Independent – Page 98 – PossibleThreat Articles

Credit to Author: Woody Leonhard| Date: Fri, 06 Sep 2019 08:16:00 -0700

August brought loads of drama to the Windows and Office patching scene. Microsoft’s first round of patches killed Visual Basic, Visual Basic for Applications and VBScript in certain situations — on all versions of Windows. Fixes for the bugs dribbled out three, four, six and 17 days after the original infection.

Those Microsoft-introduced bugs were all the more daunting because the August patches are the ones intended to protect us from DejaBlue — the recently announced “wormable” malware infection vector that (thankfully!) has yet to be exploited. The mainstream press picked up the Chicken Little cry to install August patches right away. Then the buggy offal hit the impeller, and the press fell silent.

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ComputerWorld Independent

FTC fines YouTube, but do fines really encourage change? | TECH(feed)

September 5, 2019 0 Comments Security

The FTC hit yet another tech company with a seemingly massive fine for mishandling user data. This time, YouTube, owned by Google, is forced to pay $170 million for collecting data about children under 13 without parental consent. The Federal Trade Commission slapped Facebook with a $5 billion fine just a few months ago. In this episode of TECH(feed), Juliet asks whether or not these fines are effective in regulating the tech industry.

ComputerWorld Independent

Why Apple’s little ‘Find My’ Tile competitor is big news

September 5, 2019 0 Comments Apple, iOS, Mobile, Security

Credit to Author: Jonny Evans| Date: Thu, 05 Sep 2019 04:42:00 -0700

Apple is expected to introduce its own Tile-competing tracking device(s), perhaps as soon as fall. So, what are the advantages of the device, what can we expect, and what happens next?

Freedom from networks

There are hundreds of tracking devices available today. These cost anything from tens to hundreds of dollars and in most cases require you sign-up to a network provider for SIM card-based network access.

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ComputerWorld Independent

How to disable basic or legacy authentication to set up MFA in Office 365

September 4, 2019 0 Comments office 365, Security, Windows

Microsoft recommends setting up multi-factor authentication in Windows 10 for better security, but you have to disable basic or legacy authentication first.

Independent Krebs

‘Satori’ IoT Botnet Operator Pleads Guilty

September 3, 2019 0 Comments Drake, DYN DDoS, FBI, Kenneth Currin Schuchman, Masuta, mirai, Ne'er-Do-Well News, Nexus, Nexus Zeta, Okiru, Satori botnet, SWATting, TalkTalk hack, Vamp

Credit to Author: BrianKrebs| Date: Wed, 04 Sep 2019 04:14:18 +0000

A 21-year-old man from Vancouver, Wash. has pleaded guilty to federal hacking charges tied to his role in operating the “Satori” botnet, a crime machine powered by hacked Internet of Things (IoT) devices that was built to conduct massive denial-of-service attacks targeting Internet service providers, online gaming platforms and Web hosting companies.

Independent Krebs

Spam In your Calendar? Here’s What to Do.

September 3, 2019 0 Comments calendar spam, security tools

Credit to Author: BrianKrebs| Date: Tue, 03 Sep 2019 18:56:07 +0000

Many spam trends are cyclical: Spammers tend to switch tactics when one method of hijacking your time and attention stops working. But periodically they circle back to old tricks, and few spam trends are as perennial as calendar spam, in which invitations to click on dodgy links show up unbidden in your digital calendar application from Apple, Google and Microsoft. Here’s a brief primer on what you can do about it.

Independent Krebs

Feds Allege Adconion Employees Hijacked IP Addresses for Spamming

September 2, 2019 0 Comments A Little Sunshine, Adconion Direct, Amir Golestan, Amobee, ARIN, Blackstar Media LLC, CAN-SPAM, Daniel Dye, HostWinds, Jacob Bychak, Kim Perell, Mark Manoogian, Media Breakaway, Micfo, Mohammed Abdul Qayyum, Optinrealbig, Peter Holden, Petr Pacas, Scott Richter, SingTel, Spam Nation, spamhaus, The Coming Storm

Credit to Author: BrianKrebs| Date: Mon, 02 Sep 2019 20:52:00 +0000

Federal prosecutors in California have filed criminal charges against four employees of Adconion Direct, an email advertising firm, alleging they unlawfully hijacked vast swaths of Internet addresses and used them in large-scale spam campaigns. KrebsOnSecurity has learned that the charges are likely just the opening salvo in a much larger, ongoing federal investigation into the company’s commercial email practices.

ComputerWorld Independent

Microsoft Patch Alert: Full of sound and fury, signifying nothing

August 30, 2019 0 Comments Microsoft, Microsoft Office, PCs, Security, Windows

Credit to Author: Woody Leonhard| Date: Fri, 30 Aug 2019 10:27:00 -0700

What happens when Microsoft releases eight – count ‘em, eight – concurrent beta test versions of Win10 version 1909 without fixing bugs introduced into 1903 on Patch Tuesday?

Pan. De. Moaaan. Ium.

The VB/VBA/VBScript debacle

No doubt, you recall the first wave of pain inflicted by the August 2019 patching regimen. Microsoft somehow managed to mess up Visual Basic (an old custom programming language), Visual Basic for Applications (for Office macros) and VBScript (a largely forgotten language primarily used inside Internet Explorer). Folks running applications in any of those languages would, on occasion, receive “invalid procedure call error” messages when using apps that had been working for decades.

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Independent Krebs

Phishers are Angling for Your Cloud Providers

August 30, 2019 0 Comments Anti-Phishing Working Group, Ashwin Vamshi, cloud customer relationship management, CRM phishing, Latest Warnings, Netskope, Pardot, Salesforce, The Coming Storm, United Rentals, Web Fraud 2.0

Credit to Author: BrianKrebs| Date: Fri, 30 Aug 2019 16:21:59 +0000

Many companies are now outsourcing their marketing efforts to cloud-based Customer Relationship Management (CRM) providers. But when accounts at those CRM providers get hacked or phished, the results can be damaging for both the client’s brand and their customers. Here’s a look at a recent CRM-based phishing campaign that targeted customers of Fortune 500 construction equipment vendor United Rentals.

Independent Krebs

Ransomware Bites Dental Data Backup Firm

August 29, 2019 0 Comments Brenna Sadler, Data Breaches, DDS Safe, Digital Dental Record, PerCSoft, ProPublica, Wisconsin Dental Association

Credit to Author: BrianKrebs| Date: Thu, 29 Aug 2019 17:59:11 +0000

PerCSoft, a Wisconsin-based company that manages a remote data backup service relied upon by hundreds of dental offices across the country, is struggling to restore access to client systems after falling victim to a ransomware attack.