Archives for August 2018

Survey Shows Teens Are Concerned About Their Screen Time

August 31, 2018 by Joseph Martin

According to a recent survey conducted by Pew Research Center, 54 percent of teens say that they spend too much time on their cellphones.

Acknowledging you have a problem is the first, necessary step toward correcting it, and the survey reports that significant percentages of teens are taking steps to do just that.

The Survey Specifically States:

52 percent of teens report that they are actively trying to cut back on their mobile phone use

57 percent report that they’re taking steps to limit the amount of time they spend on social media

58 percent report that they’re cutting back on the time they spend playing video games

Some other interesting and noteworthy statistics collected via the survey include the following:

72 percent of teens say that they often or sometimes check for messages and notifications first thing in the morning, just after waking up.

56 percent of teens report feeling lonely or anxious if they find themselves separated from their cherished phones.

36 percent of parents admit that they, like their teen children, spend too much time on their phones.

51 percent of teens report that their parents are distracted by their phones when teens try to have a conversation with them.

57 percent of parents say they set screen time restrictions for their teens in an attempt to limit phone use.

Smartphones are deeply embedded in our day to day activities, so these numbers are perhaps unsurprising.

What is both surprising and more than a little disturbing is the fact that a significant percentage of both teens and parents report that excessive cellphone use impacts their school and work performance, with 31 percent of teens admitting that their phone is a source of distraction that causes them to lose focus in school, and 39 percent of parents reporting that they lose focus at work for the same reason.

Unfortunately, while the statistics are illuminating, there are no easy solutions here. There’s little evidence that self-imposed use limits are having an impact.

Joseph Martin

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Encrypted Chats Are Now Available In Skype

August 30, 2018 by Joseph Martin

Earlier this year, Microsoft announced that it had entered into a partnership with Open Whisper Systems, the makers of the Signal app. The purpose of the partnership was to bring Signal’s open source, end-to-end encryption protocol to Skype.

As of the latest Skype builds, that is now a reality. Stable versions of Skype have been released for Windows, macOS, Linux, android, and iOS. If you haven’t yet upgraded to the latest versions and want to begin making use of the new protocol, you should upgrade to Skype v8.15.0.306 if you’re an Android user, or Skype v8.28.0.41 if you’re a Windows user.

The new feature is called “Skype Private Conversations.” To access it, just press the “+Chat” button at the top of your contacts sidebar and select “New Private Conversation.”

A couple of caveats here. First, both parties will have to have the latest version of Skype to make use of the feature. Second, a new private conversation needs to be started from each device.

Assuming that’s the case, Skype sets up keys to encrypt the conversation. Note that as the name of the protocol indicates, this is end-to-end encryption, which means that the messages remain in an encrypted state even while in transit between the two devices that are communicating.

It’s a good feature, and a long-overdue addition that makes Skype even more useful. At present, however, the implementation is a bit cumbersome. It won’t see widespread adoption until a majority of the Skype user base has upgraded to the latest version.

Nonetheless, this is an excellent development that will, over the medium term, make communications more secure. Be sure your team is aware, and if you want to begin using encrypted chat right away, make sure that all users upgrade to the latest version.

Joseph Martin

Gmail Releases New Confidential Mode

August 29, 2018 by Joseph Martin

Google has introduced a new Gmail feature called “Confidential Mode,” which seeks to make sending and receiving important or sensitive emails more secure. Unfortunately, it may have inadvertently created as many problems as it solves.

Here’s how the new feature works, and why you may be leery of using it:

To send a confidential email, compose your message as normal, and then, click the “lock” icon located at the bottom of the email screen. When this button is pressed, you’ll be presented with a number of options that will enable you to specify a self-destruct time ranging from one day to five years. The email will auto-delete after the amount of time specified.

You’ll also be able to specify whether the email requires a password to open, and of course, giving you the ability to set that password. Also, a message sent in Confidential mode cannot be forwarded to any other user or be printed out.

The new service works across all email systems because Confidential messages aren’t actually sent. The user will get a notification that they’ve received a confidential mail, and a link to click to access it, which points back to Google’s own servers where the email is housed.

Given this, the sender of the message also has the ability to selectively remove access to confidential emails if one was inadvertently sent to the wrong recipient.

