System Administration | Breaking Cybersecurity News | The Hacker News

A group of hackers recently attacked and took offline several websites belonging to credit-card sharing groups, security experts, and other hacking communities that had neglected basic security practices. On Christmas morning, the administrators of six websites discovered their sites had been hacked. According to a newsletter published by the hackers on Dec. 25, the second issue of "Owned and Exposed" listed carders.cc, ettercap, exploit-db, backtrack, inj3ct0r, and free-hack as compromised sites. Free-hack was targeted for being "lame script kiddies," while the other sites had criminal ties or were security experts criticized for their poor security practices, as noted in the e-zine. Mati Aharoni, the administrator of exploit-db, a site cataloging known exploits and vulnerabilities, admitted the breach in a blog post but mentioned that the damage was minimal. "Other than our egos, the damage is not severe," Aharoni wrote. The hackers posted a copy of th...

Fedora 14, known as "Laughlin," officially launched on Tuesday, offering numerous new features aimed at enhancing the user experience for this open-source desktop operating system. Usability Focus In recent releases, Fedora, sponsored by Red Hat, has concentrated on improving usability. According to DistroWatch, Fedora is the second most popular Linux distribution after Ubuntu. Recent improvements have targeted networking, software management, and hardware support, focusing on bug fixes and stability in the latest release. Enhanced Desktop Environment One significant addition to Fedora 14 is "libjpegturbo," a library that dramatically improves performance for users loading and saving JPEG images. This library "practically halves processing time on most systems," claim the developers, even benefiting those on older hardware. Another notable feature is SPICE (Simple Protocol for Independent Computing Environment), a desktop virtualization framework enha...

Vulnerability Management (VM) has long been a cornerstone of organizational cybersecurity. Nearly as old as the discipline of cybersecurity itself, it aims to help organizations identify and address potential security issues before they become serious problems. Yet, in recent years, the limitations of this approach have become increasingly evident.  At its core, Vulnerability Management processes remain essential for identifying and addressing weaknesses. But as time marches on and attack avenues evolve, this approach is beginning to show its age. In a recent report, How to Grow Vulnerability Management into Exposure Management (Gartner, How to Grow Vulnerability Management Into Exposure Management, 8 November 2024, Mitchell Schneider Et Al.), we believe Gartner® addresses this point precisely and demonstrates how organizations can – and must – shift from a vulnerability-centric strategy to a broader Exposure Management (EM) framework. We feel it's more than a worthwhile read an...