Last week an article from The Guardian stated that a backdoor within the end-to-end encryption of popular messaging app WhatsApp could be used by governments to snoop on users. The author “warned it could be used by government agencies as a backdoor to snoop on users who believe their messages to be secure.” This caused quite a stir in security circles, which resulted in a group of cryptography and security experts calling for a retraction and an apology for misleading claims.
Hackers broke into the Supercell gamers’ forum and got away with forum user information including email addresses, simply hashed passwords, usernames, and IP addresses. Supercell created the popular games Clash of Clans, Clash Royale, Boom Beach, and Hay Day. Motherboard reports that the breach affected 1.1 million accounts.
Cerber ransomware is a highly effective ransomware family that has been developed by professional cybercriminals. Fortunately for us, even professional cybercriminals make mistakes – like misconfiguring their servers. Twitter user and researcher @Racco42 noticed the mistake . Through this misconfiguration, we were able to take a closer look at their statistics and learn more about who they are targeting and who are not targeting.
The use of ransomware against businesses is soaring, with incident response teams having to deal with up to 4 attacks weekly. Originally ransomware was aimed primarily at individuals, but it is now being targeted at businesses too, with annual costs to small and medium companies of at least $75 billion in expenses and lost productivity.
The explosive growth of personal mobile devices, the huge shift towards cloud applications and the growing impact of the Internet of Things (IoT) in the last year has set the scene for a complex and challenging threat landscape in 2017.
Avast is full of dog lovers, and as such, we aspire to “…to be the person my dog thinks I am.” This inspirational quote, attributed to Victorian author Mary Ann Evans, who went by the pen name George Eliot (Silas Marner and Middlemarch), speaks to our best friend’s unconditional love and non-judgmental acceptance.
Some weeks ago, I had the privilege of speaking at the fourth annual Child Internet Safety Summit in London. This event brings together teachers, education policy makers, researchers, professors, and foundations to discuss and debate the implications of the digital world for young people today.
Quantum Computers – Boon or Bane?
Quantum computers can perform operations much more quickly and efficiently even with the use of less energy than conventional computers, but that’s bad news for encryption — a process which scrambles data according to a massively complex mathematical code.
In theory, quantum computers can break almost all the existing encryption algorithms used on the
Originally published at The Parallax.
We often forget that technology is a double-edged sword. With the benefits of every advance comes the possibility that it will be used for destructive purposes. ISIS builds its own drones, botnets hijack appliances to bring down huge chunks of the Internet, and ubiquitous Web publishing has led to fake news outperforming real news on social media.
News outlets are proclaiming this is the biggest breach of its kind and all we do is yawn and continue our everyday business. Are we in danger of becoming complacent when data breaches are disclosed, even when they grow in size?
