272 Million Password Dump Highlights Need for Strong, Unique Passwords
With the recent password dump of 272 million email credentials including Gmail, Hotmail, Microsoft, Yahoo and Mail.ru, posted on the Darknet, security professionals are once again warnings against reusing personal email credentials with corporate accounts. While recommendations to change one’s personal email password after any such attack remain consistent, experts are also ...
A Dummies Guide to ‘Insider Trading’ via Botnet
This post, the first of two parts, was written by Raj Samani, Christiaan Beek, and Shane Shook. Want to spread malware? One of the most effective ways is to use a botnet, a network of infected systems. The goals of botnets have barely changed since we first encountered them more ...
Hidden Data Economy Report Exposes Price Points for Stolen Data
McAfee today released The Hidden Data Economy report, which provides examples of how different types of stolen data is being packaged and offering prices for each type of data. McAfee Group’s McAfee Labs organization examined pricing for stolen credit and debit card data, bank account login credentials, stealth bank transfer ...
We’ve Been Hacked! Okay, I’ll Deal With It Next Week
That was the message I got from a CEO when we presented evidence that their organization had been compromised and the attackers had been free to roam for months, resulting in the theft of terabytes worth of data. Actually, the exact words were “So we’ve been hacked, eh? Well, it’s ...
Poll: 9 Top Questions CIOs are Asking about Cloud Threat Detection
Data is moving to the cloud, but the security controls offered by cloud providers vary widely. According to Gartner, one-third of consumer data will be hosted in the cloud by 2016. McAfee’s (formerly Skyhigh Networks) own usage data shows that the average organization uploads 3.1GB of data to the cloud ...
What is a Virus?
Have you ever had the chicken pox? This common childhood illness has another name—the varicella zoster virus. Like all viruses, varicella replicates itself, spreading though the body, and eventually appearing as itchy red blisters all over the body. But the virus doesn’t stop there; it can spread to other people ...
5 Devious Instances of Insider Threat in the Cloud
Security professionals would be remiss to neglect the human element of data security, a veritable chink in the security armor of every organization. Cloud services have magnified the potential consequences of user error or malice by facilitating the movement of data into and out of the enterprise, while also driving ...
Don’t Believe These 6 Mobile Security Myths
Smartphones are picking up popularity. You can now access email, social media, and other things from a device that fits in your pocket (most of the time). And, although we hear about breaches and security flaws in the news, it seems like a lot of us don’t think it applies ...
Mobile Spyware: How Hackers Can Turn Your Phone Into a Stalking Machine
In the mid-2000s a commercial advertisement achieved so much notoriety that its existence bordered on parody. The product was a headache-relieving cream called HeadOn and its advertisements told you three times to “apply it directly to the forehead.” The commercial was widely panned for its bizarre nature and lack of ...
What is Browser Hijacking?
Imagine it. You sit down at your computer about to do your daily perusal of Buzzfeed or check out The Financial Times but your homepage is now some weird search engine you’ve never seen before. Guess what? You’ve been hijacked. Browser hijacking is when your Internet browser (eg. Chrome, FireFox, ...
