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...]
Apple’s Vulnerability Struggles
Apple has been taking steps as of late to help catch vulnerabilities before they reach the hands of bad actors. For example, they recently began providing security researchers iPhones to make it easier for them to find vulnerabilities. At around the same time Apple also increased their bug bounty program to $1 million for the top prize of getting full control of a phone without … [Read more...]
DEFCON 2019: Day 2 – Security Byte
What do brain computer interfaces, macOS PKGs, and police speed guns all have in common? They're all the topics of security presentations we saw on the second day of DEFCON! Last week the WatchGuard Threat Lab team attended the Black Hat and DEFCON security conferences, which are two of the best security research conferences every year. To share the experience, Marc Laliberte … [Read more...]