Author Archives: khovde2

Hackers and cybercriminals are not missing a beat during the coronavirus pandemic. In Italy, the government is issuing relief payments to citizens (about $650). They are receiving claims through a social security website. There is a huge volume of legitimate traffic on the website–they have received an average of 100 claims per second. In theContinue reading “Stimulus Check Cyber Issues”

Hospitals are testing and treating COVID-19 patients, medical labs are overwhelmed processing COVID-19 tests, medical research organizations are working on vaccines and studying antibodies, organizations like the WHO and CDC are trying to distribute new and accurate information about COVID-19, and the US Health and Human Services department is working to distribute ventilators and PPE.Continue reading “Healthcare on Another Front Line”

Cybercriminal group Fin7 has been launching cyber attacks in the United States and Europe for years. They have a history of targeting retail and service industry point of sale systems, with the DOJ reporting that they’ve stolen 15 million payment card records. They also have a long history of phishing attacks. Fin7 has used realContinue reading “Fin7’s Newest Attack”

With many offices closing to prevent the spread of COVID-19, more and more employees are working remotely. This has made VPNs a ripe target for cyber attacks. It is important for VPN infrastructure to be kept patched and updated, in addition to the devices employees use to remote in. There is likely to be anContinue reading “VPNs and Work From Home”

After the Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election, there is a lot of attention being payed to the 2020 presidential election. Today’s Super Tuesday primary election has been a first test of what kinds of interference we might see this year. Coronavirus fears can be leveraged to create panic in strategic locations to keepContinue reading “Election Interference”

The 2020 census is coming, and it will be a little different this time around. This decade, the census will be collected via the internet. For households that do not submit census data online, census workers will go door to door and record census data on smartphones. The census is a great cyber target forContinue reading “2020 Census”

This post will focus on the “I” in CIA–integrity, and Google Maps. People rely on Google Maps to get them where they need to go and to find the quickest route. The traffic data used by Google Maps is captured by pinging smartphones that have the app open. About a month ago a man inContinue reading “99 Smartphones go by”

The FDA recently issued an alert about GE medical device vulnerabilities. The vulnerabilities are in Clinical Information Central Stations and Telemetry servers, the technology used for monitoring a patients vital signs from centralized location (for example, from the nurses station). The vulnerabilities in these devices could allow a hacker to change the configuration of theContinue reading “GE Medical Device Vulnerability”

Privacy Rights Clearinghouse (privacyrights.org) is a non-profit based in California that provides information about privacy. They have tons of articles with advice on how to protect your personal information. One resource PRC offers that may be of particular interest to the security professional or enthusiast is a database of data breaches. The data can beContinue reading “Privacy Rights Clearinghouse”

Cybrary is a great resource for people who want to learn more about cybersecurity topics. They offer tons of free courses covering a wide range of topics, and for cybersecurity enthusiasts at all levels (note that not everything on the site is free). Cybrary also has courses that are geared specifically toward industry certifications fromContinue reading “Check out Cybrary!”