When it comes to point-of-sale, there are a few vulnerabilities that you probably didn’t even know were there. In 2012, the retail industry made up 45 percent of data breach investigations, making it the highest percentage in retail history. E-Commerce sites were the most common target, accounting for 48 percent of all investigations and spanning 29 different countries. Of these attacked businesses, it took 64 percent of them more than 90 days to detect an intrusion. Small businesses are particularly vulnerable to hacking. Sixty-three percent of 2010 cyber attacks were at companies with…

There are a few risks that come with social media. Few of them are very serious, but it is always a good idea to be cognizant of them to be on the safe side. Social media profiles are not often hacked unless they are popular or influential ones. If your social media profile is becoming popular and you are becoming influential on social media, then you may wish to consider increasing your security on there.   Run a social media virus/malware scan There are now a few anti-virus and anti-malware programs that offer to run scans on the things posted on your Facebook wall. Norton (for example) offers…

“Damn you, Facebook. I don’t like you but everyone I know is on it. If I want to see pictures of little Timmy sliding into third base or hear what’s happening with my ex-, I’ll have to keep playing your game.” Similar thoughts run through the minds of millions of people all the time. People complain. They say that Facebook is bad. Then, they go right back to it to see the latest gossip, pictures, or cat videos. The social network has reached a tipping point that keeps us coming back. In a recent study by WebPageFX, 61% of respondents said that they do not trust Facebook at all versus only 2% who said they trust…

There are two sad realities about online tracking. One reality is that the majority of people have their online activities tracked on nearly every website that they visit and these tracking protocols have very little oversight, nearly no rules associated with them, and can be stored indefinitely by anyone, even sites or companies that you’ve never visited. The other sad reality is that everyone has the ability to stop the tracking, but it would mean doing things that few are willing to do. These things include setting cookies to expire automatically when browsers are closed, ending the use of…

“Together we can solve this password problem now.” That’s the final line of the video that the team at myIDkey put together for Kickstarter. The video and the overall pitch itself worked nicely – it broke the $150,000 project requirements in only two days. Sitting at $177k now, the excitement surrounding security projects like these are very easy to accept, apparently. The idea is simple – put all of your passwords onto a cloud-connected USB device, add voice commands and other nifty features, and voila! Let’s do security! Here is the video followed by some images associated with the device. Do…

One of the most personal online violations that can occur to anyone is getting hacked. It could be a personal attack such as a Facebook account, on which 600k successful hacks are achieved daily. It could be something more general such as a database hack that exposes personal information. It could be much, much worse. With all of the security measures out there and counter-hacking attempts, many systems and accounts can be easily secured by having a strong password. There are plenty of hacks that can hit a system or an account that have nothing to do with front door password access, so there’s no reason…

While high-profile hacking made headlines in 2012, some of the most famous hack jobs took place years ago. The masterminds behind these notorious events are outlined below. Kevin Mitnick Labeled as the most wanted cyber criminal in United States history, Mitnick took down the dedicated servers of Motorola, Fujitsu and Nokia. After his 1995 arrest and five-year prison term, he went on to found a computer security firm. Kevin Poulson Using the name “Dark Dante”, Poulson gained notoriety by hacking into telephone systems, notably that of Los Angeles radio station KIIS, in order to win a contest….

If you consider the amount of attempts to hack into government systems and databases, and how many times your personal information is compromised – you’d understand just how important application security really is. The following infographic from Veracode details some of the biggest hacking attempts in recent history and the work behind the scenes to keep them from happening again. Infographic by Veracode Application Security …

There’s been a lot of focus, especially in the past year, on internet censorship. From the battle against online piracy to the recent use of Facebook and social media channels to apprehend criminals, many people are stopping to wonder where their privacy ends on the Internet – in my humble opinion, it starts and ends with you. You can hear some of my opinions on the “post” button on your Facebook profile being another symbol of your automatic forfeit of privacy on fishbat’s podcast, Reel Time, but I wanted to take the time to elaborate. Even with the most recent attention, the issue of privacy…

If reports from the hacker group are to be believed, the FBI has over 12 million Unique Device Identifiers (UDIDs) on file and now 1,000,001 of them have been leaked to the public. Using the AtomicReferenceArray vulnerability in Java, the group allegedly hacked into Supervisor Special Agent Christopher K Stangl’s notebook in March of this year and retrieved a file with information about Apple iOS device users. The file, named “NCFTA_iOS_device_intel.csv”, is claimed to have usernames, device names, device types, push notification tokens, zip codes, phone numbers, addresses, and other…