Sean Michael Kerner

The Dridex banking malware is being used in a malicious spam campaign that is generating 15,000 emails a day, according to security firm Trustwave. The attacks, largely against users in the United Kingdom, are leveraging macros in Microsoft Office documents to infect users. The way the attack works is that a user receives an infected […]

Financial services firm Morgan Stanley publicly admitted on Jan. 5 that it was the victim of an insider data breach. The breach included data on approximately 350,000 Morgan Stanley wealth management clients. Though data on 350,000 clients was stolen, only a small subset of that number was publicly posted to the Internet. “While there is […]

In the continuing struggle to secure users online, passwords are on the front line of the battle. At the 2105 Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas this week, Intel Security (formerly known as McAfee) is now previewing its True Key platform as a solution for the password security challenge. The promise of True Key is […]

Microsoft’s Windows 8.1 operating system is at risk from a zero-day vulnerability first publicly disclosed by Google’s Project Zero security research team on Dec. 30. Google’s disclosure has once again highlighted the issue of what responsible disclosure is about and how long a vendor should be given to fix a reported vulnerability. The Windows 8.1 […]

Big Year for Enterprise Linux Distros Includes Major Updates By Sean Michael Kerner Ubuntu 14.04 Trusty Tahr Brings Long-Term Support The first big Enterprise Linux release of 2014 was Ubuntu 14.04, which debuted April 17. On the desktop, multiple usability improvements were made, while on the server, support for OpenStack Icehouse was a key highlight. […]

Fast food restaurant chain Chick-fil-A could well be the first retail breach to be publicly confirmed in 2015. Chick-fil-A released a public statement on Jan. 2, confirming that it is investigating a possible data breach at its restaurants. While Chick-fil-A’s statement was issued on Jan. 2, the company admitted that it received a report about […]

Prior to 2014, Docker was not well-known, but that all changed over the course of the year. The open-source Docker container virtualization project got its start in March 2013, and in 2014 hit its full stride, achieving its 1.0 release milestone and the embrace of many of the world’s leading IT vendors. To understand why […]

In any given year, there are a number of IT trends driven by evolutionary factors with leading indicators that are present in the prior year. Looking into the crystal ball to see what’s in store for IT security in 2015, there are some clear trends that emerged in 2014 that serve as harbingers of security […]

Top 10 Security Incidents and Vulnerabilities of 2014 by Sean Michael Kerner No. 10: WireLurker Targets Mac OS X and iOS WireLurker, first disclosed in November by Palo Alto Networks’ Unit 42 research group, is an interesting hybrid attack that takes aim at both Apple OS X and iOS users. To be exploited, a user […]

On Jan. 6, 2014, one Bitcoin (BTC) was valued at approximately U.S.$951, according to Coindesk, and has not rebounded to that level. On Dec. 29, BTC was valued at approximately U.S.$312, down by $639, or 67 percent, from its Jan. 6 high. Despite the dramatic decline in value, there is still much reason for optimism […]

The top path to exploitation in many cases is out-of-date and unpatched software that enables hackers to take advantage of known vulnerabilities. No stranger to unpatched software, the WordPress blogging and content management system (CMS) has now taken a large step forward to help reduce that risk by providing automatic updating for plug-ins. WordPress is […]

Hewlett-Packard is bullish on the future of the cloud and on network functions virtualization (NFV). Helping to lead HP’s NFV and cloud efforts is Senior Vice President Saar Gillai, who is also the general manager for NFV as well as the chief operating officer for HP Cloud. In a video interview with eWEEK, Gillai discusses […]