All of that sounds great in theory, but there’s a problem. That’s exactly how phishing attacks work.

Security professionals have sounded the alarm that hackers will quickly begin spoofing Google’s new service, pointing the links in their messages toward their own servers. When users are prompted to provide their login credentials to see the message, they’ll be handing access to their email account over to the hackers. Google has not yet responded to or commented on this flaw in their new system. Use with caution.

Joseph Martin

If You Use Photoshop, Update Immediately

August 28, 2018 by Joseph Martin

Do you use Photoshop? Does anyone who works for you use it? If so, you’ll want to apply the latest security patch immediately.

Two new vulnerabilities were discovered after the release of Adobe’s regularly scheduled August 2018 security patch update. This prompted the company to take the unusual step of releasing an emergency, out-of-band update to correct the issue.

These two newly discovered vulnerabilities (tracked as CVE-2018-12810 and CVE-2018-12811) impact Adobe photoshop CC2017, v18.1.5 and earlier 18.x versions, and Adobe Photoshop CC 2018, v19.1.5 and earlier 19.x versions.

It was discovered and initially reported by Kushal Arvind Shah, a security researcher with FortiGuard Labs. The vulnerabilities allow hackers to exploit a pair of critical memory corruption flaws, which allows a them to remotely execute malicious code on the target user’s machine.

Again, it must be stressed that neither of these issues were addressed by the company’s regularly scheduled patch update released earlier this month. Although if you haven’t yet applied that patch, you should. It addresses a total of eleven different security flaws spread across a number of the company’s products including: Flash Player, Acrobat, Reader, Experience Manager and Creative Cloud.

To get the fix for the Photoshop vulnerabilities, you’ll need to go to the company’s website and download the out of band patch designed specifically to address this issue.

It should be noted that both issues, while having been assigned a severity rating of “Critical,” have only been given a priority rating of three. This suggests that these flaws have not been exploited in the wild. That, however, is simply a matter of time. If members of your creative team employ Photoshop to generate graphics for your business, applying the latest patch should be a top priority. To do anything less is to invite an attack against your business.

Joseph Martin

New Intel Vulnerability Named Foreshadow Found

August 27, 2018 by Joseph Martin

Intel has had a tough time of things so far this year. The most recent trouble stems from yet another newly discovered security flaw in the company’s processors, bearing the inelegant name of “L1 Terminal Fault,” or “Foreshadow” by those who have discovered it.

The attack can take one of three different shapes (so far), and ultimately allows a hacker to access sensitive data stored in the computer’s memory or on third-party cloud-based storage services. This sensitive data includes passwords, pictures, other sorts of data files, and encryption keys.

The three variants of the attack have been grouped into two distinct categories, known as Foreshadow and Foreshadow NG (Next Gen).

The standard Foreshadow variant (Reference CVE-2018-3615) targets Intel’s Software Guard Extensions (SGX), which is new technology designed by intel to help keep user data from falling into the wrong hands, even if the whole system comes under attack.

As the researchers who discovered it describe it:

“Foreshadow enables an attacker to extract SGX sealing keys, previously sealed data can be modified and re-sealed. With the extracted sealing key, an attacker can trivially calculate a valid Message Authentication Code (MAC), thus depriving the data owner from the ability to detect the modification.”

The Foreshadow: Next Generation attack (reference CVE-2018-3620 and CVE-2018-3646) targets virtualization environments like those used by large cloud-based service providers like Microsoft and Amazon.

From the researchers again:

“Using Foreshadow-NG, a malicious program running on the computer might be able to read some parts of the kernel’s data. As the kernel has access to data stored by other programs, a malicious program might be able to exploit Foreshadow-NG to access data belonging to other programs.

Foreshadow is different from Meltdown as it targets virtual machines and SGX, in addition to data stored in the operating system’s kernel (which was targeted by Meltdown).”

According to Intel, none of these attacks have been seen in the wild, but of course, that’s just a matter of time now. No word from Intel yet on a time frame to address these issues, but stay tuned.

Joseph Martin

Macs Can Be Hacked With Synthetic Dismissal On Warning Boxes

August 25, 2018 by Joseph Martin

Depending on the lens you view him through, Patrick Wardle (former hacker for the NSA and macOS security expert) is either your best friend or your worst nightmare.

