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Throughout 2020, businesses, in general, have had their hands full with IT challenges. They had to rush to accommodate a sudden shift to remote work. Then they had to navigate a rapid adoption of automation technologies. And as the year came to a close, more businesses began trying to assemble the safety infrastructure required to return to some semblance of normal in 2021. But at the end of the year,  news of a massive breach  of IT monitoring software vendor SolarWinds introduced a new complication – the possibility of a wave of secondary data breaches and cyber-attacks. And because SolarWinds' products have a presence in so many business networks, the size of the threat is massive. So far, though, most of the attention is getting paid to large enterprises like Microsoft and Cisco (and the US Government), who were the primary target of the SolarWinds breach. What nobody's talking about is the rest of the 18,000 or so SolarWinds clients who may have been affected. For the...

Apple has removed a controversial feature from its macOS operating system that allowed the company's own first-party apps to bypass content filters, VPNs, and third-party firewalls. Called " ContentFilterExclusionList ," it included a list of as many as 50 Apple apps like iCloud, Maps, Music, FaceTime, HomeKit, the App Store, and its software update service that were routed through Network Extension Framework, effectively circumventing firewall protections. This exclusion list has been scrubbed now from macOS 11.2 beta 2. The issue first came to light last October following the release of macOS Big Sur, prompting concerns from security researchers who said the feature was ripe for abuse, adding it could be leveraged by an attacker to exfiltrate sensitive data by piggybacking it on to legitimate Apple apps included on the list and then bypass firewalls and security software. "After lots of bad press and lots of feedback/bug reports to Apple from developers such...

The Need For Unified Security Google Workspace is where teams collaborate, share ideas, and get work done. But while it makes work easier, it also creates new security challenges. Cybercriminals are constantly evolving, finding ways to exploit misconfigurations, steal sensitive data, and hijack user accounts. Many organizations try to secure their environment by piecing together different security tools, hoping that multiple layers of protection will keep them safe.  But in reality, this patchwork approach often creates blind spots, making it harder—not easier—to defend against threats. To truly secure Google Workspace, businesses need a unified security strategy that offers complete protection without unnecessary complexity. The problem with most security solutions is that they only solve part of the puzzle. Point solutions, like tools that block malware or phishing attacks, might work well for a specific type of threat but fail to recognize suspicious user behavior, unauthori...

As the pandemic continues to accelerate the shift towards working from home, a  slew of digital threats  have capitalized on the health concern to exploit weaknesses in the remote work infrastructure and carry out malicious attacks. Now according to network security platform provider SAM Seamless Network , over 200,000 businesses that have deployed the Fortigate VPN solution—with default configuration—to enable employees to connect remotely are vulnerable to man-in-the-middle (MitM) attacks, allowing attackers to present a valid SSL certificate and fraudulently take over a connection. "We quickly found that under default configuration the SSL VPN is not as protected as it should be, and is vulnerable to MITM attacks quite easily," SAM IoT Security Lab's Niv Hertz and Lior Tashimov said. "The Fortigate SSL-VPN client only verifies that the CA was issued by Fortigate (or another trusted CA), therefore an attacker can easily present a certificate issued to a differ...

Kickass Torrents (KAT cr) was once a hugely popular online portal, renowned for its vast archive of movies, music, TV shows, and other media. It was a treasure trove for those seeking rare content and for users looking to share their creations. However, Kickass Torrents faced significant opposition. The movie and music industries saw the site as a threat to their revenue, accusing it of promoting copyright infringement. Despite this, the Kickass Torrents team continued to advocate for its users, claiming they were providing a valuable service. The Downfall and Resurgence of Kickass Torrents Eventually, legal action caught up with Kickass Torrents. In July 2017, U.S. authorities shut down the site after its owner, Artem Vaulin, was charged with allowing the distribution of copyrighted material. Following the shutdown, a group of loyal contributors founded the Katcr.co forum, aiming to restore the popular torrent site to its former glory. Many wondered if this was the end for Kicka...

