Category Archives: Security News
New Chrome Malware Is The “Snipe Hunt” Of Scams
Imaginary font message fools the unwary…
There’s a new Google Chrome malware scam making the rounds, one that alerts users to a dangerous situation: the “HoeflerText font” cannot be found. Fortunately, there’s a handy update button in the popup box to help remedy this imaginary problem. Clicking the update button installs a trojan or even the Spora ransomware.
New Windows 10 feature blocks desktop apps, and points to Windows Store instead
The mainstream release of Windows 10 may soon have a setting that prevents installing anything but Windows Store apps.
Credit: Microsoft
If you’re worried about Microsoft locking down Windows 10 PCs and locking out traditional desktop apps, this story won’t make you feel any better. Microsoft quietly added an interesting feature to Windows Insider build 15042 that can prevent users from installing traditional desktop programs (Win32 apps). Users instead are prompted to download Universal Windows Platform (UWP) apps from the Windows Store.
Serious Cloudflare bug revealed secret user data from major websites
A bug in Cloudflare’s HTML parsing system leaked memory contents into web pages that were then cached by search engines.
For months, a bug in Cloudflare’s content optimization systems exposed sensitive information sent by users to websites that use the company’s content delivery network. The data included passwords, session cookies, authentication tokens and even private messages.
Why you should cover up your webcam
Why you should cover up your laptop’s webcam?
It could be hacked, though it would help if you were a celebrity.
Credit: nikkytok – iStock
As it happens a few high-profile folks have been spotted covering their webcams, including F.B.I. Director James Comey, who said in an interview, “I put a piece of tape over the camera. Because I saw somebody smarter than I am had a piece of tape over their camera.” He was most likely referring to a photo Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg posted: In the background, his work laptop shows tape applied over the webcam above the display, and the dual mic on the left side.
Researchers propose a way to use your heartbeat as a password
Patients’ electrocardiograph readings would be used as an encryption key to access their medical records.
Credit: IDGNS
Researchers at Binghamton State University in New York think your heart could be the key to your personal data. By measuring the electrical activity of the heart, researchers say they can encrypt patients’ health records.
The fundamental idea is this: In the future, all patients will be outfitted with a wearable device, which will continuously collect physiological data and transmit it to the patients’ doctors. Because electrocardiogram (ECG) signals are already collected for clinical diagnosis, the system would simply reuse the data during transmission, thus reducing the cost and computational power needed to create an encryption key from scratch.
