Amid high-profile political cyberattacks, Americans are losing confidence in their own cybersecurity. Just under half of Americans — 49 percent — think their personal information is less secure than it was five years ago, according to a new report from the Pew Research Center.
They're only slightly more optimistic about the government's abilities. Twenty-eight percent of Americans are "not confident at all" that the federal government can keep their personal information safe. And when the Democratic National Committee is hacked by Russia and Yahoo says 1 billion of its users were affected by a hack, who can blame them?
Read moreFirefox 51, released today, and Chrome 56, currently due for release next week, have started describing some HTTP connections as insecure as they continue the industry-wide push to promote the use of encrypted HTTPS.
As luck would have it, Chrome 56 was released while I was writing, and is out now. Rollouts are staggered, so systems should see the update over the next few days. The non-secure labelling will occur on pages delivered over HTTP that include forms. Specifically, pages that include password fields, and in Chrome, credit card fields, will put warnings in the address bar to explicitly indicate that the connection is not secure.
Read morePresident Trump has carried his Twitter habit into his presidency. He has also brought with him another tech habit that is causing concern. Mr. Trump has been using his old, unsecured Android phone to post on Twitter since moving to Washington late last week.
The president’s use of an unsecured personal device raises concerns that his desire to use his old smartphone could be exposing him and the nation to security threats. He is using the Android smartphone mainly to post on Twitter, not to make calls. But it’s unclear what security measures have been put in place on the device and how vulnerable he could be to someone stealing data or breaking into his Twitter account.
Read moreA few hours after President-elect Donald Trump was briefed by intelligence officials about Russian meddling in the election, a reporter called his cellphone seeking an interview. The call went to voicemail and the reporter did not leave a message. About an hour later, Trump called back.
It's hard to imagine many politicians — particularly one about to become president of the United States — calling back an unknown number on their cellphone. With Trump, it's simply how business gets done, whether he's fielding calls from real estate partners and longtime friends or foreign leaders and congressional lawmakers in the weeks after the election.
Read moreIt looks like Internet users never learn from their own mistakes. A research published the past weekend by Keeper Security reveals that the most popular password in 2016 was “123456,” which is arguably the password that can be not hacked, but guessed the easiest.
No less than 17 percent of the users set this particular password for their accounts, the research reveals after the parent company analyzed data from 10 million passwords that went public after breaches. The number two most popular password in 2016 is a bit more complex because these people do care about their security (end of sarcasm note): “123456789” is currently the runner-up password.
Read moreDeutsche Bank AG has banned text messages and communication apps such as WhatsApp on company-issued phones in an effort to improve compliance standards. The functionality will be switched off this quarter, chief regulatory officer Sylvie Matherat and chief operating officer Kim Hammonds told staff in a memo.
Unlike e-mails, text messages can’t be archived by the bank, said a person with knowledge of the matter who asked not to be identified discussing internal matters. “We fully understand that the deactivation will change your day-to-day work and we regret any inconvenience this may cause,” Matherat and Hammonds said.
Read morePeople post photos of their tickets online. Why shouldn’t they? Instagram alone contains thousands of images showing concert, airplane, and even lottery tickets. If everyone does it, why shouldn’t you? In fact, the last thing you should ever do with a ticket or boarding pass is post it online.
This piece of paper contains data that allows anybody to steal your ticket, rack up air miles, or even play a low-down trick on you. More than a year ago experts discussed just what kind of bad jokes people can make with ticket information. Recently, security researchers raised the topic again, at the Chaos Communication Congress (33С3).
Read moreTurkey has blocked direct access to the Tor anonymous browsing network as part of a wider crackdown on the ways people circumvent internet censorship. The crackdown began last month when Turkish ISPs were told to cut off the virtual private networks people use to hide where they go.
Many people are changing the way they connect to Tor to avoid the block. Activists said the block moved Turkey's net censorship policies from "moderate" to "severe". Tor, also known as The Onion Router, aims to conceal where people go online by using encryption and randomly bouncing requests for webpages through a network of different computers.
Read moreYou’ve probably heard the word botnet more than once recently, and that’s hardly surprising. Any connected device can be zombified — turned into a part of a botnet.
These include PCs, smartphones, tablets, routers, Wi-Fi refrigerators, smart toys, and a lot of other gadgets. In this post we explain what a botnet is, the bad things a botnet can do, and how to protect your gadgets from becoming a part of a botnet. Botnets: What are they? A botnet is a group of Internet-connected devices that have been infected with special malware. The kind of malware that creates bots, or zombies, works covertly, acquiring administrative rights.
Read moreThe prospect of an army of robots marching in unison to launch an attack on an unsuspecting city belongs in the realm of science fiction—as do most images of menacing autonomous machines wreaking all kinds of havoc on civilization. That’s not to say robotics is free from security and safety threats, however.
In fact, experts say the growing use of robots by companies such as manufacturers, retailers, healthcare institutions and other businesses can present a number of cyber risks. There are two primary issues related to security and robotics, says Michael Overly, a partner and information security attorney at law firm Foley & Lardner.
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