While continuing its crackdown on services that help Chinese citizens to bypass Great Firewall, Chinese authorities have sentenced a man to five-and-a-half years in prison for selling a VPN service without obtaining a proper license from the government. Earlier this year, the Chinese government announced a ban on "unauthorized" VPN services , making it mandatory for companies to obtain an appropriate license from the government in order to operate in the country. Citizens in China usually make use of VPN and Proxy services to bypass the country's Great Firewall, also known as the Golden Shield project, which employs a variety of tricks to censor the Internet in the country. The Great Firewall project already blocked access to more than 150 out of the world's 1,000 top websites, which includes Google, Facebook, Twitter, Dropbox, Tumblr, and The Pirate Bay in the country. VPN helps Chinese citizens encrypt their Internet traffic and route it through a distant c...

Image source: goldenfrog In an effort to continue its crackdown on VPNs, Chinese authorities have arrested a 26-year-old man for selling VPN software on the Internet. China's Supreme Court has sentenced Deng Jiewei from Dongguan in Guangdong province, close to Hong Kong, to nine months in prison for selling virtual private network (VPN) software through his own small independent website. VPN encrypts users' Internet traffic and routes it through a distant connection so that web surfers can hide their identities and location data while accessing websites that are usually restricted or censored by any country. Chinese citizens usually make use of VPNs to bypass the Great Firewall of China , also known as the Golden Shield project, which employs a variety of tricks to censor the Internet in the country. The project already blocked access to some 171 out of the world's 1,000 top websites, including Google, Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr, Dropbox, and The Pirate Bay in...

We have been hearing a lot about Rule 41 after the US Department of Justice has pushed an update to the rule. The change to the Rule 41 of the Federal Rules of Criminal Procedure grants the FBI much greater powers to hack legally into any computer across the country, and perhaps anywhere in the world, with just a single search warrant authorized by any US judge. However, both civil liberties groups and tech companies have blasted the proposed change, saying it is an affront to the Fourth Amendment and would allow the cops and Feds in America to hack remotely into people's computers and phones around the world. Google, Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF), Demand Progress, FightForTheFuture, TOR (The Onion Router), Private Internet Access and other VPN providers have joined their hands to block changes to Rule 41. " The U.S. government wants to use an obscure procedure—amending a federal rule known as Rule 41— to radically expand their authority to hack," the ...

Cyber criminals have explored one more way to exploit Heartbleed OpenSSL bug against organisations to hijack multiple active web sessions conducted over a virtual private network connection. The consulting and incident response Mandiant investigated targeted attack against an unnamed organization and said the hackers have exploited the " Heartbleed " security vulnerability in OpenSSL running in the client's SSL VPN concentrator to remotely access active sessions of an organization's internal network. The incident is the result of attacks leveraging the OpenSSL Heartbleed vulnerabilities, which resides in the OpenSSL's heartbeat functionality, if enabled would return 64KB of random memory in plaintext to any client or server requesting for a connection. The vulnerability infected almost two-third of internet web servers, including the popular websites. Recently, there has been an arrest of a Canadian teen of stealing usernames, credentials, session IDs and other da...

Twitter , the biggest Social Media platform used for vital communication is now banned in Turkey from the last few days, after Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan promised to root out the social media service during an election rally this week with the help of a court order. " Twitter and so on, we will root them out. The international community can say this or that – I don't care. They will see the power of the Turkish Republic ." After the ban imposed on Twitter late on Thursday, millions of Turkey users began using Google's DNS service to bypassing censorship, that briefly helped Turks stay connected to Twitter. Turkey Government is trying to close all the possible loopholes that had allowed users to circumvent the ban and finally today the authorities have also blocked the Google DNS service (8.8.8.8 and 8.8.4.4), However the number of tweets jumped 138% in the last 24 Hours and almost 2.5 million tweets have been posted from the country after the ban imposed...

