SecurityWeek

Computing pioneer Alan Kay once said, “Context is worth 80 IQ points.”  On the IQ scale, where average is about 100 and Einstein is 160+, context could propel you into the genius category pretty handily. For cybersecurity professionals who know that the industry has no shortage of threat data, context is the lever that turns threat data into threat intelligence.

As 2016 comes to a close, the time is right to look back at the year to reflect on those security lessons we learned and to identify emerging trends.

The Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU), the highest constitutional court of the EU, has effectively slapped down the UK's new Investigatory Powers Act. The court passed judgement on Wednesday in a case brought by Labour MP Tom Watson and others against the UK government's ability to require ISPs to retain all customer metadata for 12 months. 

Inflight Internet and entertainment provider Gogo has announced the launch of a Bugcrowd-based public bug bounty program covering the company’s main websites.

The Russia-linked cyberespionage group known as Fancy Bear has tracked Ukrainian artillery forces by planting a piece of Android malware in a legitimate military application, threat intelligence firm CrowdStrike reported on Thursday.

Cisco has warned customers about a critical privilege escalation vulnerability that has been exploited against Cisco CloudCenter Orchestrator (CCO) systems.

During the past year, you may have noticed a shift in the way IT and security professionals talk about cyber security. Historically, firewalls, DLP, antivirus, SIEM and other technical point solutions have been the centerpiece of security conversations, but the mindset is slowly shifting from technology to risk.

A recently observed piece of malware targeting embedded Linux systems can provide attackers with full control over the infected devices, ESET security researchers warn.

The Wassenaar Arrangement is a multilateral export control regime designed to prevent the trans-national proliferation of weapons. There are 41 participating states, including 26 independent members of the European Union (plus the UK). The EU, per se, does not participate. 

A newly discovered family of malware targeting ATMs (automated teller machines) has been designed with the sole purpose of emptying cash from the safes of the self-serve machines, Trend Micro security researchers warn.

Spam campaigns have evolved from sending a low number of messages for long periods of time to sending a high volume of emails over a short time span, which improves delivery rates before protection mechanisms can be triggered, Cisco Talos researchers warn.

Siemens has made available workarounds and patches that address medium and high severity vulnerabilities found in the company’s Desigo PX and SIMATIC automation products.

As New Technologies Infiltrate the Enterprise, Security Practitioners Must Apply a More Holistic Approach to Enterprise Risk Management

VMware has released patches that address important and critical vulnerabilities affecting the company’s vSphere Data Protection (VDP) and ESXi products.The critical flaw was discovered by Marc Ströbel (phroxvs) of HvS-Consulting in VDP, a piece of software designed for creating image-level backups of virtual machines, virtual servers and databases.

Google this week announced the availability of Project Wycheproof, an open source tool designed for finding known vulnerabilities in popular cryptographic software libraries.