Sean Michael Kerner

LAS VEGAS—In the information security business, there is a longstanding myth that users will pick up random USB keys that can easily infect their machines. That’s an urban legend that Elie Bursztein, anti-fraud and abuse research team lead at Google, put to the test and detailed in an amusing session at the Black Hat USA […]

LAS VEGAS—In a rambling, hourlong keynote address at the Black Hat USA conference here today, security luminary Dan Kaminsky detailed the risks and the opportunities inherent in the internet. Kaminsky first shot to fame in 2008, when he revealed a flaw at that year’s Black Hat USA event in the pervasive Domain Name System (DNS) […]

Yahoo is investigating claims that credentials of 200 million users were stolen from its platform, after a hacker known as “Peace” made claims on Aug. 1 that credentials were now up for sale. The initial disclosure was made by Motherboard, whom Peace contacted and allegedly shared some of the data with. It’s not entirely clear […]

LAS VEGAS–In a dark room on a busy floor at the Mandalay Bay Hotel here sits the Black Hat Network Operations Center (NOC), which could well be one of the most hostile environments many IT people will ever see. Black Hat’s NOC in many ways is like any other NOC, in that the goal is […]

LAS VEGAS–Microsoft’s Windows 10 includes many innovative security features that are intended to help minimize risk and improve user experience. One such feature is Credential Guard, which aims to protect users against attacks. However, according to security firm Bromium, many risks remain. In a video interview with eWEEK ahead of a session on Aug. 4 […]

Kaspersky Lab is no stranger to the world of vulnerability research, but the company is now opening up and enabling third-party security researchers to disclose vulnerabilities about Kaspersky’s own software. The new effort is being conducted as a bug bounty program on the HackerOne platform. Kaspersky Lab is initially providing a total of $50,000 in […]

Airbnb has emerged in recent years to become a popular option for both those seeking accommodations and those looking to provide their homes and apartments as a place to stay for travelers. A common feature of most Airbnb rentals is WiFi access, but providing that connectivity might well come with risks for both the person […]

Most antivirus security technologies at one level or another require some manner of system hook to work on a Microsoft Windows operating system. According to research set to be presented on Aug. 3 at the Black Hat USA conference in Las Vegas, some of those hooking mechanisms were flawed in a way that could have […]

Typically, a hacking tournament is made up of humans attempting to exploit code and applications, but that’s not the case for the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) Cyber Grand Challenge (CGC). The CGC occurs on Aug. 4 at the DefCon security conference in Las Vegas and will see seven different autonomous computing systems compete […]

No week in the information security calendar is quite like this one, with the annual Black Hat USA and DefCon security conferences descending on Las Vegas. The mythos of the two security conferences runs deep across more than two decades as the places where new research is revealed and zero-day exploits are announced, and the […]

Identity Finder has been helping organizations with data loss prevention since 2006. On July 28, the company officially rebranded itself as Spirion, at the same time announcing a new CEO, Jo Webber, to help move the company forward. Identity Finder had been led by founder and former CEO Todd Feinman, who is now taking on […]

After two years in stealth mode, security vendor Acalvio officially emerged on July 26, revealing its take on how deception technology can both detect and help stop attackers. Leading Acalvio is CEO Ram Varadarajan, who had previously founded Arcot Systems in 1997, selling that company to CA in 2010 for $200 million, where he was […]