Linux Security Week: October 27th, 2014

We often shift between a phone signal, private internet connections, and public Wi-Fi networks. You pass by your local Starbucks, for example, and the phone remembers you've been there in the past and latches on to its signal--without you thinking too much about it.

John Kane was on a hell of a winning streak. On July 3, 2009, he walked alone into the high-limit room at the Silverton Casino in Las Vegas and sat down at a video poker machine called the Game King. Six minutes later the purple light on the top of the machine flashed, signaling a $4,300 jackpot.

Last week, Apple announced that it is closing a serious security vulnerability in the iPhone. It used to be that the phone's encryption only protected a small amount of the data, and Apple had the ability to bypass security on the rest of it.

Patches have been flung out to cover vulnerabilities in PHP that led to remote code execution and buffer overflows.

Maintaining your privacy online, like investing in stocks or looking good naked, has become one of those nagging desires that leaves Americans with a surplus of stress and a deficit of facts. So it's no surprise that a cottage industry of privacy marketers now wants to sell them the solution in a $50 piece of hardware promising internet "anonymity" or "invisibility."

US standards body the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) has laid out the basics of hypervisor security in a draft publication released for comment on 20 October.

"Here is a tale of ransomware that will make your blood run cold," announced Stu Sjouwerman of security training firm KnowBe4 in a company newsletter this week and he wasn't exaggerating.

Senator Ron Wyden thought he knew what was going on.The Democrat from Oregon, who has served on the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence since 2001, thought he knew the nature of the National Security Agency's surveillance activities.

USB is an acronym for Universal Serial Bus; at least that is what it has stood for since 1999 when it was patented. But now it may take on a new meaning and instead stand for Ultimate Security Breakdown.