Sean Michael Kerner

Intel disclosed a series of vulnerabilities on July 10, including new variants of the Spectre vulnerability the company has been dealing with since January. Two new Spectre variants were discovered by security researchers Vladimir Kiriansky and Carl Waldspurger, who detailed their findings in a publicly released research paper tilted, “Speculative Buffer Overflows: Attacks and Defenses.” […]

The cost of data breaches has increased over the past year, according to the 2018 Cost of a Data Breach Study conducted by the Ponemon Institute and sponsored by IBM, which was released on July 11. The new report found that the average cost of a data breach is now $3.86 million, which is a […]

Apple released a series of updates for its desktop and mobile operating systems on July 9, providing users with multiple updates for security issues. Among the updated operating systems are iOS 11.4.1, watchOS 4.3.2, tvOS 11.4.1 and macOS High Sierra 10.13.6 The iOS 11.4.1 adds a a feature called USB Restricted Mode, which aims to […]

The first half of 2018 has seen a resurgence in ransomware attacks, according to SonicWall’s mid-year 2018 cyber-threat report released on July 10. For the first six months of 2018, SonicWall reported that it found 5.99 billion malware attacks, which is a 102 percent increase over the first six months of 2017. Of particular note, […]

So far, 2018 has been a very busy year for Trend Micro’s Zero Day Initiative, which is in the business of acquiring software vulnerabilities from security researchers. Through the first six months of the year, ZDI has already published 600 security advisories. In contrast, in the first half of 2017, ZDI published 451 advisories. However, […]

Social media service Timehop publicly disclosed on July 8 that it was the victim of a data breach that impacts 21 million users. The breach was discovered by Timehop on July 4, though an investigation by the company revealed that attackers first gained unauthorized access to the system in December 2017. Timehop reported that names, […]

VMware is an active member of the open-source community, contributing its efforts to multiple projects and organizations. Helping to organize and lead VMware’s open-source initiatives is the company’s chief open source officer, Dirk Hohndel. In a video interview with eWEEK, Hohndel explains where open-source technologies are being used by VMware and how the company contributes […]

A new version of open-source content management system WordPress, 4.9.7, was released on July 5 that patches a pair of security vulnerabilities that could expose WordPress sites to risk. Both security vulnerabilities are arbitrary file deletion issues. Researchers at RIPS Tech publicly reported the first issue on June 26, while WordPress security firm Wordfence discovered […]

While many Americans were busy getting ready to celebrate the July 4 holiday, spammers were busy trying to trick unsuspecting victims into clicking on malicious Independence Day themed malware messages. It’s a familiar pattern—hackers attempting to trick unsuspecting victims into clicking on a link related to a holiday or major event. On July 3, email […]

After a 20-year career in the U.S Secret Service, Ed Cabrera joined Trend Micro in 2015, where he is now the chief cybersecurity officer, working with organizations to improve cybersecurity. Among the multiple challenges enterprises around the world face are ransomware and business email compromise (BEC) attacks, which represent more immediate risk than other forms […]