funding and Advantage Capital Funding, is no […]
New Google Translate Feature Rolled Out For Android Users
Google Translate is one of the company’s most popular services, and most of the people who use it dream of the day when it’s a full blown Universal Translator. While that’s obviously still quite some distance away yet, the company has been steadily improving their offering. They recently upped the ante further with a new […]
Coronavirus Health Notifications Being Used To Carry Malicious Threats
A Pakistani-based hacking group that goes by a variety of names, including “Transparent Tribe,” “APT36,” “Mythic Leopard” and others has been discovered to be behind a particularly nasty attack recently. Researchers with QiAnXin’s RedDrip Team discovered a phishing campaign bearing the group’s stamp. This new campaign utilizes poisoned files that appear to be health advisories […]
Hackers Targeting People Seeking Coronavirus Information On Health Sites
Some people just want to watch the world burn. That seems to be the reason behind the recent attacks on the US Health and Human Services Department website, which serves as a clearinghouse for information relating to the Coronavirus outbreak. As the virus has spread, more and more people have been heading to the HHS.gov […]
Another Week Another New Ransomware To Be Concerned About
There’s a new strain of ransomware to put on your radar. This latest one was discovered by researchers working from SentinelLabs and it has been dubbed Nefilim. Based on the initial research, it seems to share significant portions of its code base with an older strain, Nemty 2.5. The two key differences between the two […]
Over 1 Billion Android Devices No Longer Get Security Updates
According to the latest statistics, there are more than 2.5 billion Android devices in use around the world. That’s a lot of devices by any reckoning. According to statistics gathered by Consumer Watchdog Which?, more than a billion of those devices are no longer receiving security updates. That is scary. That puts an awful lot […]
Paradise Ransomware Using Internet Query Files To Deliver Payload
The Paradise ransomware is like a bad penny; it just keeps turning up. The strain first appeared back in 2017, when it was spread far and wide via phishing emails. Then it seemed to fall out of favor for a while, and now, it’s back again. Even worse, it’s back with a new trick up […]
Malware Is Targeting Cookies On Android Devices To Gain Access
There’s a new malware threat to be aware of, called “CookieThief,” which is an apt name that describes what the malware does. Honestly though, the Hackers missed the mark here. “CookieMonster” would have been a much better name option. In any case, it’s part of a growing new collection of malware strains that is able […]
Intel Graphics Get Update To Address Security Issues
If you have a personal computer that uses Intel technology, you’re not going to want to miss the update released in March’s Patch Tuesday. The latest update addresses a total of 27 vulnerabilities. Ten of them rated as high severity flaws that impact Intel’s Graphics Drivers for Windows. Also impacted is the Smart Sound Technology […]
Google Chrome Guest Mode Is Great For Shared Computers
Google has recently rolled out a small but important change to its Chrome browser for Windows, Linux and macOS users. The most recent update adds a ‘Default to Guest mode’ to the browser that can be enabled via Enterprise policy or a simple command-line switch. When the new feature is enabled, any time a browser […]
Certain RAM Modules Continue To Have Security Vulnerabilities
Remember the Rowhammer vulnerability that made headlines around the world last year? 2019 saw all sorts of unusual threats, so if you’re struggling to recall the details of that one in particular, here’s a quick review: Any time a modern RAM card handles data, it is saved in memory cells that are arranged in a […]
Recent Data Breach Affects Some Walgreens Mobile App Users
Are you a Walgreens customer? Do you make use of the company’s mobile app, available for both Android and iOS devices? If so, be advised that the company recently disclosed a serious flaw in the app that inadvertently leaked both Personally Identifiable Information (PII) and Personal Health Information (PHI). The information was in the form […]
The Web Browser Wars Have A Clear Winner In 2020
It’s notoriously difficult to get reliable statistics on web browser usage. While there are sites that purport to track such things such as StatCounter and NetMarketShare, the numbers coming from these sources have proved to be problematic and unreliable. Enter the US Government’s Digital Analytics Program (DAP, for short). While it doesn’t reveal anything about […]
T-Mobile Is The Latest To Get Hit By Data Breach
Are you a T-Mobile customer? If so, be advised, the company recently published a Notice of Data Breach on their website to inform all clients that an email vendor they utilize was hacked. The notice said that the hack exposed the financial and personal information of a small fraction of the company’s customers. In addition […]
Phone Call And Text Phishing Scams Are On The Rise
