From The Blog
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NetSPI’s Offensive Security Offering Leverages Subject Matter Experts to Enhance Pen Testing
Written by Sean KalinichBlack Hat 2023 Las Vegas. The term offensive security has always been an interesting one for me. On the surface is brings to mind reaching…Written on Tuesday, 12 September 2023 17:05 in Security Talk Read 1225 times Read more...
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Black Kite Looks to Offer a Better View of Risk in a Rapidly Changing Threat Landscape
Written by Sean KalinichBlack Hat 2023 – Las Vegas. Risk is an interesting subject and has many different meanings to many different people. For the most part Risk…Written on Tuesday, 12 September 2023 14:56 in Security Talk Read 735 times Read more...
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Microsoft Finally Reveals how they Believe a Consumer Signing Key was Stollen
Written by Sean KalinichIn May of 2023 a few sensitive accounts reported to Microsoft that their environments appeared to be compromised. Due to the nature of these accounts,…Written on Thursday, 07 September 2023 14:40 in Security Talk Read 1109 times Read more...
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Mandiant Releases a Detailed Look at the Campaign Targeting Barracuda Email Security Gateways, I Take a Look at What this all Might Mean
Written by Sean KalinichThe recent attack that leveraged a 0-Day vulnerability to compromise a number of Barracuda Email Security Gateway appliances (physical and virtual, but not cloud) was…Written on Wednesday, 30 August 2023 16:09 in Security Talk Read 903 times Read more...
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Threat Groups Return to Targeting Developers in Recent Software Supply Chain Attacks
Written by Sean KalinichThere is a topic of conversation that really needs to be talked about in the open. It is the danger of developer systems (personal and…Written on Wednesday, 30 August 2023 13:29 in Security Talk Read 975 times Read more...
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Leaked Data from Duolingo incident Shows US is most Impacted
Written by Sean KalinichDuolingo, is a language learning site (not to be confused with an LLM) and has a very large base of users. The site is a…Written on Tuesday, 29 August 2023 19:12 in Security Talk Read 1389 times Read more...
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We talk about the Ransomware Threat Landscape with SecureWorks at Black Hat 2023
Written by Sean KalinichBlack Hat 2023 – Las Vegas, NV – One of my personal focuses is understanding the “Why” behind changes in the threat landscape. In simple…Written on Tuesday, 29 August 2023 18:26 in Security Talk Read 986 times Read more...
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Now Patched Flaw Leverages Abandoned Reply URL found in Entra ID allows for Privilege Escalation
Written by Sean KalinichMicrosoft has not been having the greatest of months. First it was identified that a stollen MSA signing key was used by a Nation State…Written on Monday, 28 August 2023 15:39 in Security Talk Read 1604 times Read more...
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Qrypt Looking to Attack the Inefficiencies in Quantum Encryption to make Quantum Secure Communication a Reality Today
Written by Sean KalinichBlack Hat 2023, Las Vegas – At Black Hat one of my favorite things to do is see what the latest buzzword(s)/phrases are. One of…Written on Monday, 28 August 2023 12:53 in Security Talk Read 1098 times Read more...
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Displaying items by tag: NFC
Flaw Found in Visa's New Chip-N-PIN System Allowing a Simple Bump to Steal One Million Dollars
It would seem that even the next generation of “secure” payment systems are showing up with flaws before they really hit the streets. According to security researchers there is a flaw in the next generation of electronic payments dubbed chip-n-PIN. This new technology has been hailed as the more secure means of using your cash without all the worry of swipe fraud or other hassles of using the more traditional magnetic cards. However, as with far too man y technologies these days, someone missed a rather big loophole for the bad guys to exploit
Apple Pay Competing with Walmart, not Google
When Apple announced their new NFC payment system it seemed the press and analysts were in nirvana. You could not open up a news site without seeing a headline on how Apple pay was going to change your life. Most of these failed to acknowledge that mobile payments (even through NFC) have existed for decades and that Google Wallet was and still is accepted at a number of locations. They were convinced that Apple pay was the way to go and they (Apple) had the future in their hands.
Tech press thought NFC was not a big deal… Until Apple does it.
