Sean Michael Kerner

Cisco released today its 2014 Midyear Security Report, and it contains some trends that are the same as those the company detailed in its 2014 Annual Security report at the beginning of the year. The state of security is dynamic, however, and, as such, there are also new trends debuting in the midyear report, which […]

Hidden within hundreds of millions of mobile phones around the world is control software used by carriers to help set up devices and features. According to new research set to be presented at the Black Hat USA security conference this week in Las Vegas by researchers working at Accuvant, the carrier control software itself has […]

The popular open-source Docker container virtualization technology was born inside a company originally known as dotCloud. Docker Inc. today announced that it is shedding its legacy and selling the dotCloud business to German platform-as-a-service vendor cloudControl. Financial terms of the deal are not being publicly disclosed. “While the financial value is meaningful, Docker’s primary interest […]

Eight Steps to Eliminating Security Risks in WordPress by Sean Michael Kerner Keep Your Server Software Updated If you’re self-hosting WordPress on your own server, keep the core server software updated, including the operating system, Web server, PHP and MySQL applications. Enable Automatic WordPress Updates All versions of WordPress since the 3.7 update in October […]

The U.S. government is warning of a newly discovered form of retail malware, known as Backoff, that is rooting out user information from point of sale (POS) systems. The warning comes from the United States Computer Emergency Readiness Team (US-CERT) working together with the Secret Service, National Cybersecurity and Communications Integration Center (NCCIS) and the […]

LibreOffice 4.3 Open-Source Office Suite Enhances the User Experience by Sean Michael Kerner LibreOffice Provides Full Slate of Office Apps LibreOffice provides its users with a fully featured, freely available, open-source office suite that includes Writer document, Calc spreadsheet, Impress presentation, Draw drawing, Math formula and Base database applications. Windows, Linux and Mac Versions Are […]

Simply plugging a USB device into a computer could lead to exploitation. That’s a fact that shouldn’t be news, and yet it is this week. A presentation scheduled for the Black Hat USA security conference in Las Vegas next week is set to reveal new flaws in USB devices that will enable attackers to install […]

In the modern world of application development and deployment, there are multiple ways users and developers can bring up new applications. Bitnami which got its start in 2011, is aiming to provide one of those options with a library of popular developer and server applications that can easily be deployed to an end-user device or […]

The open-source Tor Project provides a technology platform that helps enable user privacy on the Internet. While the effort is open-source, it does have financial backers that are helping fund development and operations. Tor reported its 2013 financial statements on July 26, providing transparency into the costs and sources of funding for the anonymous networking […]

On April 7, the Heartbleed security vulnerability that exposed hundreds of thousands of servers and devices to the risk of exploitation was first publicly disclosed. In the months since, organizations have been able to only partially fix the problem, according to a new study from Venafi. The Heartbleed flaw is technically a security vulnerability in […]

The emerging world that is the Internet of things (IoT) offers consumers the opportunity to have all manner of devices connected to the Internet, but with great power to connect also comes great risks, according to a new study from Hewlett-Packard. HP found a host of common vulnerabilities across 10 major IoT devices that it […]

In the wake of disclosures first made over a year ago by U.S. National Security Agency (NSA) whistleblower Edward Snowden, Congress has embarked on the long, arduous journey toward surveillance reform. The reforms are encompassed in the USA Freedom Act, an acronym for Uniting and Strengthening America by Fulfilling Rights and Ensuring Discipline Over Monitoring. […]