Serial: 4/6 – Sure sign of system compromise No. 6: Your online passwords suddenly change If one or more of your online passwords suddenly change, you’ve more than likely been hacked — or at least that online service has been hacked. In this particular scenario, usually what has happened is that the victim responded to an authentic-looking phish email that purportedly claimed to be from the service that ends up with the changed password. The bad guy collects the logon information, logs on, changes the password (and other information to…

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Serial: 2/2 – What is net neutrality? Net neutrality is a principle which states that networks should not discriminate when it comes to the content that flows through their pipes — that they should not give certain kinds of content or certain providers preferential treatment in return for money. In other words, one bit should be treated like any other bit. As former Wired writer Ryan Singel put it in explanatory piece at Medium: “Net Neutrality is the simple concept that the company that provides you internet access on your phone and…

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BYOD is happening, whether you like it or not. So how do you create a BYOD policy that works for your business? A Bring Your Own Device policy isn’t so much a choice these days as a necessity – for many companies it’s the only realistic response to the ongoing consumerisation of IT. Implementing one can make a company more flexible, and bring all kinds of benefits to an organisation. There’s the obvious reduction in hardware costs, but also the productivity gains you see when your employees use devices and…

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Serial: 3/6 – Sure sign of system compromise No. 4: Frequent random popups This popular sign that you’ve been hacked is also one of the more annoying ones. When you’re getting random browser pop-ups from websites that don’t normally generate them, your system has been compromised. I’m constantly amazed about which websites, legitimate and otherwise, can bypass your browser’s anti-pop-up mechanisms. It’s like battling email spam, but worse. What to do: Not to sound like a broken record, but typically random pop-ups are generated by one of the three previous…

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Serial: 1/2 – The FCC is proposing new rules that would govern cable networks and other carriers — rules it says will protect the open internet. But critics say the regulator is going to cripple net neutrality and introduce a pay-to-play internet. Here’s what you need to know. The issue of net neutrality is back in the news again, thanks to some proposed rule changes by the Federal Communications Commission, changes that the regulator says are aimed at protecting a “free and open internet.” A chorus of critics, however, say…

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Serial: 2/6 – Sure sign of system compromise No. 2: Unwanted browser toolbars This is probably the second most common sign of exploitation: Your browser has multiple new toolbars with names that seem to indicate the toolbar is supposed to help you. Unless you recognize the toolbar as coming from a very well-known vendor, it’s time to dump the bogus toolbar. What to do: Most browsers allow you to review installed and active toolbars. Remove any you didn’t absolutely want to install. When in doubt, remove it. If the bogus…

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If you’ve been tracking the ebb and flow of news related to the Heartbleed vulnerability, you may remember how what at first seemed like good news about the limited potential for a worst-case scenario attack quickly turned south when a challenge held by Web security company CloudFlare proved the flaw could indeed be exploited. Today the person who won the CloudFlare challenge, Rubin Xu, a security researcher and PhD candidate at Cambridge University in the UK, revealed how he did it. (The post wasrepublished on Ars Technica, which is where I first read…

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