Blogs

As you may have heard from news reports (such as http://www.washingtonpost.com/news/morning-mix/wp/2014/04/09/heartbleed-...), a major Internet security vulnerability, known as Heartbleed, was disclosed earlier this week.

If you are confused as to what will happen when Microsoft stops supporting XP, now's the time look into it.  wsj.com put together a very good video explaining the implications of hiding from this issue.

http://live.wsj.com/#!CF5103B4-D530-4ECB-9EA8-824A500A5B29

This is a story right out of the privacy tome of nightmares.  It reminds me of a recent talk by Mikko Hyppönen where he states that "George Orwell was an optimist" (Living in a surveillance state).

A blogger by the name of DoctorBeet posted a story of his LG Smart TV taking note of his watching habits and attempting to send them over the Internet for targeted ads or other nefarious reasons.  What's worse, is it was sending information about the USB stick that he put into the TV.

Martin Lee, the Threat Intelligence Technical Lead over at Cisco, posted a fascinating article about the dangers of clicking on links when tired.  There has recently been a campaign telling people that driving tired is as bad or worse than driving drunk, and now it seems that clicking tired is also on the track of bad things to do.

It has been a common thread in security talks since the inception of spam that it is a bad idea to give any type of response indicating that a human is reading the spam.  For example, by clicking on the "unsubscribe" link in a spam, all you are doing is asking to be put on more lists.

This interesting article by Laura Atkins from Word to the Wise (an anti-spam consultancy and software firm), debunks this setiment, and calls it a myth.

Comedian Jack Vale did a great video on the dangers of sharing information on Instagram and Twitter in the funny, but sobering video.  Independent security analyst Graham Cluley did a great review of the video and how it affects users.

http://grahamcluley.com/2013/11/instagram-twitter-location-privacy/

Please inform your social circle and keep yourself safe.

Cryptolocker is a new piece of malicious software that has started circling the globe in the last half of 2013.  Deemed "rasomware" by security professionals, Cryptolocker encrypts your files and demands payment to receive the key to decrypt them.  The United States Computer Emergency Readiness Team (US-CERT) drafted a briefing about this software, how to protect yourself, and what to do if you are infected.

https://www.us-cert.gov/ncas/alerts/TA13-309A

At the beginning of October, Adobe notified its customers of the theft of about 2.9 million account credentials.

http://blogs.adobe.com/conversations/2013/10/important-customer-security...

To reset your Adobe password, you can visit the following site.

https://www.adobe.com/account/sign-in.adobedotcom.html?passwordReset=true

SANS Diary writer Sally Vandeven reports on how easy it is to extract the secret keys your browser (Chrome and Firefox) uses for SSL connections.

https://isc.sans.edu/forums/diary/Psst+Your+Browser+Knows+All+Your+Secre...

Hapstance produced this very entertaining, yet woefully scary accurate portrayal of what it would be like if our spam was real and walking around amongst us.  It is definitely informative and funny at the same time.  Thanks to Kevin for pointing me toward it.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AThjAHemJ1o

Thanks,

ep