Sean Michael Kerner

IT security company ESET announced on Aug. 16 the general availability of new cyber-security products that provide expanded capabilities for enterprise deployments. Among the new products is the ESET Enterprise Inspector, which is an endpoint detection and response (EDR) technology that benefits from ESET’s endpoint security platform. Also launched were the company’s on-demand Threat Hunting […]

A year ago, Facebook Chief Security Officer Alex Stamos (pictured) pledged that the social media giant would issue $1 million in grants to help fund and support internet defense efforts and research. Facebook is, in fact, living up to its pledge, announcing this month the recipients of $1 million in prizes and grants that aim to […]

TrueVault announced on Aug. 16 that it is expanding its namesake platform to help organizations keep personally identifiable information safe and in compliance with multiple regulations, including the European Union’s General Data Protection Regulation and the upcoming California Consumer Privacy Act. The TrueVault platform provides an API by which PII can be hidden from plain […]

RSA released its second-quarter 2018 fraud report on Aug. 14, finding that once again phishing attacks are the primary attack vector for fraud. The 15-page report covers the period from April 1 to June 30 and is based on data collected by the RSA Fraud and Risk Intelligence team. Among the top trends identified in […]

Security researchers have revealed yet another side-channel vulnerability that impacts Intel CPUs. The L1 Terminal Fault (L1TF) vulnerability has been dubbed “Foreshadow” by researchers who publicly disclosed the issue on Aug. 14. The Foreshadow vulnerability could have potentially enabled an attacker to extract privileged information from both vulnerable CPUs as well as hypervisors and even […]

Millions of users around the world regularly install tracker apps on their Android devices to help them keep track of friends and loved ones. Some of those tracker apps, however, contain vulnerabilities that could potentially enable an attacker to track the users of the apps. Researchers from the Fraunhofer Institute for Secure Information Technology detailed […]

Cyber-security can be stressful job, which should come as a surprise to no one who works in the IT industry. But what precisely is the impact of stress on work performance in cyber-security? That’s a question that the U.S. National Security Agency has attempted to answer. Celeste Lyn Paul, senior researcher, and Josiah Dykstra, deputy […]

As fears about the security of  elections and voting machines remain a concern, the U.S Government is doing more than just waiting for attackers, it’s hacking its own systems with penetration testing activities. Speaking at DEF CON in Las Vegas on Aug. 10, members of the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) National Cybersecurity Assessments and […]

Hundreds of millions of Bluetooth devices are potentially at risk from a new Bluetooth attack vector called Btlejacking that was disclosed on Aug. 11 at the Defcon hacker conference in Las Vegas. The new attack is a Bluetooth jamming method identified as CVE-2018-7252 that could enable a hacker to take over vulnerable Bluetooth connections with […]

LAS VEGAS—A panel of election officials from across the country spoke at Defcon on Aug. 10 here to talk about their cyber-security concerns. The officials detailed steps taken thus far to help secure election systems and repeatedly emphasized their commitment to making things better. “We are concerned about cyber-security,” Alex Padilla, Secretary of State for California […]

LAS VEGAS—Mobile point of sale terminals are potentially at risk from multiple vulnerabilities, according to researchers from Positive Technologies. Leigh-Anne Galloway, cyber-security resilience lead, and Tim Yunusov, senior banking security expert at Positive Technologies, detailed their findings on mobile POS risks in a session at Black Hat USA here on Aug. 9. In an interview […]

LAS VEGAS—This has been a busy year for researchers disclosing new attacks against Intel chips. On Aug.10 at Black Hat USA here, security researcher Ben Gras from VU University detailed the TLBleed side-channel attack that potentially exposes Intel CPUs to risk. The initial research on TLBleed was disclosed on June 22, and Gras provided full […]