If there is one thing I do not like it is the way that some members of the technical press show their bias. This morning, while I was trying to have a nice cup of coffee, I had to stomach several articles that seem to feel that NFC (near field communication) is now the wave of the future simply because it is rumored that Apple will have it in their next devices. This despite the fact that some of these same reporters claimed it was nothing when everyone else did it years ago.
LUXA2 GroovyW Bluetooth Speaker and Wireless Charger Review
There is no doubt that the mobile market is beginning to become the focus of hardware manufacturers. In many ways this market is eclipsing what we are seeing for more mainstream computer systems. One of the biggest reasons for this is that while most people will own a phone or portable media player only a fraction of that group will own a desktop computer. Because of this the demand for high-quality components and accessories has been growing at an exponential rate. Even companies that were once dedicated to the more traditional “PC” are starting to build devices for the mobile market. A couple of areas that are growing very quickly are power and audio. Here you have two very vital functions that anyone with a mobile device needs to think about. You have to have power to keep things going and most (if not all) will want a way to listen to their media on more than just the bundled set of headphones. Today we are taking a look at a product from LUXA2 that addresses both of these areas with style. So let us introduce the LUXA2 GroovyW Bluetooth speaker set and wireless charging unit.
Qualcomm brings cheaper NFC chips
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Qualcomm subsidiary Qualcomm Atheros announced a new NFC chip labeled QCA1990 which is half the size of the current NFC chip and can supposedly work with an 8 times smaller antenna. According to Qualcomm's assessment, installation of this chip would be more cost effective than the installation of the current chips in use by smartphone manufacturers. They believe that the installation of QCA1990 into the lower tier smartphones would also be cost effective.
Apple gets a patent for NFC, or something like that
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Isn’t it nice when you can share something with other smartphone users just by tapping your phones together? Well, if we consider the popularity that near field technology is getting it could be the “go-to” close range sharing technology. So far it's mostly found on Android devices, but Apple won’t sit idle on this one. Now they were given a patent on technology similar to what is already available with NFC but apparently different enough. It looks like the smartphone war is just warming up.
Samsung Galaxy S3 remote reset hack
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It looks like there is a simple hack, containing of only one line of code that can start an unstoppable factory reset on the Samsung Galaxy S3. According to security researchers there is a simple USSD (Unstructured Supplementary Service Data) code that can do some serious harm to S3 owners. USSD is a session based GSM protocol unlike SMS and MMS, and it is used to send messages between a mobile phone and an application server. With the advancements in technology there are more than few services based on USSD, some of them are social networking apps, mobile banking, prepaid recharge/account balance, even the NFC technology and QR codes.
Black Hat Conference Shows Vulnerabilites in Third Party Apps for Apple's iOS
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Straight from the Black Hat Conference in Las Vegas we have some bad news for the Apple fans. It seems that the myth surrounding the security of the iPhone is starting to crack around the edges. This is something that we predicted would happen when the trend to use Smartphones for common net tasks first started appearing. It only make sense that malicious coders would start hitting out smart phones after all. I mean how many people use their phones for banking, personal and work email, store passwords to online accounts in their phones with password lockers and more. To be honest, considering the number of smart phones in use, we are surprised that it has taken this long.
Charlie Miller Shows Off How Dangerous NFC Can Be At Black Hat
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The Black Hat conference is happening right now in Sin City and already there is news coming out of the gather that should send chills down the spine of many smartphone owners. Apparently it is dead simple to exploit the NFC (Near Field Communications) found on Nokia and Samsung Products (this also extends to the NFC that will be in Apple’s devices when they are launched later this year). If you trot around with your NFC feature enabled someone can gain control of your phone by simply brushing a properly prepared tag against it.
Apple's History Shows They Use Other's Ideas And Are Now Trying To Use Them To Harm Android Device Manufacturers
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We have been following Apple’s free run through the patent office for quite a while now (and I covered it long before starting this site). In the beginning Apple would patent advancements or refinements on technology they “borrowed” from others. Often these improvements were so noticeable that they were close to being a new technology. Even Steve Jobs once admitted to shamelessly stealing the ideas of others. What they were not doing at the time was using the patent system as a tool to stifle competition and they had not built the mythology that they invent everything just yet.