Attacks and Vulnerabilities

17th September 2020

Elon Musk: Cybersecurity’s Iron Man

Earlier this week, while taking a break from home schooling (don’t ask), I happened to be browsing a list of the world’s billionaires. You can probably guess who’s leading the pack – Bezos, Gates and Zuckerberg, of course. But did you know that Tesla founder, Elon Musk, is consistently among the top five? I have…

20th August 2020

Three Lessons From the Garmin Ransomware

Maybe you were wondering a couple of weeks ago, why your super-fit, never-misses-a-day-of-exercise neighbor had suddenly stopped leaving the house for his morning run. Had he finally decided to join the rest of us in late-night Netflix binging and unchecked consumption of Ben and Jerry’s Chubby-Hubby ice cream? Sadly, no. He stopped running, temporarily, because Garmin — the…

21st May 2020

How Secure Are Your Employees’ Home Networks?

Everyone: “Rob, why don’t you deposit checks from your phone?” Me, Pre-Pandemic: “Use the app on my phone? Are you crazy? The bank is right around the corner. It’s so easy to deposit checks there. If my phone were stolen, the attacker would have a leg up on getting my banking information. I feel safer at the bank.”…

10th April 2020

Fast and Easy Video Conferencing Comes With a Price

Back when I was a kid, my grandfather would never talk about money on the phone. Even face-to-face, if he had to say the word out loud, he would whisper it, as if speaking normally would somehow invite a visit from nefarious forces. I can’t really blame him. He was a first generation American whose Jewish parents had…

19th December 2019

Don’t Click That Link!

Anyone who says there is no difference between boys and girls, has never coached youth basketball. I coach at our local YMCA — 3rd/4th graders with my son; 1st/2nd graders with my daughter. And let me tell you, I’m not even sure these two populations are of the same species. Here’s a prime example… When…

5th December 2019

Disney+ Account Compromise

There are many Disney Plus accounts available for sale by fraudsters. Attackers use Credential Stuffing and Password Spraying attacks to gain access to these accounts. CNBC has more details on the compromises. What are Credential Stuffing and Password Spraying Attacks? Credential Stuffing is when attackers take known email addresses and passwords from one site compromise…

6th November 2019

3 Tips to Make Your Vulnerability Report Pop

Have you ever been the victim, I mean, read a vulnerability report? It looks like the world is about to end with all of the red tens and lots of numbers all over the place. Technical humans trying to make sense of the information mumble things like, “I guess we have to patch” or “um,…

13th March 2019

Pen Test. Do I need one?

“Yes, but…” That is the right answer 95% of the time. Almost every organization needs a penetration test or pen test. Organizations with mature security programs don’t need to ask the question. They already know the answer based on their program and plan. Organizations that are asking that question are operating from the right mindset….

30th January 2019

WiFi Pineapple: Can Still Compromise Your Network in 2019

Suppose you see a few people in a rented car, parked across a street at a hotel, next to an office. Does this sound suspicious to you at all? Not at all! Right? In a real-life version of this story, those people were attempting to perform a cyber-attack on the Organization for the Prevention of…

23rd January 2019

Cybersecurity Breach Bankruptcy: It Does Happen

“Companies don’t go out of business due to a cybersecurity breach,” say several well-versed cybersecurity experts. When I give them counter-examples to disprove their point, they list it as an aberration. Here’s a less catchy but more accurate statement: “Large companies usually don’t go out of business due to a large cybersecurity breach. They can…