SANTA CLARA, Calif., Dec. 17, 2020 /PRNewswire/ — Palo Alto Networks (NYSE: PANW), today launched a rapid response program to help SolarWinds Orion customers navigate risks from cyberattacks. SolarWinds Orion products are currently being exploited by malicious actors to gain access to the company’s systems, activity being tracked by Palo Alto Networks’ Unit 42 as SolarStorm. A rapid compromise assessment to map out an organization’s attack surface and tailored incident response services are available immediately at:…

Even the best psychics, science fiction and horror writers could not have predicted or written 2020.   It’s been quite the year. I am thankful that it’s almost over.  The COVID-19 Coronavirus started a global lockdown that sent millions of people to work from home, or wherever they could shelter in place. Personally, working at home didn’t seem like a bad option at the time.  But after 8 months, sheltering in place, working from home, and sharing your Internet bandwidth with three others who also need real-time audio and…

Executive Summary There has been considerable focus on the recent disclosures associated with SolarWinds, and while existing analysis on the broader campaign has resulted in detection against specific IoCs associated with the Sunburst trojan, the focus within the Advanced Threat Research (ATR) team has been to determine the possibility of additional persistence measures. Our analysis into the backdoor reveals that the level of access lends itself to the assumption that additional persistence mechanisms could have…

End users just want to do their job, not become cybersecurity experts. When providing users with cybersecurity help, keep these tips in mind. Image: Getty Images/iStockphoto For many years, IT professionals have been trying to turn everyone who uses a computing device into a tech-savvy superuser who understands precisely what’s needed to stay safe while traversing the internet. People have indeed become superusers, but not necessarily super secure. To make matters worse, if users are…

Researchers have discovered a botnet dubbed PgMiner that targets PostgreSQL databases running on Linux servers to install a cryptocurrency miner. Security researchers from Palo Alto Networks have discovered a new botnet, tracked as PgMiner, that targets PostgreSQL databases running on Linux servers to install a cryptocurrency miner. PostgreSQL, also known as Postgres, is one of the most-used open-source relational database management systems (RDBMS) for production environments. It ranks fourth among all database management systems (DBMS)…

Researchers at a British university have created a new algorithm that uses artificial intelligence to predict which Twitter users are going to spread disinformation before they do it. The machine-learning algorithm was developed by a team of researchers at the University of Sheffield, led by PhD student Yida Mu and Dr. Nikos Aletras from the university’s Department of Computer Science. It can pinpoint with 79.7% accuracy which users are likely to share content from a news source…

Jack Wallen shows you how easy it can be to encrypt text to be sent via email, using Apple Mail and the GPG Suite. Image: iStockphoto/metamorworks If you’re at all security minded, you probably use encryption on some level. If you send sensitive documentation or information to others via email, you certainly use encryption. If not, it’s time you do. Problem is, most fail to use encryption because it’s not exactly the easiest task to…