When AVAST CTO, Ondrej Vlcek, was in Munich recently, he took an after-dinner stroll to see the Frauenkirche cathedral. Right next door to the cathedral is the Ferrari store, so he paused to do some window shopping. “Pretty standard stuff inside – lots of red t-shirts, red baseball hats and bunch of other clothing, plus […]
Summertime means vacation time, and many of us brag share our plans on social networking sites like Facebook and Twitter. A recent survey by MoneyGram found that nearly one-third of consumers aged 18-49 post details about their vacations on social media before or during their trip, essentially broadcasting to the world when they will be […]
In late January of this year, Twitter released Vine, a social video-sharing service that it acquired in late 2012. Initially launched on iOS, Vine has similar characteristics to Twitter as videos are intentionally short (users are only allowed six seco…
Sometimes it pays to wait to see how new technologies play out. Such is the case with Bitcoin — a virtual currency which allows users to purchase goods over the Internet. While the nascent currency is gaining a strong following of legitimate users, it still suffers from some key weaknesses. The most recent example comes Read more…
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Our first “#useAVAST” Hashtag challenge is over and it’s time to announce the results. As always, YOU have proven what an engaged and creative community AVAST has. We’ve seen plenty of Facebook and Google+ posts and Tweets with your personal recommendations. It has convinced us that we should be giving you this opportunity more often, […]
Last week a purple unicorn (a stuffed one, not a real one) generated some confusion at a border station in Turkey. According to this article, a family including their nine year old daughter, travelling across the Turkish border accidentally used the stuffed unicorn’s toy passport instead of the daughter’s real passport. The officer checked the passport, officially stamped it, and then let them through. At this point, the story deviates based on the source. Immigration said that the officer just wanted to be kind to the girl and forgot to stamp the real passport too. The family reports that there was no hesitation and that their daughter may have just have slipped through.
This story serves as a good reminder that security measures are only as good as their implementation. From crypto-graphical functions implemented with static initialization vectors, to passwords that are derived from public MAC addresses, to Web applications with poor session management that can be bypassed by calling the API directly. There are many examples throughout history of secure technology that actually had large, gaping security holes once they had been implemented. These examples do not even consider products that are implemented properly, but are not configured correctly or suitably integrated into the process so that the log files are never read.
If you are implementing security functions, ensure that you do it properly. Follow coding standards and play the attack scenario through. If you install security products, make sure that you configure them to your needs. Take note, if you do not pay attention to the details, you might be overrun by purple unicorns.
You’re on Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter. You use Gmail, Yahoo! and bank online. You might buy stuff on sites like Amazon and occasionally make purchases from eBay. Sometimes you apply for a loan online and maybe open up a credit card account too. This is all commonplace in today’s digital world. So how does all Read more…
This year’s National Small Business Week is upon us, with 50 years of energy behind it. The occasion is sponsored by the US Small Business Association, celebrating how small businesses are critical to an economy of growth and job creation.
The mo…