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June 27, 2020 by Vertical Axion
Rumors were recently swirling around cellphone carrier T-Mobile. Fears were running rampant that a massive DDOS attack may be underway on the heels of a major outage. The rumors spread like wildfire through the internet. At one point, even a US Senator got involved, retweeting a rumor that the attack was supposedly based out of […]
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June 26, 2020 by Vertical Axion
Tech companies both big and small are always looking for new ways to protect their customers from the threat of malware.While that’s not something that hardware vendors are known for, Intel has leapt into the fray with a recent announcement. Their planned “Tiger Lake” mobile processers will offer CPU-level malware protection features. Tom Garrison is […]
June 25, 2020 by Vertical Axion
Do you use the VLC Media Player to watch downloaded movies and other videos? If so, be aware that researchers have discovered a serious security flaw in the code that allows for remote code execution, which could compromise your system. The vulnerability is being tracked as CVE-2020-13428 and is described as a buffer overflow issue. […]
June 24, 2020 by Vertical Axion
Claire’s Jewelry and Accessories is the latest company to fall victim to hackers. According to a recent disclosure made by the company, both the retail giant’s main website, and the website of their subsidiary, Icing, were compromised. They were hit by what appears to be a Magecart attack. The company’s disclosure reads in part as […]
June 23, 2020 by Vertical Axion
A group of highly organized scammers have commandeered a pair of Youtube channels and renamed them to “SpaceX Live” and “SpaceX” in order to capitalize on the popularity of Elon Musk and his SpaceX company. SpaceX made headlines recently with their manned launch out of Florida. Over the course of just two days, the scammers […]
June 22, 2020 by Vertical Axion
In 2019, a new strain of ransomware called Thanos burst onto the scene and has since been spreading quietly and seeing increased adoption by hackers around the world. The code has been traced to a Russian hacker going by the name Nosophorus, who has been offering the software as ‘Ransomeware-as-a-service’ on Russian-speaking forums on the […]
June 20, 2020 by Vertical Axion
Recently, a number of Roku streaming channels mysteriously stopped working, leaving customers scratching their heads trying to figure out what went wrong. After some research, Roku’s support staff discovered that the issue stemmed from a global certificate expiration. They advised impacted customers to update their certificates manually by visiting the company’s website and following the […]
June 19, 2020 by Vertical Axion
A couple of months ago, Nintendo announced that their Switch gaming and live streaming service had been hacked, and as a result, some 160,000 user accounts had been compromised. As the company has continued their investigation into the incident, however, they’ve updated their disclosure, revealing that an additional 140,000 accounts were compromised, bringing the total […]
June 18, 2020 by Vertical Axion
When was the last time you applied a Windows 10 security patch? If you haven’t patched since March 10th, it would be an excellent idea to do so as quickly as possible. Recently, the Department of Homeland Security’s Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency issued a dire warning concerning a newly discovered security flaw. The flaw […]
June 17, 2020 by Vertical Axion
Microsoft has been talking for months about their new Edge browser based on Chromium technology. Users will finally be able to see it in action as of the KB4559309 Windows 10 update, which will replace the legacy Edge browser with the company’s latest offering. It should be noted that previous Windows 10 releases did include […]
June 16, 2020 by Vertical Axion
In late 2019, a new strain of malware called “Valak” was detected. In the six months that followed its initial discovery in the wild, more than 30 variants of the code were detected. Initially, Valak was classified as a simple loading program. As various groups have tinkered with the code, it has morphed into a […]
June 15, 2020 by Vertical Axion
For more than 20 years, “Disk Cleanup” has been a feature in every Windows Build. It’s a quick, easy way to free up hard disk space by getting rid of unneeded system and temporary files. In the October 2018 release of Windows 10, Microsoft added a checkbox that allowed users to also delete the contents […]
June 13, 2020 by Vertical Axion
A new study was published by researchers from the Carnegie Mellon University’s Security and Privacy Institute and was presented at the 2020 IEEE Workshop on Technology and Consumer Protection. The study has grim news for IT Security Professionals. The key finding in the report is that only about one third of users will change their […]
June 12, 2020 by Vertical Axion
Mozilla’s Firefox browser, like most modern browsers, has a built-in password management feature that allows you to save passwords for sites you log into on a regular basis. Since the browser stores the information, that’s one less thing you have to remember. That allows you the convenience of one click access to the sites you […]
June 11, 2020 by Vertical Axion
By the time you read these words, Apple will likely be previewing iOS 14 and iPadOS 14 at the all-virtual WWDC 2020. While the latest version of Apple’s OS will no doubt be packed with features you’ll love, unfortunately, it may not be compatible with some older iPhones and iPads. That could mean you’ll have […]
June 9, 2020 by Vertical Axion
Google is in hot water with a complaint filed to the District Court of Northern California. The complaint alleges that the tech giant tracks users’ browsing data and a variety of other identifying information via Google Ad Manager, Google Analytics, and a variety of other applications. It tracks data even when users are accessing the […]
June 8, 2020 by Vertical Axion
Microsoft recently issued a security advisory about a new strain of ransomware that’s been cropping up with increasing frequency in India, Iran and the US. Called PonyFinal, one of the things that differentiates this strain from the pack is that it’s deployed in what the company describes as human-operated ransomware attacks. Most of the ransomware […]
June 6, 2020 by Vertical Axion
Do you have an account on LiveJournal? If so, you may have heard the persistent rumors that have been circulating since 2014 that the company was breached and some 33 million user records were stolen. To this day, LiveJournal denies that they were breached. Unfortunately, this month (May, 2020), a database containing 33,717,787 records, each […]
June 4, 2020 by Vertical Axion
Great news for the legions of Windows 10 users around the world. Version 2004 comes with a significant WiFi update that includes Wi-Fi6 and WPA3 support, which will give users better wireless performance and increased security. That’s great news, but of course, there’s a catch. In order to make use of WiFi 6, you’ll need […]
June 3, 2020 by Vertical Axion
Thanks to the pandemic, tens of millions of people are working from home. Even before then, the Cloud was experiencing a tremendous amount of growth, but since shelter in place orders were issued by many governments around the world, growth has absolutely skyrocketed. This has drawn the attention of a number of hacking groups, which […]
June 2, 2020 by Vertical Axion
Google recently announced a change to Gmail that will make it easier for the service’s 2 billion+ users to experiment with different themes, layouts and settings. Even better, users can see the results of their changes before actually applying them. To make use of the new feature, all you have to do is click the […]
June 1, 2020 by Vertical Axion
The hacking group calling themselves ‘The Shiny Hunters’ has been busy. Recently, they put databases containing user records from eleven different companies up for sale on the Dark Web, including a massive database containing some 40 million records belonging to the popular Wishbone app. Wishbone is a social media platform that’s especially popular among children. […]
May 29, 2020 by Vertical Axion
Be advised that Microsoft has announced it will begin phasing out support of the 32-bit version of Windows 10, beginning with OEM’s. The change is effective as of the May 2020 release. Microsoft had this to say about the recent change: “Beginning with Windows 10, version 2004, all new Windows 10 systems will be required […]
May 28, 2020 by Vertical Axion
Are you a Home Chef customer? If so, be advised that the company recently announced a data breach. It was discovered after the hackers who broke in sold more than 8 million user records on the Dark Web. The group, calling themselves “The Shiny Hunters” has been busy of late. They’ve been selling databases containing […]
