If you have Apple QuickTime installed on a Windows-based PC, you should uninstall it immediately. In a public statement issued on 4/14/2016, the US-CERT recommends the removal of QuickTime for Windows. Apple announced that they’re no longer supporting the product in any way, including issuing security updates.
The statistics are both shocking and dismaying. Even in the face of innumerable high profile data breaches, people still aren’t serious about personal data security. In fact, a shocking 95% of people admit to sharing between one and six passwords with friends.
“What’s old is new again.”
The simple truth is that tastes and trends seem to repeat. We’ve seen it countless times in the world of fashion, and now, we’re seeing something similar in the hacking community.
Over the past year or so, hackers around the world have come to rely increasingly on a type of malware called “ransomware,” which encrypts all the files on your computer, requiring you to send money (typically in the form of Bitcoin) if you want your files unlocked.
The hacking community seems to have found another viable business model, this time, in the form of ransomware. Given the success that hackers have been finding with this type of attack lately, they’ve upped their game, and have begun to experiment with and vary their approach when getting ransomware onto target machines.
If you use Google Chrome, you might have the “Better History” extension installed. If you do, and you’ve upgraded it recently, you’ve probably seen a large influx of advertising on your screen. Yes, you guessed it, hackers have found yet another avenue of attack, this time, co-opting browser extensions.
You’ve probably heard that last year, Trump Hotels were successfully breached, and an unknown number of customer credit cards compromised. In fact, what makes last year’s breach of Trump Hotels remarkable as compared to the breaches of a number of other hotel chains last year is the almost complete lack of information about the incident.
Apple reports that it has fixed a security issue you may not have known existed. The problem occurred only with the iPhone 6 and 6s Plus devices, and was specific to images. Here’s how it worked, prior to the fix:
Your phone, as you know, has a lock screen.
Browser extensions are in the news lately, and not just for Firefox. Recently, hackers have corrupted several Google Chrome extensions, and are using them to display unwanted ads to unsuspecting users. For Firefox though, matters are a fair bit worse.
Your employees are your biggest, most important, most valuable asset. Everybody who knows anything about business understand that. Unfortunately, your biggest asset is also your biggest liability, at least when it comes to data security. Recently, SailPoint conducted its annual Market Pulse Survey, a part of which explored various aspects and dimensions of enterprise data security, and the results weren’t pretty.
Recently, internet security companies have been reporting increasing incidents of large numbers of emails being sent out with strange and distinctive subject lines. Typically they’re crafted as file names, and have image extensions like .tiff, .jpg and .png.
