Blog

XP? Heartbleed? Can it get any worse?

: 15-04-2014; Super User

I was inspired to write a bit about the demise of XP support, when along came the Heartbleed bug. I was stunned into silence for a few days.

As Bruce Schneier says, "On a scale of 1 to 10, this an 11."

It was already bad enough. Every XP machine connected to the Net was now a likely target for opportunistic infection. We will be helping the hackers by discovering holes in Vista, Windows 7, and Windows 8 security, and they get to "look back" to see if the same bug appears in XP. With the volume of XP in use, this was likely to become a big problem, and quickly. But there are some technical fixes, including the Secure Browsing technology from our partners, Quarri.

What will a CISO do for Target?

: 25-03-2014; Super User

I see Target are now hiring a Chief Information Security Officer (CISO) in the wake of the huge data breach that revealed millions of customer's details (including Credit Card details) to hackers. (40 million credit and debit card records and 70 million other records with customer details.) I think a lot of us are thinking of that old aphorism about shutting the barn door when the horse has already bolted...

Disconnected computers can now be infected - using audio...

: 12-12-2013; Super User

If you thought your "disconnected" computers were safe, think again. In an experiment that has echoes to me of sci-fi (think "Meme Wars") researchers have managed to jump the "air gap" to infect disconnected PCs.

See the Slate article:

http://www.slate.com/blogs/future_tense/2013/12/03/researchers_michael_hanspach_michael_goetz_prove_malware_can_jump_air_gap.html