For the last couple of years, the primary means of communication when conducting phishing campaigns has been email. Phishing emails have been absolutely rampant. So much so that people are increasingly on their guard against them. Naturally, this prompts scammers to change their tactics, switching things up a bit to catch people by surprise. In […]
New Phishing Emails Trick Users With Convincing Security Credentials
Unit 42 is a research division of Palo Alto Networks. Their researchers have discovered a sneaky and surprisingly effective phishing campaign that appears to have been launched in January of this year (2020). When targeted by this attack, a user will get an email containing a braded document containing the name of a legitimate cybersecurity […]
Facebook Is Fighting Back Against Spam Accounts
Unless you’re plugged into the world of social media, you may not realize it. There’s a war on, and until recently, it was a war that Facebook was losing. The war is being fought with billions of fake accounts being used to fundamentally alter the social media landscape. It is influencing the kinds of content […]
JCrew Retailer Customers May Have Had Information Accessed
Another week, another data breach. This time, the target being US clothing retailer J. Crew. The company announced that sometime in April of 2019, an unknown group of hackers utilized a credential stuffing attack to breach one of the company’s databases and accessed some of its customer account data. Credential stuffing, as you may know, […]
New Android Malware Can Get Past Two-Factor Authentication
Since 2010, Google has been doing its part to help keep its massive user base safe. They introduced a small but critical service called Google Authenticator, which is used by a number of online accounts as a two-factor authentication layer. Google launched the service as an alternative to SMS-based one-time pass codes. While SMS-based codes […]
Mobile Internet Usage Continues To Rise According To Study
A few years ago, the people who track such things announced that the PC had been dethroned. They said a slight majority of people were turning to their phones as their primary means of accessing the web. Since that time, the trend has continued. The Social Media Management Company Hootsuite and their partners, We Are […]
Facial Recognition Company Hacked, Leaking Billions Of Photos
Photos are a new kind of currency, and gaining in value. Clearview AI is a facial recognition startup used by hundreds of law enforcement agencies around the country. The company was hacked, giving the hackers access to literally billions of photographs. In addition to the images themselves, the hackers gained access to Clearview’s customer list. […]
Google Translate Adds More Languages To Assist Communication
Every kid who grew up watching sci-fi has dreamed of the day when a Universal Translator would be available, making seamless communication possible and eliminating the language barrier entirely. That day hasn’t arrived yet, but Google is steadily marching toward that goal. The company has been making use of new machine learning and other advanced […]
Emails Pretending To Be Secret Admirers Could Be Ransomware
Nemty Ransomware isn’t an especially well-known threat, but it’s dangerous and should not be discounted. Recently, researchers have discovered an ongoing spam-email driven campaign that’s attempting to spread the ransomware far and wide. An unknown group of hackers are sending out what appear to be love letters from secret admirers in a broad pattern. They […]
New Edge Browser Coming To Windows 10 Through Updates
Microsoft Edge has been changed and improved many times. It is now Chromium-based, and is one important step closer to widespread release. At present, the new browser is available to Windows 10 Insiders in the “Release Preview” ring. It will remain there for at least a few weeks for testing. Assuming no major problems are […]
Tax Information Theft Is On The Rise This Year
It’s tax season, and if you’re like many people, you make use of one of the numerous e-file platforms offered by TurboTax, TaxAct, and similar companies. Unfortunately, tax season also presents a tremendous opportunity for hackers. So much that the IRS has issued a formal warning to accountants and taxpayers alike, urging them to enable […]
The New Microsoft Office App Looks Like A Winner
In November of 2019, Microsoft made an announcement and gave users an early look at a new unified Office app designed specifically for Android and iOS devices. The purpose, of course, was to provide the essential functionality of Office in a faster, leaner, and lighter package that was better suited for use on mobile devices. […]
Mobile Flash Storage Getting Faster To Accommodate 5G Rollout
Are you ready for the world of 5G? Even if you are, the available storage you have on your favorite devices may not be as robust as you’d like it to be. Anticipating this problem, Western Digital has announced a new bit of technology that will be available on the next generation of devices. The […]
Mandatory Two Factor Authentication Coming To Ring Devices
