2015 Most Dangerous Celebrity

Who doesn’t love to search for celebrities online? From red carpet photos, to clips of the latest fashion faux pas, Hollywood gossip on the Web has a lot of us hooked. But sometimes, our interest in the stars can lead us into the digital danger zone.

Intel Security has dubbed electronic dance music DJ Armin van Buuren as the Most Dangerous Cyber Celebrity of 2015.

The company found that when Web users search for his name combined with the terms "free MP4," "HD downloads," or "torrent" they have almost a one in five chance of landing on a malicious site when they click on the search results.

A number of other musicians also generate dangerous search results, according to Intel Security's Most Dangerous Celebrities study.

"With today's busy culture and a desire for real time information, consumers often click on sites that will quickly provide them with news and entertainment, without considering safety and security implications," said Stacey Conner, online safety expert at Intel Security. "Cybercriminals leverage this need for immediacy by encouraging people to visit unsafe sites that can steal private data."

Indeed, it's worth reminding employees to access content directly from official websites of content providers, to only download videos from legitimate sites, and to use caution when searching for "HD downloads," which is by far the highest virus-prone search term

Cybercriminals will continue to innovate, looking for new ways to take advantage of our interest in pop culture to steal personal information.  Luckily, there are a few things you can do to keep yourself safe:

• Only download from verified sites. Don’t download anything from a website you don’t trust. If it looks suspicious, your hunch about its legitimacy is probably right. Access content directly from reputable sources, such as Apple Music and Google Play Music.
• Be strict when sharing your personal information. If you receive a message from an unknown website asking for your log-in, or requesting other personal information, about face. Cybercriminals often pose as legitimate companies to scoop up your sensitive information via email, text, or other methods of communication. Be wary of these phishing tactics to avoid becoming a victim of identity theft.
• Let an online safety advisor be your guide. When it’s hard to tell if a site is legitimate, a web advisor can help. 
• Use comprehensive security. Whether you follow celebrity gossip or not, it’s always a good idea to protect your devices from potential infection.

Public Wi-Fi: How to optimise the business without compromising security

With free wireless networks readily available in Singapore, it is common to see business professionals working from their work and personal devices in public areas such as cafés.

In fact, those living in this city state will be familiar with the local wireless broadband network, Wireless@SG, available in most public areas island wide. Once registered to this network, users can enjoy seamless wireless broadband service while on the move in such public spaces.

There are plenty of business owners who have made it a point to set up wireless networks in their shops or buildings to enable patrons’ access to free Wi-Fi. But as Sean Duca, Asia Pacific Chief Security Officer for the next-generation security company, Palo Alto Networks points out, while public networks are convenient, it also increases users’ risk of having their laptops and mobile devices hacked or infected with malware.

“Hackers are generally drawn to public networks as they are easy targets; by hacking into the networks, they would easily obtain access to data from hundreds of devices that are connected at any point, says Sean. “Some of this data may be sensitive and contains private company information, and if found in the wrong hands, can result in loss of revenue and business reputation. As such, it is important to ensure that employees who use public Wi-Fi on laptops and mobile devices optimise their security measures for hotspot connectivity to ensure company data is protected at all times”.

According to Sean, there are three ways in which organisations can optimise mobile device security for public Wi-Fi hotspots:

1. Manage the device
Organisations should configure security settings appropriate for public Wi-Fi connectivity on mobile devices. This allows businesses to safely deploy business applications and oversee device usage across the organisation. Enterprise-scale device management capabilities can also be set up in order to simplify the deployment process. This can be done by applying configurations common to all users, such as email account settings.

2. Protect the device
Organisations can use endpoint security, mobile threat prevention technologies and next-generation firewalls to enforce network policies. This prevents mobile devices from being compromised, and attackers from accessing the company’s data.

Businesses should also take note that traditional endpoint security measures may not adequately protect mobile devices against threats. Hackers are constantly using more sophisticated methods which are not easily detectable. Hence, it is crucial that organisations look to investing in the newer next-generation security products.

3. Control the data
Organisations should control data access and movement between applications. This can be achieved by enforcing policies that control network access to applications and data. By isolating and controlling business data and devices, sensitive corporate data can be better protected through blocking unwanted applications and preventing devices connecting to command and control servers.

