Monthly Archives: September 2016

Panda Security

Are your children ready to go back to school?

It is this time of the year when children are heading back to school. Not only will they be taking with them their memories from an amazing summer spent chasing Pokemons, and their hopes to have fun while learning more about the world… they’ll also be taking lots of consumer electronics. A recent study by the Consumer Technology Association suggests that consumers will spend more than $15 billion on back-to-school technology; this is a colossal sum. No matter how old your children are, they’ll either have a cell phone, a smartwatch, portable memory sticks, a tablet or a laptop. For some of them, this may even be the first time they are alone with the new technology you’ve just bought them. And with great power comes great responsibility.

Here at Panda, we’ve drawn up a list of products that your children will most likely be taking to school with them this Fall:

Cell phone

Cell phones could be a distraction and are forbidden in a number of schools here in the USA. However, there is now a way around it – connected smartwatches. They connect straight to the LTE network making it possible to make and receive calls.

Cell phones are the main focus of new hacker attacks and malware, so don’t forget to install a security product to protect your children. Moreover, in many cases security products can also protect and monitor smartwatches.

Laptop and Tablet

Delivering a presentation and taking notes has never been easier. Having a laptop or a tablet at school is a must, almost every publisher offers digital versions of their textbooks. Say goodbye to the heavy backpack!

Make sure you install trustworthy programs and remember, you should always have the latest version with all security patches applied, this prevents security holes from being exploited by viruses.

USB Stick

Every day children exchange pen-drives with schoolmates. Make sure you have the tools needed to protect your PC and Mac. Most of the time kids don’t even realise their pen drives are infected.

Did you know that many infections occur directly from USB drives? To protect against this type of infection, be sure to choose an antivirus which, when any USB drive (external hard drive, device, USB, etc.) is inserted, offers the possibility to scan it and clean it in case of infection, so you can use it without risk.

PC/Mac Software

Whether it’s the latest graphic design software or simply a tool that helps you solve math problems, the software you have on your children’s learning devices is as important and as the devices themselves.

Nowadays, technology and BYOD devices are a huge part of the learning process and our children’s lives and future have never been so reliant on technology. Let’s make sure we teach them how to take advantage safely of the benefits the 21st century offers them. All these products can be protected as Panda Security detects and blocks 99.9% of threats no matter what devices or platform they are using. So sleep tight while we work on detecting the remaining 0.01%.

The post Are your children ready to go back to school? appeared first on Panda Security Mediacenter.

Hackers News

How to Hack Smart Bluetooth Locks and IoT Devices — Check this Out

Bluetooth Low Energy, also known as Bluetooth Smart or Bluetooth 4, is the leading protocol designed for connecting IoT devices, medical equipment, smart homes and like most emerging technologies, security is often an afterthought.

As devices become more and more embedded in our daily lives, vulnerabilities have real impact on our digital and physical security.
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Hackers News

Here's How Hackers Can Disrupt '911' Emergency System and Put Your Life at Risk

What would it take for hackers to significantly disrupt the US’ 911 emergency call system?

It only takes 6,000 Smartphones.

Yes, you heard it right!

According to new research published last week, a malicious attacker can leverage a botnet of infected smartphone devices located throughout the country to knock the 911 service offline in an entire state, and possibly the whole United States,

Typo3

Cache Flooding in TYPO3 Frontend

Component Type: TYPO3 CMS

Release Date: September 13, 2016

 

Vulnerability Type: Cache Flooding

Affected Versions: 6.2.0 to 6.2.26, 7.6.0 to 7.6.10 and 8.0.0 to 8.3.0

Severity: Low

Suggested CVSS v2.0: AV:N/AC:L/Au:N/C:N/I:N/A:P/E:F/RL:O/RC:C

CVE: not assigned yet

Problem Description: Links with a valid cHash argument lead to newly generated page cache entries. Because the cHash is not bound to a specific page, attackers could use valid cHash arguments for multiple pages, leading to additional useless page cache entries. Depending on the number of pages in the system and the number of available valid links with a cHash, attackers could add a considerable amount of additional cache entries, which in the end exceed storage limits and thus could lead to the system not responding any more. This means the Cache Flooding attack potentially could lead to a successful Denial of Service (DoS) attack.