Most people (whether fans of Apple or not) will readily concede that the company works hard to make their products as secure as possible. Unfortunately, at this year’s Def Con hacker convention in Las Vegas, Wardle made a presentation that is currently sending shockwaves through the Apple user community. He exposed a major security flaw in the company’s products that impacts many of their secondary defensive measures.

Normally, when an Apple device detects an action that is potentially malicious, Apple’s OS will block it, then display an alert box to let the user know.

Unfortunately, as Wardle demonstrated, it is a trivial task for a hacker to generate a “synthetic click” to dismiss the warning box. This could be done in the blink of an eye, or with only slightly more effort, and be made utterly invisible to the end-user.

As Wardle puts it, “The ability to synthetically interact with a myriad of security prompts allows you to perform a lot of malicious actions. Many of Apple’s privacy and security-in-depth protections can be trivially bypassed.”

This is hardly a new trick. Over the years, several malware strains have used synthetic clicks to dismiss warning boxes, so Apple is certainly no stranger to the strategy. In response, they have given their OS some ability to detect and ignore synthetic clicks, but as Wardle demonstrated, it’s far from perfect and even a fully updated High Sierra system was not completely protected.

Wardle concluded his presentation with the following: “I wasn’t trying to find a bypass, but I uncovered a way to fully break a foundational security mechanism. If a security mechanism falls over so easily, did they not test this? I’m almost embarrassed to talk about it.”

Apple has not yet responded to Wardle’s presentation.

Used with permission from Article Aggregator

Joseph Martin

Fax Machines Might Be Gateway To Next Hacker Attack

August 24, 2018 by Joseph Martin

Nothing bad could possibly happen to your company’s network if the only piece of information the hackers have is your fax number, right?

Unfortunately not, according to recent research by employees at Check Point.

They recently revealed details about not one, but two different REC’s (Remote Code Execution) techniques that exploit flaws in the communications protocols of tens of millions of fax machines spread all over the globe.

If you think the Fax machine has largely gone the way of the dinosaur, think again. Many printers sport “all in one” functionality, which includes both scan and fax functionality, and therein lies the problem. Since these printers are invariably attached to your network, your fax number is a good a way in, since most people don’t even think about it.

Called the “Faxploit,” the new attack type involves a pair of known buffer overflow vulnerabilities, CVE-2018-5925 and CVE-2018-5924, which allows anyone who takes advantage of them to have the ability to execute code remotely.

The researchers who discovered the issue created a proof of concept video demonstrating the attack in action. In their demo, they made use of an HP Officejet Pro 6830 and an OfficeJet Pro 8720, sending an image file with a malicious payload through the phone line. The moment the fax machine receives it, the image is decoded and uploaded into the fax/printer’s memory.

From there, the sky is the limit. Having gained a foothold on the network, what happens next is entirely dependent on the nature of the payload delivered. One thing you can be sure of, however, is that none of the outcomes you can expect will be good.

The researchers point out that there’s nothing special about the two all in one printers they selected, and the vulnerability will work on just about any make or model. Something new to be worried about.

Joseph Martin

Android Still Tracking Users With Location History Turned Off

August 22, 2018 by Joseph Martin

According to Google’s support page on the matter, disabling your phone’s “Location History” in your phone’s privacy settings will prevent Google from tracking every move you make.

The support page reads as follows:

“You can turn off Location History at any time. With Location History off, the places you go are no longer stored.”

That doesn’t leave much in the way of wiggle room. A pity it’s not even close to being true.

A new investigation conducted by the Associated Press reveals that even with your Location History turned off, some Google Apps are designed so that they automatically store time-stamped location data on users, without asking their permission.

The AP report on the matter explains in further detail:

“…for example, Google stores a snapshot of where you are when you merely open its Maps app. Automatic daily weather updates on Android phones pinpoint roughly where you are, and some searchers that have nothing to do with location, like “chocolate chip cookies,” or “kids science kits,” pinpoint your precise latitude and longitude – accurate to the square foot – and save it to your Google account.”

To demonstrate their claim, the AP created a map of the movements of Gunes Acar, who carried his Android phone with “Location History” switched off in a bid to prevent his location data from being collected.

