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Displaying items by tag: Security

Monday, 17 January 2022 19:43

Reports of Stalking Via Apple Airtags

It seems that Apple may have an issue with their AirTags, the small tracking devices that use the Apple device network to help you find items that you have put trackers on. They are similar although much more effective than items like Tile. The problem is that since these trackers can ping out to any Apple device, there was a chance that they could be used for shady purposes. This possibility was brought up when they were launched and surprisingly, Apple listened. They added in methods to detect if someone is tracking you using an AirTag. True, not releasing something like this would have been better, but some protection is better than nothing.

Published in Security Talk
Thursday, 13 January 2022 05:09

All-in Vulnerability and Risk Management

It is a common belief that vulnerability management is nothing more than scanning and patching. However, as we have seen in many breaches and attacks, this is far from true. Vulnerability management is about understanding your organization and the risks it faces. Risks that an organization faces can include insider threats, public exposure, data leakage, improper configurations or safeguards, data integrity models, and quite a bit more. It is not enough to simply scan with a specific flavor of vulnerability scanner, it is a much larger effort and requires buy-in from every team and person in an organization.

Published in Security Talk

It seems that is the time once again to talk about the relationship between software vendors and the security posture of different business verticals. Why are we beating this particular dead horse? Well with the Covid-19 Pandemic, the rush to shift to remote work force and an increase in attacker activity aimed at the remote workforce and healthcare you would think that there would be an increase level of effort to fix vulnerabilities in remote access and healthcare services software. If you thought that, you would be wrong. Instead during this time, we are seeing more software vendors pushing FDA as law and healthcare organizations even refusing opportunities to patch critical software. This on top of an extremely slow response to threat to the remote workplace.

Published in Editorials

Although not a new subject here at DecryptedTech we thought it was time for us to dive into three of serious issues in the security world (out of many). The three we are covering today are emerging technologies, stale technologies and how the security, and IT, skill set seems to be diminishing. All three are cause for concern and often seen as at least contributing factors in breaches. What make this more interesting is that in many cases the three are connected.

Published in Editorials
Monday, 04 February 2019 12:07

When updates go wrong, horribly wrong

When you think about operating system updates you probably do not think about the security team. Sure, there are security patches and such, but those are on the operations team and not really pushed out by the security team. Well, that is when they are done properly by the OS vendor.

Published in Editorials

It seems that PC makers are not happy with the Intel’s Management Engine (IME) and the flaws that keep being found in it. The original flaw allowed attackers a clean way to compromise a system including uploading malware and exfiltrating data. This could be done in a way that bypassed most security systems and even allowed for tampering with the UEFI BIOS if the attacker was sophisticated enough. To their credit, Intel did warn people and manufacturers about this and patched it fairly quickly. The problem is, now that the cat is out of the bag about one flaw; there are sure to be more.

Published in News
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Def Con 25, Las Vegas, NV –
Your phone rings and you check the number as a precaution against marketing calls and it looks like it is from your office. The voice on the other end says that there is an issue on the network and they need your assistance to troubleshoot. The person is calm, friendly and helpful so you agree to assist. By the time it is all done you have in advertently given away vital information about your network to a potential attacker.

Published in Shows and Events

Black Hat 2017, Las Vegas, NV -
When an attacker gains a foothold in a network the first thing they need to do is learn the lay of the land. They have done some research on the target to gather information about possible systems they might encounter. In reality, they do not truly know what is going on. They are likely to have hit an exposed system with little true access into the good parts of the network. They are going to need to check shares, network connections and also scrape memory for and stored credentials. With these in had they begin the process of moving around the network and building their map of the target environment.

Published in Shows and Events

Black Hat USA 2017 - Las Vegas, NV.
Another company that we have the chance to sit down with was Attivo Networks. Attivo, if you are not familiar with them specialize in network deception through the use of projected systems. These are systems that do not really exist in the network but that occupy space and would appear real to someone looking at the network from behind the scenes. They use different methods to make these systems appear to be real including mapped drives (that are invisible to an actual user). This way when a system on the network is compromised an attacker might be fooled into interacting with a deception system and give themselves away.

Published in Shows and Events

Black Hat USA 2017 - Las Vegas, NV
When you think of Dell you might get many different images that come to mind. For some they might think about the 90s and the “you’re getting a Dell Dude” guy. Others might think about servers, or corporate desktops. In recent years, you might think about Dell’s push back into the performance market. However, for a large number of people you would not think about Security when the Dell name gets tossed out. This would be a mistake though as Dell does have a large team of people that work on security. This is not just for Dell products, but also for other products that are outside of the Dell realm. While at Black Hat 2017 I had the chance to site down with Brett Hansen, VIce President of Dell Data Security and we talked about some of the security offerings that Dell has.

Published in Shows and Events
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