Editor's News

A solution to manage wireless networks inside an organisation has been introduced by GFI Software. According to the company, GFI WirelessSentry (GFI WiSe) is a cloud-based solution which allows IT administrators to monitor, manage and secure their wireless networks, optimising performance while protecting users from wireless threats, regardless of the networking hardware deployed. GFI WiSe uses a lightweight sensor on a local machine near each access point that is monitored and managed via an online dashboard....

A 19-year old student has been named as the fourth winner of the UK Cyber Security Challenge.   An University of Cambridge student, Will Shackleton, was announced the winner after completing the 48 hour cyber defence battle which was described as an evolving, sustained cyber attack on UK national security, that brought whole industries to a halt and put the lives of UK citizens in danger.   Designed by experts from BT, GCHQ, the National...

Supermarket Morrisons has reported a breach of 100,000 payroll data records.   The details were sent on a CD and passed to theBradford-based Telegraph and Argus. Morrisons said that its initial investigation did not point to the work of an outside hacker, but that there had been no loss of customer data. The details were of employees from store staff to board level, and had been posted online.   A Morrisons spokesman told BBC news that an...

Educating the everyday person on security and ensuring that there is the right people to fix the problems are the most pressing challenges for security.   Speaking at the Queens University Belfast Centre for Secure Information Technologies (CSIT) conference, Douglas Maughan from the US Department of Homeland Security admitted that there are lots of threats, but there was too little mention of the people factor as a form of defence.   Maughan pointed to a 2009...

Greater collaboration is needed between Government, industry and academia to make any real forward steps in cyber security.   Speaking at the Queens University Belfast Centre for Secure Information Technologies (CSIT) conference, University president and vice chancellor Professor Patrick Johnson said that more than security, it should be considered how it is applied to the human being and society, and nothing can be achieved unless Government, industry and academia work together.   “We need greater skilled...

Cyber security career advice is to be given to secondary school children in a latest effort to boost the sector.   According to the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills, special learning materials for 11 to 14 year-olds and plans for a new higher-level and advanced apprenticeships are among new Government plans to increase the cyber security skills of our nation.   Among the materials are training for teachers to enable them to teach pupils...

Credit card company Discover is probing an online retailer after a breach of customer card data was detected.   According to security blogger Brian Krebs, NoMoreRack.com is being quizzed for the second time after a number of banks said that they were seeing fraud on cards that were all recently used by customers of the retailer.   NoMoreRack.com said that it was aware of this and had called in outside investigators to check for signs of a...

Microsoft released five patches last night to cover two critical flaws in Windows and Internet Explorer.   Firstly, MS14-012 addresses 18 vulnerabilities in all versions of IE, from IE6 on Windows XP, to IE11 on Windows 8.1. It also includes the fix for a 0-day vulnerability that was identified by FireEye on February 11, first on the website of the organization of the US Veterans of Foreign Wars.   According to Wolfgang Kandek, CTO of Qualys, said:...

More than 162,000 WordPress sites have been used in a distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attack after a HTTP-based (layer 7) distributed flood attack was enabled with them.   According to IT security firm Sucuru, any WordPress site with Pingback enabled (which is on by default) can be used in DDoS attacks against other sites. The attack sent hundreds of requests per second to servers from valid and legitimate WordPress sites.   “Is your site attacking others? It...

A widely-reported virus that has infected users in the Ukraine has been detected as widely as the UK and USA.   Called the “Snake” or “Uroboros” virus, it has been compared to the Stuxnet worm and the finger of blame has been pointed at Russia. According to io9.com, the virus works by giving the attacker full remote access to the compromised system and it has the ability to stay inactive for a number of days.  ...