Sean Michael Kerner

In June 2013, Edward Snowden shocked the world by disclosing the U.S. National Security Agency’s (NSA) PRISM program that arbitrarily collects phone metadata from Americans. Since then, the former NSA contractor has been on the run and is currently hidden somewhere in Russia, though his disclosures about U.S. surveillance activities continue to come out. Week […]

From the time I first started writing regularly about IT security in 2003 until today, the Full-Disclosure mailing list has been a must-read resource every day—but that apparently is ending today. In a posting today, Full-Disclosure creator John Cartwright announced that the list is shutting down. It’s a loss that I know I will feel. […]

Security vendor Trend Micro is warning about a spam campaign that is targeting gamers looking to play “Grand Theft Auto V” (GTA V) on the PC. GTA V is the latest iteration of the popular gaming franchise, but to date, the game has only been available on gaming consoles and not on the PC. The […]

Mozilla is out today with its latest Firefox Web browser release, fixing security vulnerabilities and providing new capabilities to end users and developers. Firefox 28 patches all four zero-day vulnerabilities that were disclosed during the Hewlett-Packard Pwn2Own event last week. HP awarded security researchers $50,000 each, for a total of $200,000, for the four zero-days […]

Security vendor Trustwave is acquiring application security testing firm Cenzic in a deal announced today. Financial terms of the purchase are not being publicly disclosed, and existing Cenzic staff will become Trustwave employees. Cenzic’s technology includes application security and testing capabilities for the cloud as well as desktop and mobile testing technologies. Cenzic’s technology is […]

Akamai is well-known in the Web world for its capabilities as a content delivery network (CDN) provider. Akamai is also a leading vendor in the IT security space with distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) capabilities that have recently been expanded, thanks to the $370 million acquisition of data center DDoS vendor Prolexic. In a video interview with […]

Late Friday, March 14, the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) held a press conference announcing that the U.S government is looking to give up oversight of the organization’s control of Web domains and the Domain Name System (DNS). While ICANN’s announcement is interesting, it’s actually not a new direction for either ICANN […]

Ever since news first broke in December that U.S. retail giant Target had been the victim of a large data breach, speculation has run rampant on how the breach occurred. Some critics pointed accusing fingers at the use of magnetic-stripe credit cards, which are not as secure as chip and PIN credit cards. There have […]

Mobile Malware, Ransomware, Signed Binaries on the Rise, McAfee Finds by Sean Michael Kerner Signed Malicious Binaries on the Rise Malicious binaries increased over the course of 2013, particularly during the fourth quarter, McAfee Labs observed attackers digitally signing their code in an effort to trick users into thinking it was legitimate. New Mobile Malware […]

On March 13, the second day of the Hewlett-Packard Zero Day Initiative (ZDI) Pwn2Own event, security researchers continued to expose zero-day flaws in Google Chrome, Apple Safari, Microsoft Internet Explorer, Mozilla Firefox and Adobe Flash. HP awarded $450,000 in prize money on the second day of Pwn2Own, adding to the $400,000 that the company awarded […]

Once again, media reports have surfaced alleging that the U.S. National Security Agency is overstepping its authority and is using its technology to get data from Internet users around the world. As has been the case since June 2013, the allegation about the NSA’s activities is derived from data obtained from NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden. […]

Once again, the Pwn2Own event has proved that no matter how hard vendors try, vulnerabilities remain in popular Web browser technologies. On March 12, security researchers at the Pwn2Own security challenge found new zero-day flaws in Microsoft’s Internet Explorer, Mozilla’s Firefox, Adobe Flash and Adobe Reader technologies. In total, Hewlett-Packard’s Zero-Day Initiative (ZDI), which runs […]