Pew Research recently asked adults in the US some basic digital knowledge questions as a part of a research study. Out of 10 questions asked, only 20% scored 70% or higher with correct answers. There are some concerns about the questions Pew used though. While the survey asks some good questions, one of the questions doesn’t relate to digital knowledge. It asks to identify a … [Read more...]
LastPass, an Extremely Valuable Target for Hackers
Last week, researcher Tavis Ormandy from Google Project Zero found and published a vulnerability in The LastPass browser extension. The vulnerability affects the Chrome and Opera extensions and could allow a malicious server to capture LastPass credentials. Neither LastPass nor Project Zero released details on how this exploit works but by reviewing the notes from Project Zero … [Read more...]
9th Circuit Court of Appeals Makes CFAA Law More Confusing
In an area of law that worries many white hat hackers, the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act (CFAA) makes testing websites and vulnerabilities somewhat risky. In 1986 the CFAA amended the Comprehensive Crime Control Act of 1984, to cover unauthorized access to a computer. Now , it seems that anyone can scrape public data from a website without violating the CFAA. Previously, … [Read more...]
Attackers DDoS Wikipedia, Twitch and World of Warcraft
Over the weekend, gamers who were hoping to quest through World of Warcraft Classic, the official reincarnation of the original 15-year old WoW, were instead greeted by disconnections and downed servers as a hacking outfit going by UKDrillas launched a massive Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attack against the gaming service. The group, whose Twitter account has since been … [Read more...]
XKCD Forum Database Breached
If you use the password CorrectHorseBatteryStaple you may want to change it. This week, security researcher Troy Hunt revealed that someone recently breached the XKCD forums database. The attacker made this database public and released usernames, email addresses, and hashed passwords. Somewhat ironically XKCD, created by Randall Munroe, focuses on technical and IT humor. One … [Read more...]