Solution: Update to TYPO3 versions 6.2.27, 7.6.11 or 8.3.1 AND set the following configuration value to true. 

$GLOBALS['TYPO3_CONF_VARS']['FE']['cHashIncludePageId'] = true;

Important Note: Just updating to new TYPO3 versions is NOT enough to fix this vulnerability in existing installations. The configuration option needs to explicitly be set as well. Setting this option to true, will invalidate EVERY existing URLs which include a cHash. This means if such URLs are indexed by a search engine, visitors from this search engine will end up on a not properly working page. If extensions like realurl are used, it is required to flush their caches (and TYPO3 caches as well), so that the new cHash is stored, once the pages are requested.

Additionally, calling the CacheHashCalculator API will require the id argument to be set in the URL provided. This means, that switching this option on, may break existing extensions, that are using this API.

Because of this major impact on existing installations, please carefully consider when to activate this additional security option for your TYPO3 installation.

For new installations, this option is ON by default.

Credits: Thanks to Dmitry Dulepov who discovered and reported the issue.

 

General Advice: Follow the recommendations that are given in the TYPO3 Security Guide. Please subscribe to the typo3-announce mailing list.

General Note: All security related code changes are tagged so that you can easily look them up on our review system.

AVG

New Distributors Join AVG Channel, Extend SMB Footprint in Europe

 The spotlight is on Europe this week as we welcome new distribution partners to our AVG channel  . . . Sigma Software Distribution in the UK and Dexceo in Denmark.

As our GM Fred Gerritse has shared this year, our distribution go-to-market model has been top of mind for us this year and key to driving value for our partners.

Building a strong distributor network lets us better respond to the security needs of business customers as our AVG channel grows and scales globally. Central to this is finding distribution partners that share our security commitment and bring the expertise and capabilities to sell our full line of AVG Business solutions.

This week, we are announcing the addition of two new European value-added distributors to our AVG channel: Sigma Software Distribution in the UK and Dexceo in the Nordics. Both distributors will provide our full line of AVG Business solutions.

Sigma, who was named CRN UK’s Specialist Distributor of the Year, is a great example of a partner that aligns to our vision with the track record to show they mean business.

Sigma General Manager Jane Silk shared her thoughts on the new Sigma-AVG relationship, “We always strive to truly understand our partners’ needs and establish long term relationships that drive opportunities. The AVG relationship is one where we can work transparently, develop the best model for the channel and then prove this in the marketplace.

“AVG’s proven security expertise and its advanced technology will help us immediately respond to challenges our partners face in the current threat landscape. Product innovations such as AVG Managed Workplace that offer a centralized, automated platform to manage security while also helping our partners provide more services to their customers, have us very excited.”

Sigma has demonstrated consistent and sustainable growth in its specialty field. As proof, the company has delivered seven consecutive years of revenue and profit increases. Sigma’s operating model includes a dedicated sales development team with the knowledge base to work closely with re-sellers to support training, identify cross-sell opportunities, manage deal registration and more.

Our UK team is at the Insight Technology Show in Manchester today and will be sharing more about the Sigma-AVG relationship.

Dexceo, a leading Scandinavian security distributor and our first AVG Business solutions distributor in Denmark, is also ready to start marketing AVG Business solutions. The Dexceo team shared its AVG news this week with Danish media.

Dexceo specializes in IT security and network solutions for an international business client base and carefully selects its IT suppliers and re-sellers to maintain the company’s high quality and service standards. Dexceo is a relatively young company but we are impressed by the team’s experience, knowledge base and growing partner network. The company has also acknowledged a need to complement its security portfolio with cloud security and remote monitoring and management solutions. Both AVG Managed Workplace and AVG CloudCare will support Dexceo’s needs to deliver increased visibility across IT environments and efficiency in deploying and maintaining security services.

Dennis Wøldike, founder of Dexceo, shared his view of the AVG opportunity for Danish businesses, “We are looking forward to building our relationship with AVG and extending new benefits and opportunities to our partner network. As an AVG trusted partner, we can offer new security innovation and a range of solutions and services for the Scandinavian market.”

The additions of Dexceo and Sigma are a natural extension of our partner-focused model and complement our specialty focus, as well as our existing and valued broad line distributors.

We look forward to building strong relationships and sharing big results.