Editor's News

A fresh watering hole attack which specifically targeted the oil and gas sector appeared days after the company announced a sizable funding grant.   According to research by Bromium, it suspected that the attackers were expecting more traffic to the website and hoped to increase their chances of a successful infection.   While both have confirmed that no sensitive information was leaked, the attack did leverage a then-unpatched vulnerability and the script on the compromised...

Addressing data protection, insider threats and advanced malware are among the challenges for Dell's security division.   Speaking at the Dell Security Summit in Brussels, Tim Brown, executive director of security at Dell Software, said that this was a “good time” to put controls on data that can roam, and he said Dell could see the problem in making implementations, and standards and technology to make it effective, and while this was a hard area...

Security is a requirement that customers have and it has got to be part of what you do every single day.   Speaking at the opening of the Dell Solutions Summit in Brussels, CEO Michael Dell claimed that the company addressed the offering shortage by acquiring technology from SonicWall, SecureWorks and Quest. He said: “Five years ago, while we had various security things that we were doing, we didn't have the level of property that we...

FireEye has launched two an “as a service” offering to provide an adaptive defence security model to rapidly detect and respond to security incidents as they occur.   According to the company, “FireEye as a Service” allows organisations to tap into FireEye’s team of threat analysts located in security operations centres around the world. Organisations can choose to manage their own security operations, offload security operations to FireEye, or co-manage operations with FireEye or a...

Online auction website eBay has played down the impact of a page redirect which may have seen user credentials stolen.   According to BBC News, a cross-site scripting (XSS) flaw on the eBay website saw a spoof site set up to look like the online marketplace's welcome page, complete with a login section.   A spokesman for eBay played down the scope of the attack, telling BBC News that the report relates only to a...

Apple has added two-factor authentication to its iCloud cloud storage option.   Following the recent attack, which saw celebrities have their accounts accessed and personal photos stolen when an attacker used a password-guessing tool utilising the most common 500 passwords, Apple users with two-factor authentication will now be required to verify their identities when they sign in to iCloud on new devices, or when logging on to iCloud.com.   According to IT News, 2FA for...

US ISP Comcast has denied that it is discouraging users from using the Tor browser, with its own vice president of technology saying he is a user.   After acknowledging reports where a user was apparently told that they needed to stop using Tor as “it is against the contract” that they had with Comcast, and that Comcast does not want its customers using Tor, Jason Livingood, vice president of internet service in technology at...

Cyber security will receive a £4 million boost, thanks to a £4 million competition for UK businesses to develop ideas to tackle security threats.   Run by the Technology Strategy Board, it will award funding to the firms with the best ideas. Business Secretary Vince Cable, said: “The growth of the cyber security sector in the UK is a great success story, worth over £6 billion and employing around 40,000 people. Building a strong and...

NCC Group has hired Gunter Ollmann as its new chief technology officer.   Following the launch of its top-level domain - .trust – Ollmann will drive strategy with a focus of bringing the domain to market in order to make a lasting and game-changing impact on the internet and ensure that the domain delivers value to brands.   Bringing almost three decades of experience in information security, including serving recently as CTO of consultancy and...

Treasure Map, a “near real-time interactive map of the global internet” that shows details of the public internet has is nearing reality for global intelligence agencies.   A leaked document revealed that the “Five Eyes” intelligence agencies of the USA, UK, Australia, Canada and New Zealand will have access to this capability. According to Spiegel, Treasure Map is the “mandate for a massive raid on the digital world” which aims to map the internet and...