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If you are a security researcher and fond of traveling from one conference to another, then United Airlines' bug bounty program would be of great interest for you. United Airlines has launched a new bug bounty program inviting security researchers and bug hunters to report vulnerabilities in its websites, apps and web portals. Bug bounty programs are very common among technology firms, including Google and Facebook, who offer you hundreds of thousands of dollars as rewards for exposing security flaws and errors in their products. So, what's different in United Airlines new bug bounty? The most interesting part of this bug bounty program is – Instead of offering cold, hard cash, United Airlines is offering air miles as the reward for yours . Let's see what United Airlines says about its bug bounty program: " At United, we take your safety, security and privacy seriously. We utilize best practices and are confident that our systems are secure ," ...

Target's data breach is a chilling example: After the widely publicized hack, 12% of loyal shoppers no longer shop at that retailer, and 36% shop at the retailer less frequently. For those who continue to shop, 79% are more likely to use cash instead of credit cards.  According to DeMeo, Vice President of Global Marketing and Analytics at Interactions Marketing Group, shoppers who use cash statistically spend less money, hurting the company. Indeed, 26% say they will knowingly spend less than before. So, why did Target get hacked? There could be two reasons, either they (or one of their vendors) lacked in their IT Security implementation or their employees were not stepped through effective security awareness training. In Target's case, an employee at one of their vendors was tricked into clicking on a phishing link. Now, let's have a look at what Target affirmed: "Target was certified as meeting the standard for the payment card industry in Septembe...

Just after a new security vulnerability surfaced Wednesday, many tech outlets started comparing it with HeartBleed, the serious security glitch uncovered last year that rendered communications with many well-known web services insecure, potentially exposing Millions of plain-text passwords. But don't panic. Though the recent vulnerability has a more terrific name than HeartBleed , it is not going to cause as much danger as HeartBleed did. Dubbed VENOM , stands for Virtualized Environment Neglected Operations Manipulation , is a virtual machine security flaw uncovered by security firm CrowdStrike that could expose most of the data centers to malware attacks, but in theory. Yes, the risk of Venom vulnerability is theoretical as there is no real-time exploitation seen yet, while, on the other hand, last year's HeartBleed bug was practically exploited by hackers unknown number of times, leading to the theft of critical personal information. Now let's know more about Ven...

This week you have quite a long list of updates to follow from Microsoft, Adobe as well as Firefox. Despite announcing plans to kill its monthly patch notification for Windows 10, the tech giant has issued its May 2015 Patch Tuesday , releasing 13 security bulletins that addresses a total of 48 security vulnerabilities in many of their products. Separately, Adobe has also pushed a massive security update to fix a total of 52 vulnerabilities in its Flash Player, Reader, AIR and Acrobat software. Moreover, Mozilla has fixed 13 security flaws in its latest stable release of Firefox web browser, Firefox 38, including five critical flaws. First from the Microsoft's side: MICROSOFT PATCH TUESDAY Three out of 13 security bulletins issued by the company are rated as 'critical', while the rest are 'important' in severity, with none of these vulnerabilities are actively exploited at this time. The affected products include Internet Explorer (IE), ...

Small office and home office (SOHO) routers are an increasingly common target for cybercriminals, not because of any vulnerability, but because most routers are loosely managed and often deployed with default administrator credentials. A new report suggests that hackers are using large botnet of tens of thousands of insecure home and office-based routers to launch Distributed Denial-of-Service ( DDoS ) attacks . Security researchers from DDoS protection firm Incapsula uncovered a router-based botnet, still largely active while investigating a series of DDoS attacks against its customers that have been underway since at least last December, 2014. Over the past four months, researchers have recorded malicious traffic targeting 60 of its clients came from some 40,269 IP addresses belonging to 1,600 ISPs around the world. Almost all of the infected routers that were part of the botnet appear to be ARM-based models from a California-based networking company Ubiquiti Net...

Last week, I have to communicate with my friend overseas in China. We both were aware that our email communications were being monitored. So, we both were forced to install and use a fully-fledged encrypted email system. Although it appeared to be very secure, it was quite cumbersome to handle. If you are ever faced with the same situation, I am here to introduce you a very simple and easy-to-use approach to encrypt your files and send them to the person you want to communicate with. Here's the Kicker: You don't even need to install any software or sign up to any website in order to use the file encryption service. So, what do I have today in my box? " Otr.to " — an open-source peer-to-peer browser-based messaging application that offers secure communication by making use of "Off-the-Record" (OTR) Messaging, a cryptographic protocol for encrypting instant messaging applications. We first introduced you Otr.to two months ago. At that time,...