Finally, a smart device manufacturer is taking device security seriously, and that’s great news indeed. You may recall reading about a serious issue with Ring security systems recently. The news was that the security issue allowed hackers to commandeer user systems and spy on them. The hackers were sending the users messages and making disturbing […]
Google Docs Gets Smarter With Smart Compose Feature
Google continues to increase the versatility and usefulness of the G-Suite. This time they are adding the much anticipated Smart Compose feature to Google Docs, and it is now available to all G-Suite users. The new feature launched in beta in November of 2019 and was well-received. The technology relied on Google’s extensive AI expertise […]
New Dangerous Malware Is Disguising Itself As Fortnite Launcher
LokiBot burst onto the scene in 2015, and has earned a reputation as being a powerful. This fearsome trojan is being distributed in a new way that poses a very real threat to targets of all shapes and sizes. The latest campaign emulates the launcher for Epic Games, which is the developer behind the game […]
Dashlane Password Manager Removed From Google For Privacy Issues
Do you use the Dashlane Chrome web extension to help you manage your passwords? If so, you’re not alone. The extension has more than three million users based on download stats. Unfortunately, Google recently announced that they took the extension down from the store temporarily because of issues with the “Use of Permissions and User […]
Old School Virus Called KBOT Is Hitting Networks
There was a day when worms were once common, terrifying threats on the internet. In the early days of the world wide web, there were a number of famous attacks that were considered highly advanced for their time. Time and technology have moved on of course, and these days, modern malware is significantly more advanced. […]
Malware And Viruses On Apple/Mac Systems Are On The Rise
For most of Apple’s history, the company has been able to cast itself as a safer alternative to Windows-based computers.Hackers tended to focus the bulk of their efforts on Wintel boxes (Windows processors), rather than Apple machines. That has been changing in recent months. According to research conducted by Malwarebytes, over the past twelve months, […]
Windows 10X Will Assist With Folding Screens And Dual Monitors
A lot of people raise a curious eyebrow when they hear the term Windows 10X for the first time. It’s a bit of a niche product, but it is interesting. In recent years, several smartphone manufacturers have announced that they’d be experimenting with models sporting larger screens. For example, folding smartphones that when unfolded give […]
Dangerous New Trojan Can Infect Systems Through Wifi
If you’re not already familiar with the Emotet trojan, it deserves a special spot on your radar. It’s one of the most dangerous forms of malware in the world today. Their success is thanks to the fact that its creators have worked hard and diligently to keep it upgraded by bolting on a variety of […]
CoronaVirus Scare Is Being Used By Scammers To Trick People
There is no low that hackers and scammers won’t stoop to. The US Federal Trade Commission (FTC) has issued a warning about a worldwide scam in progress relating to fears surrounding the CoronaVirus. The FTC’s announcement speaks for itself. Their announcement reads, in part: “Scammers are taking advantage of fears surrounding the Coronavirus. They’re setting […]
Multi-Factor Authentication (MFA)
All Two-Factor Authentication (2FA) is Multi-Factor Authentication (MFA), but not all MFA is 2FA. Multi-Factor Authentication works on the principle of using multiple pieces of secret information in order to verify identity. Standard usernames and passwords can be brute forced but using a separate piece (or more) of information makes this more and more impractical. Some […]
What Happens When Support for Windows 7 Ends?
We’ve already had ample warning that Windows 7 and derivatives are reaching the end of life, but what is actually going to happen on January 15th? Previously, Microsoft was content to just let the devices fall off on their own, but devices with XP hung on for years past what anyone expected. Many of us still deal […]
Maximizing Cloud Relationships with Your MSP
by Joseph Landes Businesses of all sizes are looking to move their IT infrastructure to the cloud and the most important choice to make when doing so is finding a great IT provider who will have your best interests in mind on this journey. Promises will be made about capabilities and expertise, but it is […]
The End of Life for Windows 7 and Server 2008 (R2)
The end of life for Windows 7 and Windows Server 2008 and 2008 R2 is coming January 15, 2020. This means that support, is coming to an end. On this date, these OS’s no longer check certain compliance checkboxes for safe usage. The biggest impact is going to be on security for the OS itself, […]
How to Secure Your Business Against API Exploits
MSPs large and small are systematically being targeted over and over in the news. It’s almost weekly a new article comes out about a given large provider being targeted. Many of these attacks come from API weaknesses. You can’t control the provider or service, but you can minimize the chance of these attacks impacting you […]
