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Verified by Visa (Veriphied Phishing?)

If you have used a Visa card to make a purchase online lately you may have encountered a relatively new program, Verified by Visa . I've encountered it twice. The system is an interesting attempt by Visa to reduce online fraud and identity theft. It's a noble effort, but the user experience is unsettling, and the security implications are not exactly crystal clear. Here's what happened to me, both times the Verified by Visa system was activated. I was redirected away from the domain at which I was shopping, to a URL which was: not the domain where I was shopping, not the domain of the bank that issued my card not visa.com I've been telling people for years that if anything like that happens to you, close your web browser immediately and do not under any circumstances enter any personal information into the form, because this is a sure sign of a man in the middle or phishing scam. (Never mind that all the best phishing scams now-a-days look like the actual dom...
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Splunk acquires Phantom Cyber

I hope it doesn't come across as too cynical, the observation that most acquisitions in the tech domain fail to produce anything useful and often as not wind up killing a promising upstart technology, even if only by accident. I have hope for this one, though. Splunk strikes me as a likely exception. This acquisition of fresh ideas and talent might breathe new life into a solid, if somewhat staid, security company. Splunk’s data analytics gets a security boost with $350 million acquisition of Phantom Cyber
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SQL Injection - So Easy, Your Server is Already Cracked

In a simple demonstration, a hapless team discovers the truth. "Your server is vulnerable. It's already been cracked. Oh, and by the way, it's already distributing malware for a botnet." A Big Case of Oops! Attitude of management in many organizations is one of the biggest barriers to improved security on the internet. People simply don't want to believe that their systems are vulnerable. Denial is pervasive, and affects organizations from the biggest of the Fortune 500 or Federal government agencies, down to modestly sized companies, local governments, and non-profit corporations. The attitude of the unnamed client described at the "Following the White Rabbit" blog (link above) is all too common. I suspect that an underlying cause is that people want to believe several things that worked pretty well from an evolutionary perspective, but don't work very well on the internet. When everybody around is a bunch of cave dwellers, consumed entirely with...
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