What was the first online service that you signed up for? Perhaps it was your middle school email address (“soccerloveR1450@hotmail.com” anyone?) or your very first Tumblr or Myspace account. Whatever it was, it’s likely that you haven’t used these accounts in years — but did you ever actually delete the account?   Over the past decade, you’ve likely collected various online accounts that you no longer use. But just because you stop using an account doesn’t mean that it doesn’t exist — and your data…

Today’s VERT Alert addresses Microsoft’s October 2021 Security Updates. VERT is actively working on coverage for these vulnerabilities and expects to ship ASPL-968 on Wednesday, October 13th. In-The-Wild & Disclosed CVEs CVE-2021-40449 Up first this month, we have an elevation of privilege in Win32k that has been exploited in-the-wild via MysterySnail. This vulnerability appears to impact all systems from Windows 7 to the newly released Windows 11. Microsoft has rated this as Exploitation Detected on…

The former CEO of failed South Carolina electric and natural gas public utility SCANA Corporation (SCANA) has been sent to federal prison after pleading guilty to conspiracy to commit mail and wire fraud. Evidence presented to a South Carolina Court showed that 66-year-old Kevin B. Marsh intentionally defrauded rate-payers while overseeing and managing SCANA’s operations.  Marsh made false and materially misleading statements about the progress of the company’s building projects so that SCANA could obtain…

VMware CEO Raghu Raghuram opened VMworld 2021 by highlighting that “it’s no longer about a ‘cloud first’ approach—it’s about being ‘cloud smart’. Organisations should have the freedom to choose the ’right’ cloud, based on their strategic business goals.” To this end, “Multi-cloud is the digital business model for the next 20 years, as entire industries reinvent themselves.” Multi-cloud doesn’t just mean deploying applications across 2 or 3 of the major hyperscalers. It’s about building a…

You can develop the skills to qualify you for a variety of tech careers all online and on your own schedule. Image: REDPIXEL.PL/Shutterstock If you’ve been wanting to switch to a new tech career, there’s never been a better time for it. Because the self-paced courses in The Premier All CompTIA Certification Training Bundle: Lifetime Access can prepare you for nine of the most popular CompTIA exams. Certifications from the Computing Technology Industry Association (CompTIA)…

3Critical 70Important 0Moderate 1Low Microsoft patched 74 CVEs in the October 2021 Patch Tuesday release, including three rated as critical, 70 rated as important and one rated as low. This is the eighth month in 2021 that Microsoft patched fewer than 100 CVEs. This month’s update includes patches for: .NET Core & Visual Studio Active Directory Federation Services Console Window Host HTTP.sys Microsoft DWM Core…

Google is bringing together a bevy of in-house experts to form a new cybersecurity advisory team. In a statement released earlier today, Google announced the creation of its new Google Cybersecurity Action Team, which it says will have “the singular mission of supporting the security and digital transformation of governments, critical infrastructure, enterprises, and small businesses.” In pursuit of this mission, the team will provide services in four key areas: strategic advisory, trust and compliance, security customer and solutions…

The NSA issued a technical advisory to warn organizations against the use of wildcard TLS certificates and the new ALPACA TLS attack. The National Security Agency (NSA) is warning organizations against the use of wildcard TLS certificates and the new ALPACA TLS attack. A wildcard certificate is a public key certificate that can be used to secure all first-level subdomains of single domain name. “On the surface, wildcard certificates appear to be a great way to quickly…