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Report: Thieves Can Hack and Disable Your Home Alarm System | WIRED

Wired’s Kim Zetter reports on (independent) reports by two researchers that show how home alarm setups can be hacked remotely, from as far away as 250 yards. The vulnerabilities could allow a malicious actor to suppress alarms or create multiple, false alarms that would render the system unreliable (and really annoying). Zetter profiles the work of Logan Lamb, a security researcher at Oak Hill Ridge National Lab who conducted independent research on  three top brands of home alarm systems made by ADT, Vivint and a third company that asked to remain anonymous. She also cites work by Silvio Cesare, who works for Qualys who studied common home alarm systems sold in Australia, including devices manufactured by Swann, an Australian firm that also sells its systems in the U.S. Both discovered a litany of similar problems, Zetter reports: The systems use radio signals to report when monitored doors and windows are opened, but fail to encrypt or authenticate the signals being […]

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TRUST: Threat Reduction via Understanding Subjective Treatment

It has become obvious (to me, anyway) that spam, phishing, and malicious software are not going away. Rather, their evolution (e.g. phishing-to-spear phishing) has made it easier to penetrate business networks and increase the precision of such attacks. Yet we still apply the same basic technology such as bayesian spam filters and blacklists to keep the human at the keyboard from unintentionally letting these miscreants onto our networks. Ten years ago, as spam and phishing were exploding, the information security industry offered multiple solutions to this hard problem. A decade later, the solutions remain: SPF (Sender Policy Framework), DKIM (Domain Keys Identified Mail) and DMARC (Domain-based Message Authentication, Reporting & Conformance). Still: we find ourselves still behind the threat, rather than ahead of it. Do we have the right perspective on this? I wonder. The question commonly today is: “How do we identify the lie?” But as machine learning and data science become the new norm, I’m […]

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Must Read: How Russian Hackers Stole the Nasdaq – Businessweek

If there’s one story you should read this week, its Michael Riley’s extensive report over at Businessweek on the 2010 compromise of systems belonging to the Nasdaq stock exchange, “How Russian Hackers Stole the Nasdaq.” The incident was extensively reported at the time, but not in great depth. Obviously, the parties involved weren’t talking. And Nasdaq’s public statements about the compromise woefully downplayed its severity, as Riley’s report makes clear. Among the interesting revelations: the Nasdaq may have fallen victim to a third-party compromise – similar to the hack of Target earlier this year. In the case of Nasdaq, investigators from the FBI, NSA and (eventually) CIA found discovered that the website run by the building management company responsible for Nasdaq’s headquarters at One Liberty Plaza had been “laced with a Russian-made exploit kit known as Blackhole, infecting tenants who visited the page to pay bills or do other maintenance.” What’s clear is […]

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Apple And IBM: The Corporatization of Consumerization

Apple Computer has built up a brand so strong that it borders on being a cult. That is why it is jarring to realize that, at the end of the day, Steve Jobs’ baby is just another company that needs to make its numbers each quarter and keep Wall Street happy. The company’s announcement of an exclusive partnership with  IBM is just that: a reminder that Apple’s core business is business, and that the company has been sorely underperforming in a key market: the enterprise. Whatever its faults, IBM is flush with the very things that Apple lacks: the brand, technology, expertise and reach that puts enterprise technology buyers at ease. As we reported, IBM will offer mobile device management, security, data analytics and cross-platform integrations for Apple’s iPad and iPhone that leverage IBM’s cloud services. There will be IBM-managed offerings around mobile device activation, supply and management tailored to businesses. But the partnership is something more- […]

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Apple and IBM Partner Bringing iPhone and iPad To The Enterprise

In a deal aimed at breaking down long-standing barriers to Apple in the workplace, the Cupertino company has announced a partnership Tuesday to implement Apple’s mobile products – the iPhone and iPad – in businesses around the world. In a joint statement, Tim Cook, Apple’s CEO and Ginni Rometty, the CEO of IBM, said the partnership will seek to fuse IBM’s prowess in data analytics and deep ties to the enterprise with Apple’s design and consumer savvy. IBM will work with Apple to develop enterprise mobile applications for iPad and iPhone specifically for industry under the IBM MobileFirst for iOS brand. The company will also offer mobile device management, security, data analytics and cross-platform integrations that leverage IBM’s cloud services. There will be IBM-managed offerings around mobile device activation, supply and management tailored to businesses. Apple will begin offering a version of its (popular) AppleCare product support service that is tailored to the needs of enterprises. Finally, IBM will sell […]

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