Robert Lemos

In late January, Oracle announced that the company would stop supporting its ubiquitous Java plug-in, which would be, in developer terminology, “deprecated” in the next version of the Java software development kit, slated for release in 2017. The announcement comes not as a surprise but a recognition of a trend among browser developers toward removing […]

A ransomware attack that had left a southern California hospital unable to access its electronic medical records was solved by paying the attackers nearly $17,000, the CEO of the hospital said in a statement on Feb. 17. The attack was first noticed by the staff of Hollywood Presbyterian Medical Center on Feb. 5, when doctors […]

While phishing attacks have a reputation for being poorly written and fairly obvious in their attempts to con users, the attacks continue to be a problem for most companies, according to a security threat report published by Cloudmark on Feb. 11. Ninety-one percent of companies encountered phishing attacks in 2015, with the lion’s share—84 percent—of […]

President Barack Obama on Feb. 9 proposed spending more than $19 billion over the next year on cyber-security initiatives as part of a new plan to better protect the computers, networks and data of U.S. citizens, businesses and government agencies. The initiatives, which the administration wove together in its 2016 budget proposal as the Cybersecurity […]

The oil glut has increased tensions between various oil producers, resulting in an increase in hacking and cyber-espionage among nations such as Russia, Iran, Saudi Arabia and other Middle Eastern nations, according to CrowdStrike, which released its annual threat report on Feb. 3. Calling the drop in global oil prices the “most impactful force” driving […]

Distributed denial-of-service attacks used to be reserved as the not-so-subtle tool of vandals and hacktivists. Increasingly, however, other actors are using DDoS attacks for a variety of ends. Criminals clog networks to demonstrate their capabilities and extort money from companies. Rogue gamers attack rivals to gain advantage in online arenas. In fact, criminal and online […]

On Dec. 23, a blackout hit the western part of Ukraine, affecting a region served by three power-generation centers. As the two power companies affected by the outage recovered, their support centers were inundated with fake phone calls, blocking legitimate customers from reaching the companies’s staff. Within hours, officials for the power companies concluded that […]

Every year or so, the Internet rediscovers that unsecured webcams are out there, leaking ready-to-watch videos of babies, pets, bank customers and even the offices of the webcam makers. This month, the ability of the Shodan port-scanning service to easily find webcams set off a kerfuffle in the media. Yet, the criticism is missing the […]

Companies have lost ground in the fight to secure their infrastructure, as the managers of security operations centers (SOCs) have to deal with a greater variety of information technology and a shortage in knowledgeable security workers, Hewlett Packard Enterprise stated in a report released on Jan. 20. The State of Security Operations 2016 report found […]

San Diego-based startup AttackIQ emerged from stealth mode and kicked off its flagship security service on Jan. 20, aiming to allow companies to attack their own systems as a way of detecting vulnerabilities and security weaknesses. The FireDrill service will allow companies to actively test the security of their networks, validating that their security products […]