#HappyFriday
This is a weekly series to highlight the best articles and stories happening all over the web.
What was your favorite story? What topics would you like to see? Sound off in the comments!
HP Reissuing BIOS Updates After Buggy Intel Meltdown and Spectre Updates
HP announced this week it was stopping the deployment of BIOS updates containing Meltdown and Spectre patches and reissuing older BIOS versions.
Dell was the first OEM to heed Intel's warning and today recommended that customers not install the recently issued Dell BIOS updates, even going as far as telling clients to revert back to a pre-Meltdown-and-Spectre BIOS version "in order to avoid unpredictable system behavior."
In response to Intel’s recommendation, HP is taking the following actions:
- HP is removing HP BIOS softpaqs with Intel microcode patches from hp.com
- HP will be reissuing HP BIOS softpaqs with previous Intel microcode starting January 25, 2018
- Once Intel reissues microcode updates, HP will issue revised Softpaqs.
Reddit rolls out 2FA to all its users
Reddit, the so-called “front page of the internet”, has some important news for its 250 million registered users.
You can now secure your Reddit account with two-factor authentication (2FA).
After you have scanned the confirmation QR code and entered a verification code generated by your app, you’re all done. Your Reddit account is now protected by two-factor authentication (although the site does recommend that you generate some emergency backup codes in the event of losing access to your authentication app). From now on you’ll be required to enter a six-digit code when logging into the site, as well as your password.
Learn more.
What Is a Shortcut Virus and How Can You Remove It?
A shortcut virus is a kind of Trojan/worm combination that hides all of your files and folders, then replaces them all with shortcuts that look exactly the same.
Shortcut viruses mainly affect physical file transfer devices like USB flash drives, external hard drives, and SD memory cards, but can be transferred to computers when exposed to an infected device that takes advantage of Autorun or Autoplay in Windows.
The gracious folks over at MakeUseOf have created quick-guides for removing shortcut viruses from both external devices & PC's.
You might want to bookmark this one.
UK law firms have leaked over a million email addresses (most with passwords) online
80% of those email addresses had related password details.
In excess of a million email addresses and hacked credentials taken from some of the UK’s foremost legal firms are floating around on the dark web, according to a new report.
Patrick Martin, cybersecurity analyst at RepKnight, commented:
“The truth is that no company in the world is safe from the threat of the dark web. The top 500 law firms RepKnight analysed almost certainly haven’t done anything wrong cybersecurity-wise, but all it takes for a breach to occur nowadays is for a single employee to accidentally fall for a phishing email or send sensitive data via email accidentally to the wrong person. It’s almost impossible to prevent."
Read the full story.
CAPTCHA + reCAPTCHA
Are they the Best Fraud Prevention Solution for your Business?
When first developed, CAPTCHA asked users to read distorted text and type the letters into a box prior to registering for accounts, posting blog comments, purchasing products and services, etc. Since bots and other computer programs were incapable of performing that task, CAPTCHA helped prevent fraud by keeping some bots out of the system.
Despite the security and UX improvements, there are still many ways for bad actors to get around CAPTCHA systems. CAPTCHA bots and CAPTCHA farms even exist where low-skilled workers are utilized to mass solve CAPTCHAs for rates as low as 80 cents for 1,000 solved codes. CAPTCHA attack systems presented at Black Hat Asia in Singapore showed a more than 70% CAPTCHA-cracking success rate with an average running time of just 19.2 seconds.
Dive into the World of CAPTCHAs.
What story from the last week the most important for you? We love hearing your feedback!
