Sean Michael Kerner

Jay Kaplan worked for the U.S National Security Agency (NSA) for nearly four years before leaving to set up his own security startup called Synack. At Synack, Kaplan has taken some of the lessons he learned while working at the NSA to create a new model for enterprise application penetration testing and security. Synack is […]

Firefox 34 Adds Browser-Based Voice Calling, Blocks POODLE Attacks By Sean Michael Kerner Firefox Hello Enables Browser-Based Voice Calling The new Firefox Hello feature leverages WebRTC technology to enable users to use Firefox 34 for voice calls. All It Takes to Set Up a Voice Call Is a Link On the receiving end of a […]

Any given week, I find myself writing about yet another security breach in which usernames and passwords are at risk. The risk isn’t always limited to just the breached site either, as there are multiple examples of breaches in one location leading to attacks in another. It’s a situation that Facebook understands well, and it […]

I first heard about Anonabox on Monday, Oct. 13 and immediately decided to back the effort. The promise of Anonabox was that the project would design a purpose-built device to enable the Tor onion router network, that enables a degree of user privacy and anonymity. On Oct. 17, at approximately 1 p.m. ET, the Kickstarter […]

As millions of Apple Mac OS X fans were waiting on Oct. 16 for the opportunity to update to the new OS X 10.10 Yosemite release, a strange thing happened. An Apple app store notification popped up with a security update identified as Apple Security Update 2014-005, for OS X 10.9.5 Mavericks and OS X […]

Paying security researchers for properly disclosing security flaws is now considered by most leading technology vendors to be a good best practice. It wasn’t always that way though. Just a year ago, Yahoo was widely criticized for offering a security researcher just a T-shirt for providing a security report. Yahoo recognized the error of its […]

The cost of cyber-crime continues to rise in the United States and around the world, according to the 2014 Ponemon Institute study, sponsored by Hewlett-Packard. According to the study, the annualized cost of cyber-crime per U.S organization in 2014 is $12.7 million, a 9.3 percent increase from the 2013 rate. In contrast, the annualized cost […]

The OpenStack Foundation is set to debut its Juno release on Oct. 16, delivering the 10th major milestone of the open-source cloud platform since NASA and Rackspace started the project in 2010. The new release includes feature updates as well as bug and stability fixes. Juno is the second major milestone update for OpenStack in […]

Docker Inc. today announced a partnership with Microsoft to extend support for the popular open-source Docker container virtualization engine to Windows servers. Docker Inc. is the lead commercial sponsor behind the open-source Docker container technology, which started out as being available only on Linux operating systems. The new Docker partnership with Microsoft is an extension […]

POODLE, or Padding Oracle On Downgraded Legacy Encryption, is a newly disclosed vulnerability in the legacy SSL 3.0 protocol that could be exposing users of newer Transport Layer Security (TLS) encryption protocols to risk. Google disclosed the POODLE vulnerability, also identified as CVE-2014-3566, in a research paper. If exploited, the POODLE flaw could potentially enable […]

Mozilla came out Oct. 14 with its new Firefox 33 Web browser, providing users with incremental feature updates and patches for eight different security advisories. Firefox 33 follows Mozilla’s Firefox 32 release in September, which included fixes for six security advisories. Firefox 33 includes three security advisories that Mozilla rated critical. MFSA 2014-74 is identified […]

Microsoft is out with one of its October Patch Tuesday releases, which includes eight different security advisories patching 24 Common Vulnerabilities and Exposures (CVEs), including several zero-day flaws that have been actively exploited. Among the zero-day flaws patched is CVE-2014-4114, which has been dubbed “Sandworm” and has already been used in attacks against NATO and […]