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June 2, 2017 by Vertical Axion
If you’re a music fan, you’ve probably got several hundred (or more) MP3 files on your computer. It burst onto the scene while the internet was still in its formative stages and has been the defacto standard for audio codecs …
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June 1, 2017 by Vertical Axion
Sometimes, legitimate companies accidentally create malware. That’s certainly the case in this latest example. It was an innocent mistake, but some debugging code was inadvertently left in the code of an audio driver used by more than two dozen models …
May 31, 2017 by Vertical Axion
The Empire is officially striking back, and hacking is about to get at least a little bit harder. Recently, there have been several high-profile attacks that relied on Google’s user data, the most recent of which was a large-scale phishing …
May 30, 2017 by Vertical Axion
It’s been a bad week for the corporate world. Things started off with a bang thanks to the “WannaCry” ransomware attack that targeted more than 200,000 company locations in more than 150 countries. Among other things, it brought the UK’s …
May 29, 2017 by Vertical Axion
DocuSign, the world’s leader in electronic signatures for official documents, played an unwitting role in a particularly nasty phishing attack. If you’re not familiar with the company, DocuSign is used by 12 of the top 15 US insurance companies, 12 …
May 27, 2017 by Vertical Axion
Phishing attacks are a fact of life on the internet these days, but recently, a Google Doc was used in a wide-spread, wildly successful attack that security researchers are calling one of the most advanced attacks of its class seen …
May 26, 2017 by Vertical Axion
Google is throwing its weight around on behalf of the netizins of the world. Beginning this October, Chrome users will start seeing “Not Secure” warning messages any time they use Incognito Mode and venture onto a website that isn’t using …
May 25, 2017 by Vertical Axion
Unless you are intimately familiar with digital security, odds are good that you’ve never heard of Snake, Uroburos or Turla. These are three different aliases used by a single group of sophisticated Russian hackers that have been operating since at …
May 24, 2017 by Vertical Axion
Does your company use IBM Storwize? If you’re not sure what that is, then you probably don’t. It’s the company’s Big Data storage system, and when you purchase it, you get USB flash drives with initialization tools and installation files.…
May 23, 2017 by Vertical Axion
Researchers from Check Point Software Technologies have identified a new strain of malware dubbed OSX/Dok that has been found infesting macOS users. The new malware has been primarily found in Europe, and is being spread primarily via phishing campaigns, using …
May 22, 2017 by Vertical Axion
Several months ago, a nasty malware attack caused quite a stir among Google Chrome users. After a flurry of activity, it went dormant. Now, it seems to have returned, and this time, it’s targeting Firefox users. The basic form of …
May 20, 2017 by Vertical Axion
If you’ve recently downloaded an app called SMAVova, you’re not alone. Between one and five million users have done the same. Unfortunately, that’s a problem, and to be safe, you’ll want to reset your device to factory defaults to be …
Dell has recently released the findings from their End-User Security Survey, and the results will probably keep you up late at night with worry. Their key finding was that an overwhelming percentage of employees (72 percent) are willing to share …
May 18, 2017 by Vertical Axion
There’s a new phone-based scam making the rounds that you need to be aware of. In this case, the scammers are spoofing the number of the Department of Health and Human Services’ Office of the Inspector General’s hotline (HHS-OIG), which …
May 17, 2017 by Vertical Axion
Manuel Caballero has been a busy man. If you haven’t heard of him, he’s a security researcher and blogger who made a name for himself identifying a variety of critical security flaws in the old Internet Explorer web browser. It …
May 16, 2017 by Vertical Axion
This past Friday, a new ransomware threat burst onto the scene globally in what was described as an attack “unprecedented in its scale.” Before the original version was stopped by a young, anonymous digital security expert, it had brought England’s …
May 15, 2017 by Vertical Axion
IHG, The Intercontinental Hotels Group, which owns Crowne Plaza and Holiday Inn, has recently announced a serious data breach that impacted 1174 of its franchise locations. The company reports that their Point of Sale (POS) system was found to have …
May 13, 2017 by Vertical Axion
The landscape of ransomware attacks is changing. When the malicious software first hit the internet a couple years back, it did so in a big way, primarily targeting large hospitals, insurance companies or other health-related businesses. These high-profile attacks temporarily …
May 12, 2017 by Vertical Axion
Last year, the Department of Health and Human Services made headlines by issuing more than a dozen hefty fines to big companies that deal with Protected Health Information for noncompliance with HIPAA regulations. That trend has continued into 2017, but …
May 11, 2017 by Vertical Axion
Microsoft is in the habit of releasing regular security updates and patches on the second Tuesday of each month. This month, though, in addition to the regular patch, the company’s massive user base got a second update that was rushed …
May 10, 2017 by Vertical Axion
It’s not an overstatement to say that Linksys, to a large degree, powers the web. The company makes a broad range of routers that lie at the heart of everything from small home networks to keeping small and medium sized …
May 9, 2017 by Vertical Axion
Hackers have once again pushed the envelope. They’ve again come up with a new way to infect target computers and get around whatever detection software is in place. The latest twist is sending encrypted Word files to your employees. These …
May 8, 2017 by Vertical Axion
Each month, hundreds of millions of people rely on Google Maps. It has become the replacement for GPS in most of our cars. We rely on the service for everything from getting simple directions to doing research on a new …
May 6, 2017 by Vertical Axion
Microsoft is taking some heat, thanks to a nasty exploit in Microsoft Word that is being used to install malware on the PCs of unsuspecting users. The exploit was discovered by both McAfee and security firm FireEye, and based on …
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