Sean Michael Kerner

The risk of data loss from a Website can come from multiple avenues. There could be an outright data breach where an attacker steals content directly from a database, or an automated bot could scrape the site, stealing data that is out in the open. The challenge of dealing with automated Web-content scraping is one […]

A harrowing tale has emerged about how Twitter user Naoki Hiroshima lost his Twitter account @N. In a detailed and dramatic post on blogging site Medium, Hiroshima explains how an attacker was able to steal the @N Twitter handle from him. The attack wasn’t a simple one-layer exploitation; there was no hacker guessing that Hiroshima’s […]

A basic tenet of open-source software security has long been the idea that since the code is open, anyone can look inside to see if there is something that shouldn’t be there. It’s a truth that does work and many of us who use open-source software daily accept it as such. That’s why some recent […]

The open-source OpenStack Foundation is ramping up multiple efforts to continue to bolster its own growth and momentum in the cloud space. OpenStack is a multi-stakeholder effort to build a cloud platform that includes the participation of some the biggest names in IT, including IBM, Cisco, Dell, AT&T and Hewlett-Packard. The basic idea behind any […]

The Bitcoin cryptocurrency has gained in notoriety and in U.S. dollar value in the last year. But what is the true value of Bitcoin, and who should consider adopting it? Bitcoin’s true value today can be found in what it says about the state of money and payment in the modern connected world, said David […]

People were tethered to their computers and the networks that connect them via copper or optical cables for most of computer history. That situation started to change in the late 1990s with the emergence of the IEEE 802.11 wireless standard that set the stage for the first wave of wireless Internet adoption. The wireless revolution […]

Time and again, the top concern for many organizations about moving to the cloud is security. Last week, security startup Skyfence emerged from stealth with technology—its Cloud Application Gateway—that leverages user behavior as a key tool for cloud security. “What’s really unique about Skyfence are our threat prevention capabilities around cyber-intrusion,” said Ofer Hendler, CEO […]

All week, friends and family have asked me if I had heard about the story on the most commonly used password. It’s a story that had tremendous media coverage (including in eWEEK). The gist of the story is that “123456” is now the most commonly used weak password—surpassing the use of the word “password.” Although […]

Millions of open-source WordPress administrators around the world were greeted with emails today, telling them that their WordPress installations were automatically updated. “Howdy! Your site at [http://sitename.com] has been updated automatically to WordPress 3.8.1.,” is the automated message sent from WordPress installations that many administrators received. “No further action is needed on your part.” The […]

News network CNN is the latest victim of an attack against its social media feeds, perpetrated by the hacker group known as the Syrian Electronic Army (SEA). Multiple CNN Twitter accounts were briefly compromised on the evening of Jan. 23, including the main @CNN account as well as CNN’s Security Clearance @natlsecuritycnn accounts. According to […]

After more than a year of operating in stealth and more than $20 million invested in research and development, Shape Security emerged out of the shadows this week to debut its ShapeShifter technology. The basic idea behind ShapeShifter is to constantly shift the attack landscape that is available to an attacker in a bid to […]

Internet users in China were affected by a large-scale outage over an eight-hour period on Jan. 21 that has been linked to an unspecified DNS problem that redirected traffic and prevented many Web users from reaching popular domains. DNS (Domain Name System) is the technology that links domain names and routes them to the right […]