Samsung silently disables Windows Update on PCs

Friday, June 26th, 2015

New data from Microsoft MVP and researcher Patrick Barker shows that Samsung has been disabling Windows Update on at least some of its laptops distributed with Windows 8 and 8.1, and the company’s responses thus far have been astonishingly tone-deaf. Not only does Samsung disable the Windows Update capability, it ...

NetUSB vulnerability leaves millions of routers open to attack

Wednesday, May 20th, 2015

Millions of routers and other embedded devices are affected by a serious vulnerability that could allow hackers to compromise them. The vulnerability is located in a service called NetUSB, which lets devices connected over USB to a computer be shared with other machines on a local network or the Internet. The ...

Killer USB Drive is Designed to Fry Laptops

Thursday, March 12th, 2015

[Dark Purple] recently heard a story about how someone stole a flash drive from a passenger on the subway. The thief plugged the flash drive into his computer and discovered that instead of containing any valuable data, it completely fried his computer. The fake flash drive apparently contained circuitry designed ...

Keysweeper: creepy keystroke logger camouflaged as USB charger

Tuesday, January 13th, 2015

KeySweeper is a stealthy Arduino-based device, camouflaged as a functioning USB wall charger, that wirelessly and passively sniffs, decrypts, logs and reports back all keystrokes from any Microsoft wireless keyboards (which use a proprietary 2.4GHz RF protocol) in the area. Keystrokes are sent back to the KeySweeper operator over the Internet ...

800 Million Apple Devices at Risk, No Jailbreak Necessary

Thursday, November 6th, 2014

A piece of Apple-focused espionage malware dubbed WireLurker has been uncovered that, unlike most iPhone bugs, can compromise even non-jailbroken iOS smartphones and tablets—potentially putting 800 million devices at risk. Apple operating systems, once seen as a more secure alternative to Windows and Android, have been faced with increasing numbers of ...