Linux Kernel Vulnerability and how to fix it A flaw in the Linux Kernel has made big news lately, labelled as a local privilege escalation vulnerability. In fact, the company ‘Perception Point’ which released news of the flaw is under criticism as after reporting it…
Security Scorecard Survey Shows Retail Seriously Underperforming in Web Application Security
While not being in the worst performing sector for security, retail is one of the biggest targets for attackers and a number of breaches hit the headlines in 2015, the most well known being chain store Target. As retailers process a large volume of payments,…
New attacks on SHA-1 and MD5 raise urgency for their obsolescence
A pair of researchers from INRIA, the French Institute for Research in Computer Science and Automation, have published an academic paper titled “Transcript Collision Attacks: Breaking Authentication in TLS, IKE, and SSH” in which they describe a series of transcript collision attacks against the ageing…
WordPress 4.4.1 security release patches XSS vulnerability
A high-severity Cross-site scripting (XSS) vulnerability has been fixed in WordPress’ new 4.4.1 release that is now available for download. In addition to the XSS vulnerability reported by security researcher ‘Crtc4L’, the release includes 51 other non-security bug-fixes. WordPress sites configured to receive automatic updates…
In the headlines: Juniper backdoor, BBC hack, Steam attack, UK surveillance bill, and more
Juniper backdoor mystery, NSA are at least partly to blame Last week, tech company Juniper Networks who sell corporate networking solutions, disclosed that they had discovered two unauthorised encryption backdoors in their firewalls. Encryption backdoors will immediately grab attention as one of the surveillance methods…
Website hack: Help, my website has been hacked! What to do now?
Here we identify 4 practical steps SMEs can plan for and implement when they become a victim of a website hack. With the massive growth in cyber-crime, it’s a sad fact that it’s highly likely to become a question of ‘when’ rather than ‘if’. Below…
Defence in Depth – Final Part – Update software, Isolate services
Update software and components Whether it’s a server’s operating system, a web server, a database server or even a client-side JavaScript library, an application should not be running software with known vulnerabilities. Updating, removing or replacing software or components with known vulnerabilities sounds obvious, but…
Defence in Depth – Part 4 – Validate everything, Parameterize SQL queries
Trust no one, validate everything Unfortunately, most vulnerabilities at the application layer can’t simply be patched by applying an update. In order to fix web application vulnerabilities, software engineers often need to correct mistakes within the application code. It’s therefore ideal for software engineers to…
Webroot report shows SMBs unprepared to counter cyber security attacks
A number of big name retailers, insurance providers and companies have hit the headlines with their cyber attacks and data breaches over the last year or two. But what about the small and medium businesses? There’s no doubt they have their own security incidents but…