From The Blog
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New APT Group targeting iOS Users with Zero-Click Malware, US gets the Blame
Written by Sean KalinichThere is a new bit of malware targeting iOS users via iMessage from what appears to be a new APT (Advanced Persistent Threat) group. The…Written on Friday, 02 June 2023 14:46 in News Read 234 times Read more...
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AI Drone Decided Humans Were an Obstacle to be Removed in Simulated Test
Written by Sean KalinichThe arguments for and against AI as a threat all seem to be centered on the point of AGI (Artificial General Intelligence). This is the…Written on Friday, 02 June 2023 13:07 in Editorials Read 272 times Read more...
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32 Malicious Google Chrome Extensions Removed from the Chrome Web Store
Written by Sean KalinichGoogle’s Chrome (and derivatives) is one of the more popular browsers on the market. It reached the height of popularity via a well-orchestrated marketing push,…Written on Friday, 02 June 2023 12:01 in News Read 543 times Read more...
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Microsoft’s Xbox and Activision Both Considering Pulling Games out of the UK to get around CMA Block
Written by Sean KalinichRemember how the EU regulators said the Microsoft Activision deal was pro competition and pro-consumer? Well, I wonder what they might be thinking now as…Written on Friday, 02 June 2023 10:00 in Game Thoughts Read 190 times Read more...
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RaaS group Updates their Software with Better Performance and Stealthy Features
Written by Sean KalinichThe group behind BlackCat ransomware seem to be following some good business practices as they have launched a new variant with improved performance (faster encryption)…Written on Thursday, 01 June 2023 13:41 in News Read 551 times Read more...
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RedFall – How to Enjoy an Awkward, Buggy, and Confusing Game
Written by Sean KalinichFor the second of our game reviews, since returning to covering games, we decided to look at the Microsoft flagship game RedFall. If you have…Written on Thursday, 01 June 2023 11:05 in Game Thoughts Read 374 times Read more...
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RedFall Developers Hoped the Game would get Cancelled Before Launch
Written by Sean KalinichRedFall by Akrane Austin was not a well-received game. It has been pretty much panned by everyone that played it. The complaints range from a…Written on Thursday, 01 June 2023 11:02 in Game Thoughts Read 209 times Read more...
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Claimed EDR Killer Found to be a Vulnerable AV Driver Similar to Past Evasion Techniques
Written by Sean KalinichA couple of days ago an email was sent to me about a new tool kit being sold on the darker side of the internet.…Written on Thursday, 01 June 2023 08:26 in News Read 240 times Read more...
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Gigabyte Shipped Millions of Motherboards with a Massively Insecure UEFI Patch Function
Written by Sean KalinichThis one goes in both the “failure of imagination” and “this is why we can’t have nice things” category. It seems that Gigabyte, for some…Written on Wednesday, 31 May 2023 16:51 in News Read 117 times Read more...
Recent Comments
- Sean, this is a fantastic review of a beautiful game. I do agree with you… Written by Jacob 2023-05-19 14:17:50 Jedi Survivor – The Quick, Dirty, and Limited Spoilers Review
- Great post. Very interesting read but is the reality we are currently facing. Written by JP 2023-05-03 02:33:53 The Dangers of AI; I Think I Have Seen this Movie Before
- I was wondering if you have tested the microphone audio frequency for the Asus HS-1000W? Written by Maciej 2020-12-18 14:09:33 Asus HS-1000W wireless headset impresses us in the lab
- Thanks for review. I appreciate hearing from a real pro as opposed to the blogger… Written by Keith 2019-06-18 04:22:36 The Red Hydrogen One, Possibly One of the Most “misunderstood” Phones Out
- Have yet to see the real impact but in the consumer segment, ryzen series are… Written by sushant 2018-12-23 10:12:12 AMD’s 11-year journey to relevance gets an epic finish.
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Illusive Networks says that deception everywhere is the way to go Featured
Written by Sean Kalinich
Black Hat 2017, Las Vegas, NV -
When an attacker gains a foothold in a network the first thing they need to do is learn the lay of the land. They have done some research on the target to gather information about possible systems they might encounter. In reality, they do not truly know what is going on. They are likely to have hit an exposed system with little true access into the good parts of the network. They are going to need to check shares, network connections and also scrape memory for and stored credentials. With these in had they begin the process of moving around the network and building their map of the target environment.
CloudPassage Looks to secure your entire cloud infrastructure Featured
Written by Sean Kalinich
Black Hat 2017, Las Vegas, NV -
The cloud has become one of those buzz words that people like to use when they want you to put your data or workloads on someone else’s computers and network. Amazon Web Services (AWS), Microsoft Azure, and some lesser known systems. The problem is that once you put your information into their network there is a lot that you have to do to ensure that your information or workloads are secure. Amazon, Microsoft and others are only going to take security so far for you and that leave you vulnerable.
Vera jumps into the document control market with both feet Featured
Written by Sean Kalinich
Black Hat USA 2017 – Las Vegas, NV
Three years ago we talked with a company that had something of a change in thought process on how to protect your data. Instead of building bigger walls they wanted to make the items behind those walls unusable to anyone that did not actually have access to them. This year at Black Hat we have talked with multiple companies that have the same, or a similar idea. One of the companies we talked to about this is Vera. Vera is another in a growing group of companies that understand that the traditional security posture is just not enough.
Attivo Networks rolls in incident response and controls into their deception Featured
Written by Sean Kalinich
Black Hat USA 2017 - Las Vegas, NV.
