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Showing posts from January, 2019

Trojan malware is back and it's the biggest hacking threat to your business

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  Old school but effective, hackers are shifting aware from in-your-face ransomware to attacks that are much more subtle. Trojan malware attacks against business targets have rocketed in the last year, as cyber criminals alter their tactics away from short-term gain and in-your-face ransomware attacks towards more subtle, long-term campaigns with the aim of stealing information including banking information, personal data and even intellectual property. Figures from security company Malwarebytes Labs  in a new report  suggest that trojan and backdoor attacks have risen to become the most detected against businesses – and the number of trojan attacks has more than doubled in the last year, increasing by 132 percent between 2017 and 2018, with backdoors up by 173 percent. Malwarebytes classifies trojans and backdoors separately, describing  a trojan  as a program "that claim to perform one function but actually do another", Meanwhile, a  backdoor  is defined as "a type of

Over 87GB of email addresses and passwords exposed in Collection 1 dump

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  An 87GB dump of email addresses and passwords containing almost 773 million unique addresses and just under 22 million unique passwords has been found. Almost 773 million unique email addresses and just under 22 million unique passwords were found to be hosted on cloud service MEGA. Image: Troy Hunt In a blog post, security researcher Troy Hunt said the collection totalled over 12,000 separate files and more than 87GB of data. The data, dubbed Collection #1, is a set of email addresses and passwords totalling 2,692,818,238 rows that has allegedly come from many different sources. "What I can say is that my own personal data is in there and it's accurate; right email address and a password I used many years ago," Hunt wrote. "In short, if you're in this breach, one or more passwords you've previously used are floating around for others to see." Some passwords, including his own, have been "dehashed", that is converted back to plain text. H

All the flash-y new storage technologies showcased at CES 2019

  Higher densities and new storage technologies for specialized use cases were unveiled at CES 2019. Manufacturers of traditional hard drives and flash storage solutions outlined their product roadmaps at  CES 2019 . While some new products expected ship as early as this quarter, others are simply proof-of-concept devices requiring refinement before hitting store shelves. Here is pick of the most important storage announcements made at CES this year. SanDisk SanDisk introduced the new  SanDisk Extreme PRO Portable SSD , which connects to devices using either USB-A or USB-C 3.1 Gen 2. Internally, the drive uses an NVMe to USB bridge, allowing for speeds up to 1 GB/s. The Extreme PRO uses a ruggedized shell similar to the standard Extreme Portable SSD, which uses a slower SATA to USB bridge. The newly announced variant opts for an aluminium shell to better dissipate heat from the SSD. The Extreme PRO Portable SSD will be available in 512 GB, 1 TB, and 2 TB capacities. SanDisk also demons

Windows 10 finally overtakes Windows 7 as favorite desktop OS

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  The turning point was flagged by web traffic analytics firm Net Applications, whose NetMarketShare figures showed Windows 10's market share on desktop and laptop PCs passing Windows 7 in December 2018. More than three years after its launch, Windows 10 has finally overtaken its predecessor Windows 7 in terms of popularity. The turning point was flagged by web traffic analytics firm Net Applications, whose NetMarketShare  figures showed Windows 10's market share on desktop and laptop PCs overtaking Windows 7  for the first time in December 2018. In that month, 39.22% of all Windows PCs were running Windows 10 and 36.90% were running Windows 7, according to the NetMarketShare figures. Overall, Windows was by far the most popular desktop OS, with 86.2% market share. In the middle of last year, Microsoft said that Windows 10 was running on nearly 700 million devices each month. That figure didn't just include PCs, but also tablets, phones, and Xbox consoles. While Microsoft i