Ransom attacks likely to fade as small email providers resist

The spate of cyberattacks against email providers is likely to pass with time as they refuse to pay ransoms. But that doesn't mean the attacks haven't cost them. Since early this month, the list of companies that have been attacked has grown longer: first ProtonMail of Switzerland, followed by HushMail, RunBox, VFEmail, Zoho and FastMail of Australia. The companies have typically received extortion requests by email asking for 10 or 20 bitcoins in exchange for not being subjected to distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attacks. DDoS attacks involve sending a large amount of data traffic to a company's network, causing the service to choke and go offline.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Don’t trust that USB drive!

Picture this: You go to a trade show and you collect your allocation of freebies: Teeshirts, hats, USB drives, and so on. You get  back to your room or, more likely, you get back to your office and you start sorting out your haul of tschotskes. You plug one of the nerd sticks into your computer and then this happens: Suddenly your day has taken a nosedive. To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Cybercriminals turn to video ads to plans malware

Cybercriminals have been delivering malware through online display ads for years, but they appear to be making headway with a new distribution method: video advertisements.Both methods of attack, known as malvertising, can have a broad impact and are a major headache for the ad industry. A single malicious advertisement, distributed to several highly trafficked sites, can expose tens of thousands of computers to malware in a short time.Some ad networks and publishers have taken steps to vet their ads more thoroughly, but criminals are constantly on the lookout for weaknesses.An attack detected about two weeks ago shows how cybercriminals are showing more interest in creating malicious video ads.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Cybercriminals turn to video ads to plant malware

Cybercriminals have been delivering malware through online display ads for years, but they appear to be making headway with a new distribution method: video advertisements. Both methods of attack, known as malvertising, can have a broad impact and are a major headache for the ad industry. A single malicious advertisement, distributed to several highly trafficked sites, can expose tens of thousands of computers to malware in a short time. Some ad networks and publishers have taken steps to vet their ads more thoroughly, but criminals are constantly on the lookout for weaknesses. An attack detected about two weeks ago shows how cybercriminals are showing more interest in creating malicious video ads.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

BusyCal and Textual

I wanted to call out a couple of software packages whose vendors I’ve worked with recently that I felt had really good customer service. The software packages are BusyCal (from BusyCal, LLC) and Textual (from Codeux Software, LLC).

As many of you know, the Mac App Store (MAS) recently suffered an issue due to an expired security certificate, and this caused many MAS apps to have to be re-downloaded or, in limited cases, to stop working (I’m looking at you, Tweetbot 1.6.2). This incident just underscored an uncomfortable feeling I’ve had for a while about using MAS apps (for a variety of reasons that I won’t discuss here because that isn’t the focus of this post). I’d already started focusing on purchasing new software licenses outside of the MAS, but I still had (and have) a number of MAS apps on my Macs.

As a result of this security certificate snafu, I started looking for ways to migrate from MAS apps to non-MAS apps, and BusyCal (a OS X Calendar replacement) and Textual (an IRC client) were two apps that I really wanted to continue to use but were MAS apps. The alternatives were dismal, at best.

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Robot keeps stores stocked with Doritos

An autonomous robot was unveiled this week that can make sure that when you're hankering for Doritos, there's a bag waiting for you at the market.Simbe Robotics, based in San Francisco, announced its first product, a 30-pound robot called Tally that can move up and down a store's aisles checking inventory. The robot determines what products need restocking and send reports to workers who can add more stock. Tally also is set up to work during normal store hours, alongside employees and customers."Tally performs repetitive and laborious tasks of auditing shelves for out-of-stock items, low stock items, misplaced items, and pricing errors," the company said in a release. "Tally has the ability to audit shelves cheaper, more frequently, and significantly faster than existing processes; and with near-perfect accuracy."To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Lapsed Apple certificate triggers massive Mac app fiasco