Yet another American Internet privacy service has bitten the dust, prompted by fears about broad government surveillance demands. CryptoSeal, a Virtual private network (VPN) based in California has decided to shutter its privacy-conscious service rather than hand over its encryption keys to the U.S. Government. VPNs are secure tunnels to the Internet that allow users to mask their location, defeat regional restrictions, stay safe over public Wi-Fi connections, and maintain at least a modicum of privacy online. CryptoSeal is the latest company to voluntarily shut down its service after the U.S. Government's legal action against Lavabit, an email service used by former NSA contractor Edward Snowden. " With immediate effect as of this notice, CryptoSeal Privacy, our consumer VPN service, is terminated, " a notice reads on the company's website. " All cryptographic keys used in the operation of the service have been zerofilled...all records created incidental ...

The very first question we always try to figure before choosing a trusted VPN service - Can't a VPN provider just look at my traffic all they want and see what I'm doing? Well, a reputated  VPN provider today answers the Question and admitted that they sniffed the traffic on one of its United States-based servers in order to catch an alleged hacker. Proxy.sh , a quality VPN service with no-logging policy, made a surprise announcement : " We are unfortunate to announce that there have been abuses complaints about hacking activities on our U.S. Illinois 1 node. We have been saddened to learn that these actions were harmful to individuals (human beings). As a result, we will open this node again and monitor it with Wireshark for a period of 7 days. Torrentfreak  noticed that there was no mention of any legal process, court order, police action or other similar outside influence compelling Proxy. sh to do so. The monitoring was triggered after Proxy....

Since Snowden came forward with details about the NSA's PRISM program in June, web users concerned about online privacy are increasingly turning toward privacy tools to protect their online data. U.S. Government project PRISM allows the government to tap phone calls, email, and web browsing of any citizen without a warrant. New metrics from The Tor Project show that, the usage of Tor Browser is increasing day by day due to the fact that internet users are getting more and more inclined in keeping their online activity isolated from internet surveillance programs like US Prism. Tor was launched in 2004 and developed by the U.S. Navy, is used by governments, activists, journalists and dissidents to conceal their online activities from prying eyes. The TOR online anonymity service has exploded since early June, up more than 100 percent, from just over 500,000 global users to more than 1.2 million. Of those 600,000 new users, roughly ten percent are from...

If you have followed the startling revelations about the scope of the US government's surveillance efforts, you may have thought you were reading about the end of privacy, and about the Enemies of the Internet. " My computer was arrested before I was ." a perceptive comment by an internet activist who had been arrested by means of online surveillance.  Online surveillance is a growing danger for journalists, bloggers, citizen-journalists and human rights defenders. Over the last few years, law enforcement agencies have been pushing for unprecedented powers of surveillance and access to your private online communications. This week the PRISM surveillance scandal has consumed the Internet as the implications of massive scale U.S. Government spying begin to sink in. The US National Security Organization (NSA) is almost certainly one of (if not the) most technologically sophisticated, well-funded and secretive organizations in the world. The Prism initiative was launched ...

IRAN has spent years fending off cyber attacks, blocking access and isolated their own intranet off from the outside world. Many Iranians was using of virtual private network (VPNs), which provides encrypted links directly to private networks based abroad, to access Sites like YouTube and Facebook after bypassing the country's internet filter. But recently, Iranian authorities have blocked the use of most virtual private network to stop people in the country from circumventing the government's internet filter. A widespread government internet filter prevents Iranians from accessing many sites on the official grounds they are offensive or criminal. Ramezanali Sobhani-Fard, the head of parliament's information and communications technology committee said, " Within the last few days illegal VPN ports in the country have been blocked. Only legal and registered VPNs can from now on be used. " Registered and legal VPN access can still be purchased, but the typical fi...

Systems on your network log data 24/7/365. Simply allowing logs to take up disk space, reviewing them only after something has happened and deleting logs when you run low on disk space are all the strategies of an admin doomed to always being in firefighting mode, reacting to bad things when they happen. Proactive log management can help an admin get into a proactive mode You know that event log monitoring is important, since all your systems and key applications log data. But since no two systems log to the same place, or in the same format, it's almost impossible to get ahead of the logging and actually pay attention to what is being logged. That's where event log monitoring comes into play; here's why: Aggregate your logs in a central location:  With logs spread across dozens or even hundreds of systems, there's no way you can manage them where they are. Event log monitoring applications can gather up all your logs in a central location, making them easy to analyze, store, a...