Sean Michael Kerner

Cyber-security can be stressful job, which should come as a surprise to no one who works in the IT industry. But what precisely is the impact of stress on work performance in cyber-security? That’s a question that the U.S. National Security Agency has attempted to answer. Celeste Lyn Paul, senior researcher, and Josiah Dykstra, deputy […]

As fears about the security of  elections and voting machines remain a concern, the U.S Government is doing more than just waiting for attackers, it’s hacking its own systems with penetration testing activities. Speaking at DEF CON in Las Vegas on Aug. 10, members of the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) National Cybersecurity Assessments and […]

Hundreds of millions of Bluetooth devices are potentially at risk from a new Bluetooth attack vector called Btlejacking that was disclosed on Aug. 11 at the Defcon hacker conference in Las Vegas. The new attack is a Bluetooth jamming method identified as CVE-2018-7252 that could enable a hacker to take over vulnerable Bluetooth connections with […]

LAS VEGAS—A panel of election officials from across the country spoke at Defcon on Aug. 10 here to talk about their cyber-security concerns. The officials detailed steps taken thus far to help secure election systems and repeatedly emphasized their commitment to making things better. “We are concerned about cyber-security,” Alex Padilla, Secretary of State for California […]

LAS VEGAS—Mobile point of sale terminals are potentially at risk from multiple vulnerabilities, according to researchers from Positive Technologies. Leigh-Anne Galloway, cyber-security resilience lead, and Tim Yunusov, senior banking security expert at Positive Technologies, detailed their findings on mobile POS risks in a session at Black Hat USA here on Aug. 9. In an interview […]

LAS VEGAS—This has been a busy year for researchers disclosing new attacks against Intel chips. On Aug.10 at Black Hat USA here, security researcher Ben Gras from VU University detailed the TLBleed side-channel attack that potentially exposes Intel CPUs to risk. The initial research on TLBleed was disclosed on June 22, and Gras provided full […]

LAS VEGAS—Three years ago at the Black Hat conference, Charlie Miller and Chris Valasek (pictured) detailed flaws in Chrysler cars that led to the recall of millions of vehicles. The pair have now changed their focus from offense to defense, detailing ways to help secure autonomous vehicles at the Black Hat USA 2018 event on Aug. […]

LAS VEGAS—Cellular gateways are leaking information that could be exposing critical infrastructure to risk. That’s the conclusion of Justin Shattuck, principal threat researcher for F5 Labs, who talked about the issue of cellular gateway flaws for internet of things (IoT) in a session at Black Hat USA here on Aug .9. In a video interview with eWEEK, […]

LAS VEGAS—A pair of researchers from IBM and Threatcare have discovered 17 vulnerabilities across three different manufacturers and four different smart city products and will detail their findings at Black Hat USA here on Aug. 9. In a video interview with eWEEK, security researcher Daniel Crowley from IBM X-Force Red and security researcher Jennifer Savage […]

LAS VEGAS—The opening keynote for Black Hat USA on Aug. 7 had a strong message, there is a better way to do security than simply fixing one bug at a time. Jeff Moss, founder of Black Hat said that modern cyber-security technologies tend to favor offense and the time has now come to change the […]