Archive for March 2017

Should it be legal to hack a hacker who is intent on attacking you? It’s an interesting, touchy debate, with powerful opinions on both sides. On the one hand, hacking is universally regarded as an illegal act, even when conducted in self-defense. After all, it invariably involves breaching a network you do not own. Furthermore,…

Dahua, a Chinese manufacturer of DVRs and Smart Cameras, has security problems. In fact, on the Dark Web, the company is commonly referenced as building products that are particularly easy to hack, and as such, hackers gravitate to them. In practice, what this means is that Dahua devices make up a disproportionate share of most…

Unless you have kids, you may not have even known about CloudPets, or the MongoDB, much less the recent hack or the shocking lack of security. Firstly, yes. Smartpets are a “thing.” They are a new type of stuffed toy for small children connected to the internet. Parents and grandparents can record messages for their…

The next big thing is going to be really small, at least if Microsoft has anything to say about it. They’ve been experimenting with storing data in what some might call the most unlikely of places…DNA. The process is mind-bendingly complex, but the potential is simply too great to be ignored. A single gram of…

Last week, Amazon’s AWS (Amazon Web Services) suffered an 11-hour outage that resulted in dramatic slowdowns and complete unavailability of more than 100 large internet retailers and a number of the web’s top sites, including Amazon itself, Netflix, Imgur, Reddit and a host of others. The situation has now been resolved, and Amazon has published…

While Cloudflare isn’t a household name, it is one of the titans of the internet, having a massive presence as a reverse proxy service. It provides security and serves optimized content to many Fortune 500 companies and a whole host of smaller ones. From September of last year to Feb. 20 of this year, thanks…

Remember in the ancient past, two years ago, when Ransomware first made its appearance, infecting hospitals and banks? That’s still happening, of course. But now, the hackers have a new target: mobile devices. Increasingly, hackers are shifting their attention to smartphones. The idea is that although there’s not as much money in them individually, with…

Not long ago, the first instance of ransomware was designed to effect Macs. This was greeted with an even mix of shock, surprise and dismay among the ranks of Mac users, and it did a lot to dispel the Mac Mystique. After all, it has been held as an article of faith that Macs are…

Another week, another big problem for the Internet of Things. This time, it’s smart cars and the apps that surround them. There are an increasing number of apps available for a growing number of makes and models of vehicles that can do everything from unlocking your car to starting it remotely. Unfortunately, as researchers at…

Are you still using Yahoo mail? If so, your account may have been one of the billion or more accounts hacked in recent years. Yahoo’s email servers have been on the receiving end of two of the largest breaches in the history of the internet as recently as 2013, and for many users, it destroyed…