With the right security products in place, and through proper and precise policy enforcement, organisations can be assured that security isn’t compromised when their employees connect their mobile devices to wireless networks. Employees can also take advantage of free public Wi-Fi without having to worry about sensitive information falling into the wrong hands.

Credits: Sean Duca, Asia Pacific Chief Security Officer at Palo Alto Networks.

Malaysia takes the lead as the most cyber-savvy Asian nation while Indonesia is on the bottom rung

While 93% of online users in Asia worry about cyber security, 3 out of 5 consumers are unable to answer basic cyber security questions correctly, according to the ESET Asia Cyber Savviness Report 2015.

The survey also underlines that the region still has a long way to go in understanding online security and protecting themselves.

Polling 1,800 respondents from across Hong Kong, India, Indonesia, Malaysia, Singapore, and Thailand, the survey aimed to gain insights into the attitudes, knowledge and user behaviours across Asia when it comes to cyber security.

Despite the fact that Asia-Pacific region has the highest number of internet users in the world, the results of the study show that users in this region don’t know how to stay safe online. Moreover, a large  share of those  polled  commit basic mistakes like using passwords containing easy to access personal information, such as their date of birth or surname, storing passwords and credit card details online, and connecting to unsecured public wi-fi networks.

ESET’s study ranked Malaysia as the most ‘cyber-savvy‘nation in Asia-Pacific, ahead of Singapore, India, Thailand, Hong Kong, and Indonesia in that order. Cyber-savviness is based on factors such as the ability to understand activities likely to make them vulnerable online, risky behaviours while surfing the web, and the steps users take to protect themselves online.

Surprisingly, the results showed that consumers in countries with higher cyber savviness didn’t necessarily take all the right precautions, nor were they fully aware of the cyber security risks that common online activities pose. For example, users in India and Indonesia, take the highest number of precautions despite having the lowest levels of cyber security awareness. On the other hand, countries like Malaysia, Singapore and Thailand, which ranked amongst the top in ESET’s awareness survey came in near the bottom when it came to protecting themselves.

“We need to bust some myths about online security,” said Parvinder Walia, Sales Director APAC at ESET. “The ESET Asia Cyber Savviness Report 2015 found that users in Asia-Pacific tend to take unnecessary risks when they’re online, partly due to a lack of awareness. Users have the dangerous misconception that their personal accounts and activities are not likely to be a target for hackers or might be trading security for convenience. This has to change.”

“Information today is available at the touch of a button and the Internet is simplifying our day-to-day lives. Being aware and taking simple precautions will mean that users can stay protected online and feel confident as they take advantage of all that the Internet has to offer,” added Walia.

More education needed to boost cyber security awareness 
The study quizzed respondents about common safety risks online in order to find out how much they actually know about cyber security. Across the region, while 68 percent of online users said that they are aware of online security issues, they were unable to answer questions regarding cyber security practices.

In the Asia-Pacific region, the lack of formal education is a huge issue as 4 in 10 online users said they gained most of their information about online security through unofficial sources such as doing their own online research or from their families and acquaintances.

On an encouraging note, over 78 percent of the surveyed respondents that didn’t have any formal training about cyber security, said they were keen to learn more.

If You Didn’t Change The Default Password On Your Security Camera, Someone’s Probably Watching It Stream

Remote access has been a boon to many industries. Home security cameras, for example: not only can you keep an eye on your property in case anything bad happens, but you can do it in real-time, instead of reviewing footage after the fact. But cameras protecting the security of your home may in fact need a serious security helper of your own. And running tens of thousands of searchable livestreams from unwitting camera owners who didn’t change default the access passwords on their devices is certainly one (unethical, intrusive) way to make the point.

One site does exactly that, as Vice reported recently. The site runs live streams of feeds from tens of thousands of IP cameras around the world.

Users buy the devices — think nanny cams, baby monitors, and home security — to keep an eye on their families, valuables, and property. But with poor security practices, anyone and everyone else can keep an eye on your goods, too.

Cameras designed to be accessed remotely, as these are, have passwords. And they ship with default passwords, that users are supposed to change during the set-up processes. Only, many users don’t. (Even when they do, admittedly, people are often objectively terrible at passwords.) That makes it easy for someone with an idea for a website to come along and write a script that looks for cameras on the internet, then tries the default password on them and adds the feed to a public collection if that password works.

