Sean Michael Kerner

Some patch updates are larger than others, a lot larger. Such is the case with Oracle’s July Critical Patch Update, which tackles a whopping 276 vulnerabilities across multiple Oracle software products. Oracle has had a quarterly patch cycle for its software portfolio since 2004, and as new companies have been acquired, including Sun Microsystems in […]

Massive DDoS Attacks Becoming the New Normal, Arbor Networks Finds The latest Arbor Networks DDoS report shows a disturbing trend toward massive DDoS attacks—274 attacks of 100G bps or higher in the first half of 2016. Peak DDoS in 2016 Hits 579G bps The peak attack reported by Arbor Networks in the first half came […]

Some flaws take longer—a lot longer—than others to get fixed. The newly named HTTpoxy vulnerability was first discovered back in March 2001 and fixed in the open-source Perl programming language, but it has sat dormant in multiple other languages and applications until July 18. The HTTPoxy flaw is a misconfiguration vulnerability in the HTTP_PROXY variable […]

Apple released security updates for iOS and OS X on July 18, ahead of major news releases for Apple’s desktop and mobile operating systems in the fall. The OS X 10.11.6 update patches 60 security vulnerabilities while iOS 9.3.3 fixes 43 security issues. The new updates follows the OS X 10.11.5 and iOS 9.3.2 release […]

Ever since the Stuxnet malware was able to incapacitate an Iranian power facility in 2010, the specter of cyber-attacks against industrial control systems has been a concern. Among the technology vendors that have built platforms to defend ICSes is startup Indegy, which has raised $12 million in a Series A round of funding to support […]

Ubuntu Linux is one of the most popular Linux distributions in use today, making its users an attractive target for hackers. In an attack that was officially confirmed on July 15, Canonical, the lead commercial vendor behind Ubuntu Linux, revealed that its Ubuntu Forums user community was hacked, and the attacker gained unauthorized access to […]

Fiat Chrysler Automobiles (FCA) has the inauspicious distinction of being perhaps the first major auto vendor in the world to issue a vehicle recall due to IT security flaws. Now a year after researchers Charlie Miller and Chris Valasek detailed flaws in FCA’s vehicles including the Jeep Grand Cherokee that led to the recall of […]

Bay Dynamics today announced it has raised $23 million in a Series B round of funding, bringing total funding to date for the cyber-risk analytics vendor to $31 million. The company will use the new funding, which was led by Carrick Capital Partners and included the participation of Comcast Ventures, the venture capital affiliate of […]

Security firm SentinelOne on July 12 published new research on a malware variant that is taking aim at energy companies. The malware, dubbed Furtim’s Parent by SentinelOne, is related to a malware strain previous identified as Furtim, which means stealth in Latin. “We have found and analyzed the sample that prepares the system to run […]

Most organizations know how much of a security risk phishing attacks are, but what isn’t always known is how well an organization and its employees are able to detect and deflect such attacks.Duo Security has run a number of surveys over the course of the year that have consistently revealed how poorly prepared many organizations […]

Just days after its debut, Pokémon Go is already one of the most popular apps in the world. However, one thing that people noticed early on with the iOS version of Pokémon Go was that when using a Google account to authenticate, the app required permissions that were somewhat intrusive. At first glance, it appeared […]

A group of attackers infiltrated American health care institutions and stole at least 600,000 patient records and attempted to sell more than 3 terabytes of associated data, according to a report set to be released later this week from security firm InfoArmor. Andrew Komarov, chief intelligence officer at InfoArmor, told eWEEK that he informed the […]