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The term “hackers” dates back to the 1960s at MIT.  “Hacker” is used to describe extremely skilled individuals that practiced hardcore programming in FORTRAN and other older languages (HelpNet Security). In today’s society, when someone speaks of a “hacker”, we automatically assume that the person was trying to do something illegal and perform a major … Continue reading >>>

Thinking you have to allow every connection to every open network port. Thinking because you have a VPN portal it’s secure. Thinking your a IDS isn’t based on variables on the past, and can predict the future. Thinking you won’t be chasing your tail over and over on false positives, and will not become jaded. … Continue reading >>>

Since the UN Identified this back in February 2013, do you think the infections have spread, or have been curtailed? I would say with near certainty they have grown exponentially like a plague in every direction uncontrollably. Here in the US we are finding it difficult to manage our own break outs, even though at … Continue reading >>>

The cost of a breach in security to a company can be catastrophic.  According to Ponemon, a single security breach often costs a company more than $500,000, and recent studies have reported that cyber-crime costs the U.S. economy a staggering $100 to $140 billion dollars and half a million jobs. Furthermore, these costs are certainly … Continue reading >>>

I got this alert today that one of our local media outlets got hit with a possible DDoS. Just a few miles from them sits PacketViper, LLC, something which would have shut down the attacking countries at their port without the need of an global outage. A large volume of Internet traffic overwhelmed Trib Total … Continue reading >>>

Hacking and cyber security are truly global problems. Spammers set up shop in co-locations, unregulated network space, and vulnerable systems around the world. They are continually in motion and almost impossible to track, but Geo-IP filtering can help address the problem. The following diagrams from customers who’ve implemented our Geo-IP filter illustrate the dramatic improvements … Continue reading >>>

I read this article on Softpedia titled “63 Percent of Companies Run Cyber-Security Drills”. The bulk of the article discussed how more than half of the respondents companies perform cyber security drills. While I do not question the accuracy of the percentage, I do question the types of drills performed, frequency, and bias of those … Continue reading >>>

As I read through articles on the latest security threats, breaches, door opening exploits, and vulnerabilities that left doors opened. I Ironically see a firewall ad next to the security article saying ‘The Complete Firewall Solution, Get Total Visibility Into Your Security”. The article in Reuters explained how many security systems found they were susceptible … Continue reading >>>

I woke one morning and found this alert in my email: “ON WORLD Press Freedom Day, Saturday May 3, Panama’s TVN channel 2 received another “cyber-attack” on its website (tvn-2.com). The network said that the attacks have gone on continuously for five days leading up to Sunday’s election and a TVN broadcaster has been threatened … Continue reading >>>

It takes an army of security professional today to identify, isolate, track, and eliminate security threats, and breaches. The convolution within network security in my opinion have reached irresponsible levels. The days of the past where anomalies were quickly squashed by the network staff on hand is over from what I’m reading. It always seems to be a … Continue reading >>>

The ransomware that brought hospitals throughout England and Scotland to an operational standstill is a strain of WannaCry/WannaCrypt ransomware which contains a potent and dangerous payload called ExtendBlue. ExtendBlue exploits Microsoft’s SMB protocol and gives it legs. ExtendBlue allows the attacker to discover new exploitable systems within the LAN and/or connect to infected systems outside … Continue reading >>>

FINANCIAL SERVICES Companies in the financial services sector possess highly sensitive data, and therefore cyber-attackers typically consider the time, effort and risk of attacking them to be well worth the potential reward. At the same time that financial services companies need to leverage technology advances to support customer demands, they also need to provide superior … Continue reading >>>

Relentless brute-force attacks and distributed denial of service (DDoS) attacks against enterprises continue to be on the rise. Most recently we have seen Mirai, and now there is Hajime. While these cyberattacks bear some technical differences, network administrators need to be concerned with the similarities of their objectives. DDoS and brute-force attacks both seek to … Continue reading >>>