Despite running ads and generating revenue, security is the real point the site is making, its owner told Vice. “Most people still do not know about the problem,” they wrote in an e-mail, and so nobody has yet asked to have their camera removed from the collection. “Only [the website] can prove the scale of the problem,” the administrator added. “This problem was in darkness for many years.”
Vice then goes on to look at how ethical hackers — the so-called “white hat” set — expose software vulnerabilities and then share their information with the companies that made the vulnerable products. It’s a common pastime for network security experts and for security companies. (When done by the latter, it’s not entirely altruistic: if you can point out a security hole, you can point out the need for someone to buy your services to fix it.)

The person or group behind this particular website, Vice concludes, isn’t exactly one of the good guys; they’re doing something both illegal and unethical. But this particular camera-sharing website, though troubling, isn’t really the root problem. It’s just one symptom of a massive, much larger, much deeper issue.

As everything gets “smart,” mobile, remote-accessible, and connected, security becomes an ever-deeper challenge. Sophisticated hackers will probably always be able break their way into certain lucrative systems, just as criminals will always try to rob physical banks. But millions of cracks, hacks, and break-ins aren’t even the purview of sophisticated hacking operations: they’re just the result of plain bad security that end-users — we home consumers — didn’t even know needed fixing. It’s not about how to protect your bank vault from Bonnie and Clyde; it’s about knowing the cash should go in a vault in the first place, and not simply be left in piles on the lawn.

Commandeered cameras are incredibly intrusive, but as far as poor default security goes, they’re only the tip of the iceberg.

Every wifi router ships with a default password, and it’s super easy to look those up by make and model. Securing your router, on the other hand, takes more work.

Your remotely-accessible multifunction printer might use a weak default password or in fact not have a password at all, meaning anyone with know-how could get in. Like a wandering security expert who hacks it to run video games… or someone less ethical, installing something worse as a gateway to the whole network.

A common default password can get you into a cash-filled ATM, where you could presumably then commit actual bank robbery.

At least, though, we all have a vague association with “network” and “security” when it comes to our
routers, even if we’re bad at implementing it, and we know that banks need strong network security to protect their customers and their transactions. But security applies to everything that uses an internet connection.

From heating to cooling, homes are getting ever more connected. When your whole house goes smart, Bradbury-style, that means your whole house is vulnerable. Last year, one Forbes contributor explained how she was able to access everything from televisions to light switches to hot tubs in complete strangers’ homes.

Home appliances — from TVs to refrigerators — have already been unwitting participants in spam-sending botnets. Spam e-mail is annoying but comparatively harmless. Future intrusions, though, might not be.

Any company making connected devices that can receive, transmit, or share data needs to be stepping up their security game. Anything and everything should clearly require passwords and should require on first use that owners change those passwords to something reasonably secure, for a start.

But until then, the burden remains on individuals. Any time you buy or install a device that in any way connects to the internet? Look up how to keep it secure. And use a good password when you do.

#ClickSmart Tip!

Think your computer is immune to viruses? Think again! #ClickSmart this season to keep all your holiday cheer. 

Don't always think before you click on celeb news?

Don't always think before you click on celeb news? You could be bringing malware center stage:

Nude Celebrity Photo Dump Has Many Asking What Happened

Hundreds of private photos belonging to several high-profile Hollywood actresses were posted online this past weekend. They are explicit in nature, and were not intended to be seen by the public. But they have been.

The question, now, is how did this happen?

The details of the hackings haven’t been worked out quite yet, but there are two popular theories floating around: the first is that the hacker, or hackers, exploited a vulnerability allowing cybercriminals to make an unlimited number of password guesses on Apple’s cloud service offering, iCloud. This type of attack—repeatedly guessing passwords until the successful password is found—is called a brute force attack, and is typically done with an automated program. Once an iCloud account is breached, or any cloud service for that matter, the hackers can view and retrieve anything saved in that cloud such as contacts, photos, saved notes, and more.

