Passwords

This Week In Security: Poking Holes In Two Factor Authentication

It was another busy week in the security world. There was big news on the legal front, as The U.S. Supreme Court took steps to protect the data stored on mobile devices from warrantless searches by police. (That’s good news.) But the week also plenty of concerning stories about the security of data stored on mobile phones, tablets and the like. One of the stories that gained a lot of attention was DUO Security’s report on a flaw in PayPal’s two factor authentication feature that could expose the accounts of  security-conscious PayPal users. As The Security Ledger reported, DUO researcher Zach Lanier discovered a flaw in mobile APIs published by PayPal that would allow anyone with a valid PayPal user name and password to sidestep two-factor authentication when accessing PayPal accounts that had that option enabled. After DUO went public with information on the flaw, PayPal disabled two factor authentication […]

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Paypal Disables Two Factor From Mobile

In the wake of a disclosure, yesterday, that a secure log-in feature was vulnerable to hacking, PayPal has suspended the ability of customers who elect to use the feature to log in to PayPal using the company’s mobile application. In a blog post on Wednesday, PayPal Director of Global Initiatives Anuj Nayar said that the company took the step of disabling mobile application log ins after the researcher, Zach Lanier of DUO Security, published his findings in a blog post yesterday. As reported by The Security Ledger, researcher Zach Lanier of DUO Labs discovered that a PayPal mobile API (application program interface) for its Security Key two-factor authentication technology contains a vulnerability that would allow even a non-technical hacker to bypass the second factor when accessing a Paypal customer’s account. The problem comes up when trying to access a Paypal account protected using two-factor authentication using a PayPal mobile application – […]

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Code Spaces Probably A ‘Target of Opportunity’

The spectacular collapse this week of Code Spaces, a cloud-based code repository, may have been the result of a an unspectacular “opportunistic” hack, rather than a targeted operation, according to one cloud security expert. The sudden demise of the online application repository has sent shock waves through the tech industry, laying bare what some say are lax practices among many cloud-based application and infrastructure providers. But the attack itself was almost certainly the result of a larger, indiscriminate cyber criminal campaign, said Jeff Schilling, the Chief Security Officer of Firehost, a Texas-based secure cloud provider. “This is something we pretty frequently: companies get held ransom with a DDoS attack, and if that doesn’t work, (the attackers) will resort to doing other things,” Schilling told The Security Ledger. But Code Spaces almost certainly wasn’t the only company the extortionists worked on, Schilling said. Instead, the company was likely caught up in a wide net […]

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This Week In Security: Ebay’s School of Hard Knocks

It’s the end of another busy week in the security world. As we’re wont to do at The Security Ledger, we had DUO Security Evangelist Mark Stanislav in to the deluxe Security Ledger Studios to talk about the events of the week. On the agenda this week: the continued fallout from the hack of online auction giant eBay. The company ran into a thicket of criticism this week for the breach and its botched response. Despite knowing about the security breach for weeks, eBay seemed unprepared for the fallout once the news became public. Beyond its statements to the press, the company hadn’t taken steps to streamline the (inevitable) flood of customers who wanted to update their password. In fact, more than a day after the news broke, eBay still hadn’t made mention of it on their home page. What lessons can we learn from the breach at online auction […]

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iPhone and iPad Hijacking: What You Need To Know

The past 24 hours has seen a spate of stories warning about a spate of ‘ransomware’ attacks on iPhones and iPads – especially in the the UK and Australia. According to the reports, compromised devices are locked and owners are instructed to email a ransom (variously: $100, $50, €100) to one “Oleg Pliss” to have their devices unlocked. These attacks aren’t really news. In fact, the Oleg Pliss scam appears to have been circulating for close to six months. However, it’s worthwhile reviewing what we do (and don’t) know about these latest attacks on mobile devices. Accordingly, Security Ledger has put together a short FAQ that tells you what you need to know about the latest mobile scam, and to dispel some of the rumors floating around in the Internet ether. What’s Going On? According to news reports and complaints on Apple Support forums, owners of iPhones and iPads are having their devices locked. […]

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