Articles for March 2016

Security expert Matthew Garrett found himself in a hotel recently with Android tablet based light-switches and a few hours he could have had control of the electronics in every hotel room.

Source: The Internet of dangerous, broken things | ZDNet

It’s remarkable how quickly a stolen purse or wallet can morph into full-blown identity theft, and possibly even result in the victim’s wrongful arrest. All of the above was visited recently on a fellow infosec professional whose admitted lapse in physical security led to a mistaken early morning arrest in front of his kids.

Read the full story here…

The FCC wants to help you protect your privacy when it comes to your Internet service provider. Technologists who grasp both law and technology believe you might make incorrect assumptions after reading a paper about online privacy and ISPs, so the Upturn team wants you and policymakers to know what your ISP can really see.

Source: What can your ISP really see and know about you?

Tens of thousands of Web browsers may have been exposed to ransomware and other malware over the last few days after malicious advertisements appeared on high-profile websites.

Source: Top websites affected by Angler exploit kit malvertising, security vendors say | PCWorld

Security researchers have put a pompous computer criminal in their rightful place after releasing the decryption keys for their ransomware.

Source: Ransomware author’s bravado shot down by release of decryption keys

Half-a-billion people stored files on Dropbox. Well, sort of. Really, the files were in Amazon’s cloud. Until Dropbox built its own. And threw the switch.

Source: The Epic Story of Dropbox’s Exodus From the Amazon Cloud Empire

“I cannot accept the possibility that a sitting US president would willingly and knowingly hand our country over to our enemies, lock, stock, and barrel.”

Source: JOHN McAFEE: Either President Obama’s cybersecurity advisers are incompetent, or our enemies have planted agents at the highest level of our government

Number of recorded DDoS attacks has almost doubled in a year, warns report.

Source: DDoS attacks: Getting bigger and more dangerous all the time | ZDNet

Let’s Encrypt, an organization set up to encourage broader use of encryption on the Web, has distributed 1 million free digital certificates in just three months.

Source: Encryption project issues 1 million free digital certificates in three months

Cybersecurity attack has put current and former employees at risk for identity fraud.

Source: Spear phishing data breach hits SevOne