The second theory, one suggested by Apple after it made an official statement on the situation, is that these celebrities may have fallen victim to a social engineering attack. Social engineering attacks are attacks that take advantage of social habits in order to compromise an account or gain access to sensitive information. For example, a “hacker” could pose as someone who works at your company, but in a different department, in order to trick you into giving up sensitive company information. This wouldn’t be the first time that a social engineering attack made headlines. In 2012, digital journalist Mat Honan had his life turned upside down when hackers gained access to nearly all of his online accounts through social engineering techniques.

Regardless of which theory is accurate, the result is fairly predictable: someone involved with the hacking ring, or the single person who accrued all of these photos, wanted to show off on an Internet imaging board and posted stolen photos. Those photos, of course, were shared throughout the Web, and the privacy of these well-known individuals was shattered.

We won’t know what hacking method was used for some time, possibly not until after an F.B.I. investigation. That investigation won’t restore anyone’s lost privacy, but it’ll hopefully result in some much-needed justice. In the meantime, what can people do in order to protect themselves from such attacks?


Of course, with celebrities being in the public eye, the demand for their personal photos is quite high. Still, while you may not be a celebrity, there are a few important steps that you can take to protect your online identity, and your private photos.

• Be wary of uploading to the cloud. By default, iPhones upload photos to iCloud through a feature called “Photo Stream.” This is done to preserve your photos in the event of phone failure, and enable you to access photos from any of your devices. In this context, however, having personal photos in multiple places only increases the likelihood of those photos leaking. If you feel that you need to disable Photo Stream, follow Apple’s instructions here.

• Be careful what photos you take with your mobile device. Even if you’re not sending them to anyone or uploading to the cloud, do remember that your phone or tablet can be lost or stolen. 

• Use strong passwords. Every online service requires the use of a password. These passwords need to be complex in order to ensure your security. A complex password consists of at least eight characters in length and uses a combination of upper and lower case letters, numbers and symbols. These passwords should be unique to each site and should be changed every six months at a minimum.

• Use a password manager. The reason why strong passwords aren’t used enough is largely attributed to the fact that they’re more difficult to remember. Complex passwords can also be a pain to use on mobile devices.

• Enable two-factor authentication wherever possible. Two-factor authentication is a security standard that requires the account holder to possess two things: knowledge (like a password or answer to security questions) and something that only they would have (like a phone number). Two-factor authentication is a great way of preventing hackers from gaining access to sensitive accounts, and would’ve likely prevented this whole situation from taking place if enabled.

Be warned: there is no one silver bullet to digital security. Vulnerabilities exist because of how programs are built and how they interact with one another. The best way to stay secure online to stay knowledgeable of security defense and use the techniques you need to stay safe surfing.

The largest ever theft of passwords uncovered

What appears to be the greatest theft of user credentials in history has been reported by Hold Security, a small US security firm. No less than 1,200 million login credentials have been stolen from numerous websites around the world.

Although all the details are still not clear, it seems the cyber-crime group behind this theft used automated tools to exploit known bugs in databases such as SQL. Apparently, they were on the lookout for websites that had failed to update software and were therefore vulnerable to attacks. A total of 420,000 websites were targeted.

It’s still not known which websites are affected by the attack, neither have they all been contacted to advise them to update their defenses. Hold Security has yet to contact the authorities, although it planned to do so after reporting this story.

What can you do in the light of this attack?
It is clear that no matter how well protected your computer is, there’s nothing you can do if, as in this case, you are not the direct victim. Here for example they have stolen user databases from websites, not from users’ computers. That’s why one of the most important security measures you can take is to never use the same login credentials on more than one website. If you reuse usernames and passwords for different services you are increasing the risk, because if one of these sites is compromised, your other accounts will be vulnerable.

A good example of this was the recent case in Australia, where users of iPads/iPhones had their devices hijacked by cyber-criminals who demanded a ransom to hand back control. Some sources speculated that Apple’s databases may have been hacked, though the company denied this. Everything then pointed towards the source of the problem as being an Internet forum on which users had set the same password as they had for Apple’s iCloud service.

How to make a strong password

• Use numbers
• Include letters as well
• Combine upper and lower case
• Add symbols such as@, #, ? or %
• Where possible it should have at least eight characters. The longer it is, the more difficult it will be to guess
• Never use a run of consecutive numbers or letters: 123456; 987654; abc123
• Never use adjacent keyboard letters: qwer123; asd987
• Your password should not be something easily associated to you. Never use your name or date of birth.