From Spam to Scams: 30 Years of Online Annoyances

By JR Raphael Contributing Writer, [GAS] Break out the bubbly: Spam is celebrating its 30th anniversary this weekend. And my oh my, three decades later, how the annoyances of the internet have changed. Where it all started The message considered the first unsolicited mass e-mail went out to unsuspecting inboxes on May 3, 1978. A […]

F-Secure’s Internet Security 2009 Beta

Anti-virus products from large corporations are becoming so bloated.  With features like backup solutions, password managers, anti-phishing, anti-spam, and application scanning firewalls, products that were intended to protect your system only tends to bog down it down.  Even as a security professional, I would prefer to not run an Anti-Virus product that is all-encompassing like […]



Creative Coding Catches Presidential Hopeful Off-Guard

By JR Raphael Contributing Writer, [GAS] Cross-site scripting is being blamed for a campaign trail hack. Someone took advantage of weak security to redirect visitors from barackobama.com’s “Community Blogs” section to rival Hillary Clinton’s home page over the weekend. A user identifying himself as “Mox” claims credit for the move on a post written just […]

Upgrade Flash Now: 90 Percent of Windows Hosts Vulnerable

If you’re a heavy Internet surfer and are using Windows, you are probably vulnerable to a bunch of vulnerabilities in Adobe’s Flash Player without knowing it. A new version of the popular software has been just released, fixing seven flaws said to allow remote executable code to be run on a Windows system. From Infoworld here: Adobe has upgraded its Flash Player to fix […]

Followup: Hannaford Used Rapid7 for Security

Hannaford Brothers Supermarkets didn’t know much about cybersecurity, but then again, most companies don’t.   Companies that don’t use a full-time infosec staff rely on security providers to assess their network and provide solutions that fit their size and need, and hopefully, provides protection for them at an acceptable level of risk.  Then those companies […]

Hannaford Data Breach is Likely Much Worse Than Reported

By PatB Contributing Writer, [GAS] Hannaford Brothers Supermarkets, a large New England grocery store chain, reported that they suffered a data breach.  The store’s network was penetrated and hackers were listening in during credit card authorizations.  Already, there are 1,800 confirmed cases of fraud associated with the breach.  At risk are 4.2 Million additional credit […]