Another company that we have the chance to sit down with was Attivo Networks. Attivo, if you are not familiar with them specialize in network deception through the use of projected systems. These are systems that do not really exist in the network but that occupy space and would appear real to someone looking at the network from behind the scenes. They use different methods to make these systems appear to be real including mapped drives (that are invisible to an actual user). This way when a system on the network is compromised an attacker might be fooled into interacting with a deception system and give themselves away.
Dell talks security, document control, and air gapped networks at Black Hat 2017 Featured
Written by Sean Kalinich
Black Hat USA 2017 - Las Vegas, NV
When you think of Dell you might get many different images that come to mind. For some they might think about the 90s and the “you’re getting a Dell Dude” guy. Others might think about servers, or corporate desktops. In recent years, you might think about Dell’s push back into the performance market. However, for a large number of people you would not think about Security when the Dell name gets tossed out. This would be a mistake though as Dell does have a large team of people that work on security. This is not just for Dell products, but also for other products that are outside of the Dell realm. While at Black Hat 2017 I had the chance to site down with Brett Hansen, VIce President of Dell Data Security and we talked about some of the security offerings that Dell has.
Kaspersky; the plot and ridiculousness thickens
Written by Sean Kalinich
A few days ago we published an article that covered a leaked batch of emails that showed Kaspersky has worked with the Russian Government. We also covered that the pieces of the emails that were published were completely out of context, and also are nothing out of the ordinary for a company that has a contract with a Government body. Kaspersky's denial of cooperation is also nothing new, so why the big deal in the media? Well we might have found a few pieces to that puzzle which would certainly explain the big push to discredit Kaspersky.
Leaked emails are the new "IT" when it comes to swaying the debate
Written by Sean Kalinich
Questionable security practices aside, it seems that just about every "big" scandal lately has had leaked emails as some sort of component. In the latest such scandal we find that leaked Kaspersky emails are at the core of the US National Security policy maker's concerns over the company and the use of the product inside the US. According to "internal company emails obtained by Bloomberg Businessweek" Kaspersky has had a rather close relationship with Russian intelligence agencies.
No, The Jayden K Smith Facebook Message is not real...
Written by Sean Kalinich
You have probably seen a message, or email, or even a recent Facebook post claiming that a dangerous Facebook Hacker by the name of Jayden K Smith working his way through the Facebook community and hacking user accounts with ease. In fact, this "hacker" is so good that you are at risk if even one of your friends has him in their friends list. This is quite scary and also not real at all. Yup, that message, email, or post is just like every other chain message out there, completely full of crap.
Facebook Hate Speech AI Blocking The Wrong People
Written by Sean Kalinich
Hate is a powerful item and when it spills out it can be violent, rude and many other things. Because of the power of hate found in images, media, mems, etc., many have wondered why there are not more efforts to prevent the posting or sharing of such information. After all why would a media (social or other) want to allow hate speech or images posted on their pages. Facebook took this thought process and turned it into a policy that is designed to help stop hate speech from showing up. Now the system has inadvertently started censoring the wrong people.
New WikiLeaks Vault7 reveals show nothing that is all that new
Written by Sean Kalinich
WikiLeaks is at it again with their "Vault 7" releases. This time part of the dump features a nice little took kit for continued exploitation of some Linux systems. The tool kit is called OutlawCountry and is, to be perfectly honest, not much more than a remote management, monitoring and exfiltration tool. It is intended to run in the background on a system after a vulnerability has been exploited to allow the payload to be pushed. It looks very similar to a tool that the NSA used for years and has now become the commercial product Kaseya.
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For the last couple of days the world has been buzzing with news about the Petya malware. When the news of the outbreak broke on Tuesday morning, it was all about a new ransomware that was spreading around the globe. References to WannaCry were made and fingers pointed to the use of the same NSA exploit as the attack vector. However, Petya was not really like WannaCry in that there was no “kill-switch”. Wednesday morning the big players in the anti-malware and security markets had sent out their “what you should know emails” and a low-grade form of panic hit many enterprises.
AMD’s 11-year journey to relevance gets an epic finish.
Written by Sean Kalinich
In the early 2000s AMD was on top of the world, they had a desktop processor that was what everyone wanted. AMD was handily beating Intel in terms of performance and pushing x86-64 computing out to the world. In 2006 AMD made an odd decision to buy GPU maker ATi for a rather hefty sum. This one act threw AMD off their game so badly that they operated in the red for many years after the purchase. However, over the last 2-3 years AMD has made some well-planned changes internally. These changes included dropping the mobile focus and creating the RTG (Radeon Technology Group). They have secured some technologies through purchases and cleaned up some financially impacting deals.
Is HBM a viable technology for GPUs? Yes, Yes it is… just not right now
Written by Sean Kalinich
Over the last couple of days, we have received information that would indicate nVidia is not moving to HBM 2 for their consumer GPUs (outside of some extremely high-end models). Instead, they appear to be focusing on improvements found in GDDR5X and GDDR6. Conversely, AMD appears to be focusing on HBM for many of their high-end and even some mid-range cards. The two very different paths has sparked something of a debate amongst fans of both products (as you can imagine). The questions are, why chose one over the other at this point and is HBM a truly viable option for AMD?
Microsoft finds active exploit of Intel's AMT vulnerability
Written by Sean Kalinich
Remote management and access tools are great things for IT staff to use, but if they are not set up correctly or they have bugs hidden in the code they can quickly become a nightmare. Intel’s AMT (Active Management Technology) suite of tools recently was found to have a rather nasty little surprise hidden in them. It seems that a flaw in the way their SOL (Serial on LAN) tool runs combined with the way Windows deals with AMT allowed attackers to use AMT to deploy malware and to exfiltrate data from a compromised system.