Despite taking this step, the AP researchers were able to produce a map of his train commute on a pair of trips to New York and visits to the High Line park, Chelsea Market, Hell’s Kitchen, Central Park, and Harlem. The team also discovered his home address in this manner, but in a bid to protect the professor’s privacy, they did not publish that information on the map tracing the routes mentioned above.

At this point, Google has not responded to the AP’s research.

Joseph Martin

Social Media App Filters Could Alter Beauty Perception

August 21, 2018 by Joseph Martin

File this one away under “unintended consequences.” There’s a newly emerging trend in the medical community called “Snapchat Dysmorphia” that’s leaving plastic surgeons around the country to sound the alarm, and in some cases, scratch their heads in disbelief.

Recent research conducted at Boston University has discovered that the digital filters featured prominently in social media services like Snapchat are influencing how Millennials think about beauty. It’s causing significant numbers of them to investigate the possibility of getting plastic surgery in order to look more like the filtered pictures of themselves.

The newly minted term, ‘Snapchat Dysmorphia’ is a variant of body dysmorphia, which is a mental health condition that causes people to be stressed and obsessed with the way they look. Previously, one of the leading causes of body dysmorphia has been the unrealistic standards of beauty portrayed in magazines and on televisions. These media portrayals include supermodels with perfect bodies setting a standard of perfection that few can ever hope to achieve.

The more recent trend, however, is an increasing percentage of young people wishing to look more like their filtered-image selves, with, as the report highlights, “fuller lips, bigger eyes, or a thinner nose.”

The researchers went onto say, “This is an alarming trend because those filtered selfies often present an unattainable look and are blurring the line of reality and fantasy for these patients…overall, social media apps, such as Snapchat and Facetune, are providing a new reality of beauty for today’s society. These apps allow one to alter his or her appearance in an instant and conform to an unrealistic and often unattainable standard of beauty.”

If you have a child who spends a significant amount of time on social media, then it’s something to keep a close eye on. Based on the data, this trend is only going to get stronger over time.

Joseph Martin

Survey Shows People Are Most Concerned About Data Theft

August 21, 2018 by Joseph Martin

How seriously does the average consumer take data theft? It’s an interesting (and fair) question, and one that Radware recently attempted to answer when the company sent out surveys. They contacted more than three thousand people to conduct its recent survey titled “Consumer Sentiments: Cybersecurity, Personal Data and the Impact on Customer Loyalty.”

As it turns out, today’s consumers take the matter even more seriously than many other types of crimes.

Here are some of the highlights from the recent report:

A full 55 percent of those surveyed said that data theft was their top concern

The theft of a personal wallet ranked a distant, with just 23 percent of respondents placing it as their top concern

10 percent of respondents listed auto theft as their primary concern

Just 6 percent listed the theft of their cell phone and house keys as their #1 concern

Anna Convery-Pelletier, Radware’s Chief Marketing Officer, had this to say about the report:

“It’s no surprise that data theft ranks so high in the minds of Americans as a major risk. It’s easy to buy a new car or a new cell phone, but having private data exposed can have permanent consequences for both the consumer and the brand where the breach occurred. When an organization does not properly secure its network, it is putting its brand reputation in jeopardy and risking its customer base.”

While that’s true, some of the results are curious. After all, the theft of a cell phone ranks quite low in terms of top concerns, but cellphones contain a treasure trove of personal data, which points to an odd disconnect in the survey results.

Additionally, while 54 percent of survey respondents said that having their social security number stolen was a major concern, only 18 percent said they were worried about having their banking information stolen, and only 9 percent listed the theft of healthcare information as a big issue.

In the end then, the survey raises at least as many questions as it answers, but it does shine a much needed light on a fascinating topic. Clearly, more study and education is needed.

Joseph Martin

Encrypted Chats Are Now Available In Skype

Gmail Releases New Confidential Mode

If You Use Photoshop, Update Immediately

New Intel Vulnerability Named Foreshadow Found

Macs Can Be Hacked With Synthetic Dismissal On Warning Boxes

Fax Machines Might Be Gateway To Next Hacker Attack

Android Still Tracking Users With Location History Turned Off

Survey Shows People Are Most Concerned About Data Theft

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