A lapsed Apple digital certificate today triggered a massive app fiasco that prevented Mac users from running software they'd purchased from the Mac App Store. "Whenever you download an app from the Mac App Store, the app provides a cryptographically-signed receipt," explained Paul Haddad, a co-founder of Tapbots, the company behind the popular Tweetbot Twitter client, in an email reply to questions today. "These receipts are signed with various certificates with different expiration dates. One of those is the 'Mac App Store Receipt Signing;' that expires every two years. That certificate expired on 'Nov 11 21:58:01 2015 GMT,' which caused most existing App Store receipts to no longer be considered valid."To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

IDG Contributor Network: How vulnerable are the internet’s undersea cables?

With a recent New York Times article expressing concern from military officials that some undersea internet-carrying cables are susceptible to submarine-attack by Russians, a few questions come to mind:Should we be worried? Just how much data do these cables carry? And where are they anyway?Mariners "Not many people realize that undersea cables transport nearly 100% of transoceanic data traffic," writes Nicole Starosielski in The Conversation.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Magic or Curse? World TV day 2015

The Big TVImage by REUTERS/Kim Hong-JiThrough the years television has been celebrated and denounced for its influence. In 1996 the United Nations designated November 21 as World Television Day “not so much a celebration of the tool, but rather the philosophy which it represents. Television represents a symbol for communication and globalization in the contemporary world,” the UN stated. While in the US and other countries TV is decidedly high-tech, other places it is not. Reuters took a look at people watching television all over the world to celebrate World Television Day.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Magic or Curse? World TV day 2016

The Big TVImage by REUTERS/Kim Hong-JiThrough the years television has been celebrated and denounced for its influence. In 1996 the United Nations designated November 21 as World Television Day “not so much a celebration of the tool, but rather the philosophy which it represents. Television represents a symbol for communication and globalization in the contemporary world,” the UN stated. While in the US and other countries TV is decidedly high-tech, other places it is not. Reuters took a look at people watching television all over the world to celebrate World Television Day.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

IDG Contributor Network: Cisco finally updates the CCDA certification

I have been waiting years for Cisco Systems to refresh their popular Design Associate certification, and that day has finally come! The new exam number is 200-310. The old exam, 640-846, features a last day to test of December 14, 2015. The great news is the new exam is live right now and you can start studying for it immediately. In order to obtain the CCDA, you do need to meet an important prerequisite. You must possess a valid CCENT or a valid CCNA Routing and Switching. Of course, you can also have any CCIE certification act as a prerequisite.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

EU wants US companies to report intelligence agency data access requests

The European Union wants U.S. businesses to report when U.S. intelligence agencies request access to data they hold about Europeans; the reporting is one of the conditions EU negotiators are imposing for signature of a new Safe Harbor agreement. Since Edward Snowden's revelations about the U.S. surveillance of Internet traffic, European Commission officials have been negotiating better privacy protection for Europeans' personal information transferred to the U.S. But since the Court of Justice of the EU struck down the 2000 Safe Harbor data transfer agreement last month, the negotiations have become more urgent. More than 4000 U.S. companies relied on the agreement to process Europeans' data, either for their own use or in order to deliver services to European businesses, and although other legal mechanisms exist allowing them to continue operations, those mechanisms are also increasingly falling under suspicion.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Half of U.S. businesses have no formal BYOD policy for security

Years after the widespread adoption of workplace smartphones, more than half of U.S. companies said they have no formal BYOD (bring your own device) policy to safeguard their enterprises, according to a survey. The survey of 447 businesses of all sizes was conducted over the summer by systems integrator Champion Solutions Group. It found that 53% of those businesses haven't implemented a formal BYOD policy, while more than one-fourth confessed they have no systematic security approach, much less a formal policy. The survey findings are "ridiculous … surprising," said Champion CEO Chris Pyle, in an interview. Mobile security best practices have been promulgated by analysts and security firms for more than a decade to protect sensitive corporate data, but there is apparently widespread variation about how companies implement security for BYOD workers.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

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