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A recently discovered hole in the security of the Bourne-Again Shell (bash) has the majority of Unix/Linux (including OS X) admins sweating bullets. You should be, too--attackers have already developed exploits to unleash on unpatched web servers, network services and daemons that use shell scripts with environment variables ( this can include network equipment, industrial devices, etc .) Jaime Blasco , AlienVault Labs Director, gives a good explanation of the exploit in this blog post . And, the video below gives you a quick overview of how AlienVault Unified Security Management (USM)  can detect malicious traffic on your network trying to locate and exploit this vulnerability. Basically, this vulnerability allows an attacker to execute shell commands on a server due to an issue in how bash interprets environment variables (such as "cookie", "host", "referrer"). Exploiting this allows an attacker to run shell commands directly. Once they have access to run shell comm...

It seems that there is no end to the Windows zero-days, as recently Microsoft patched three zero-day vulnerabilities in Windows which were actively exploited in the wild by hackers, and now a new Zero-day vulnerability has been disclosed affecting all supported releases of Windows operating system, excluding Windows Server 2003. Microsoft has issued a temporary security fix for the flaw and also confirmed that the zero-day flaw is being actively exploited by the hackers through limited, targeted attacks using malicious Microsoft PowerPoint documents sent as email attachments. According to the Microsoft Security Advisory published on Tuesday, the zero-day resides within the operating system's code that handles OLE (object linking and embedding) objects. OLE technology is most commonly used by Microsoft Office for embedding data from, for example, an Excel spreadsheet in a Word document. The vulnerability (designated as CVE-2014-6352 ) is triggered when a user is forced...

Google is taking its users' privacy very serious and making every possible effort for its users just to make them feel secure when they are online. Today, the tech giant has announced its enhanced two-step verification service that is based on a physical USB key, adding yet another layer of security to protect its users from hackers and other forms of online theft. SECURITY KEY- 2 STEP VERIFICATION USING USB DRIVES The "Security Key" feature will currently work on Chrome and will be free for Google users, but the company also notes that the Security Key is supporting the open Universal 2nd Factor (U2F) protocol from the FIDO Alliance, which will allow users to log in to Google Accounts by inserting a USB device into their systems. By letting users protect their accounts using two-factor authentication based on physical USB keys, it will be no longer any compulsion for you to type in the six-digit authentication code in Google's Gmail or your Google Acco...

The Search Engine giant is not going to spare the Pirated content providing sites . Google is ready to fulfill its commitment to downgrade the search rankings of ' notorious ' piracy sites globally that often rank above legal and commercial sites. Google and the Copyright holders are, to some extent, enemies for years, but in Google's ongoing anti-piracy efforts, the company will fight copyright infringement and assure rights holders that their contents will be appeared at the top of its search results and that the search made up only a small portion of pirate traffic. DOWNGRADE PIRATED SITES Google is preparing major tweaks to its search engine, which you'll be able to see this week, to ensure that the 'notorious' piracy sites that enable the downloading or streaming of pirated contents are out of search results when people search for music, movies and other copyrighted content. The announcement of the algorithm update came as Google updated " How Google Fights ...

Apple's latest desktop operating system, known as Mac OS X 10.10 Yosemite , sends location and search data of users without their knowledge to Apple's remote servers by default whenever a user queries the desktop search tool Spotlight, which questions users' privacy once again. The technology firm faced criticism on Monday when users came to know about the company's About Spotlight & Privacy which clearly states that anyone who uses the Spotlight feature in either Mac OS X 10.10 Yosemite or its newly launched mobile operating system iOS 8 will have their location and search information passed back to Apple's servers to process. APPLE COLLECTS USERS' DATA AND FORWARDS IT TO MICROSOFT AS WELL On one hand, where Apple decided to enable hard drive encryption by default, despite the FBI requests not to do so. But on the other, the company is itself putting its users' privacy on risk. The same data Apple collects from the users' searched te...