Network Security News

'Hacker' is too uncertain a term, and nowadays it's not the hackers, in their traditional sense, that compose a threat to Internet entities. In most cases, hackers is a new name for security professionals, dealing with most new and powerful threats, predicting new ones and developing the paradigms of security for the years to come. Wallet Pop tells about an important event in Hacker conference announces internet security flaw.

The story goes: just when you thought it was safe to go online, the hackers at Def Con announced a new security flaw regarding the way websites prove their validity.

Currently, websites that deal with personal information make use of SSL technology to maintain a secure connection. You may be more familiar with SSL security by the little padlock icon that shows up in most browsers or the "s" that follows "HTTP" in a web address. Generally these indicators mean that anything you transmitted to the website was secure, but these newly found flaws allow for someone to tap the connection.

Basically this flaw lets a hacker trick your web browser into not looking further at a web address that has a special character in it, letting unscrupulous individuals pose as a legitimate site. From there they can collect personal information and even install software on your computer.

The good news is that the Seattle Post checked in with Microsoft and Mozilla, who make the world's most popular browsers, and learned that the issue is currently being investigated. Mozilla, makers of the Firefox browser, indicated that its latest update fixed a portion of the problem, and told the Post that, "the rest will be fixed in an update coming this week."

So take note: the next time your browser asks you to update it and you think of dismissing the notification since you're super busy, you might be saving yourself a headache down the road by spending three minutes getting up to date. Do it now, before the hackers have time to fully exploit this issue and begin attacking out-of-date computers.

Despite the fact such announcements may be infuriating, they are quite useful: in most cases all the security flaws are found after they are already exploited. brining them to light prior to mass exploits appear, brings a possibility to monitor the security threats level and be prepared to all the similar problems, with vulnerability origins akin to those disclosed.

This article was brought to you by the developers of IPHost Network Monitor, network and server monitoring software.