CRS - OWASP ModSecurity Core Rule Set

The OWASP ModSecurity Core Rule Set CRS is a set of generic attack detection rules for use with ModSecurity or compatible web application firewalls. The CRS aims to protect web applications from a wide range of attacks, including the OWASP Top Ten, with a minimum of false alerts. The Core Rule Se...

Why Malwarebytes decided to participate in AV testing

Starting this month, Malwarebytes began participating in the antivirus software for Windows comparison test performed by AV-test.org. This is uncharted territory for us, as we have refrained from participating in these types of tests since our inception. Although recent testing results show...

Four Ways Layered Security Will Improve Your Detection and Response

It’s widely understood by cybersecurity professionals today that it’s no longer a case of if your organization gets attacked online but when. Trend Micro blocked more than 20.4 billion threats in the first half of 2018 alone, and the ready availability of “as-a-service” toolkits will continue to...

44% of Security Professionals Spend More than 20 Hours a Week Responding to Alerts

As the global cybersecurity climate continues to heat up, so too do the subsequent levels of alert fatigue IT security professionals have to deal with. A recent survey by Imperva reveals that nine percent of UK security teams battle with over five million alerts each week. Five million, just let...

Survey: 44% of Security Professionals Spend More than 20 Hours a Week Responding to Alerts

As the global cybersecurity climate continues to heat up, so too do the subsequent levels of alert fatigue IT security professionals have to deal with. A recent survey by Imperva reveals that nine percent of UK security teams battle with over five million alerts each week. Five million, just let...

Partnering with the industry to minimize false positives

Every day, antivirus capabilities in Windows Defender Advanced Threat Protection Windows Defender ATP protect millions of customers from threats. To effectively scale protection, Windows Defender ATP uses intelligent systems that combine multiple layers of machine learning models, behavior-based...

Keeping False Positives in Check

In 2017, seven out of ten organizations said their security risks increased significantly, according to a Ponemon Institute study. This is no surprise given that last year organizations suffered the largest ransomware outbreak in history WannaCry and vulnerabilities such as Meltdown and Spectre...

Survey: 27 Percent of IT professionals receive more than 1 million security alerts daily

Imagine trying to tackle over one million security alerts in a day. That number is so huge that it may sound like hyperbole, but this is exactly what many security teams face. Dealing with such a high volume of potential threats on a regular basis can quickly lead to alert fatigue. Sure, we expec...

Adding transparency and context into industry AV test results

Corporate Vice President Brad Anderson recently shared his insights on how Windows Defender Advanced Threat Protection Windows Defender ATP evolved to achieve important quality milestones. Our Windows Defender ATP team is committed to delivering industry-leading protection, customer choice, and...

Yet Another Biometric: Ear Shape

This acoustic technology identifies individuals by their ear shapes. No information about either false positives or false negatives...

Introducing Web Security Analytics

Every security team knows that the success of any security product relies heavily on the ability to maintain an optimal security configuration. Any misconfiguration can result in malicious or undesired traffic reaching the application, or worse - legitimate traffic being blocked. In addition, it...

Algorithms, Alerts, and Akamai Threat Intelligence

Let me start by posing a question: If in one week security solution A produces 120 alerts and security solution B produces 45 alerts, which solution is providing you with more effective protection? The answer is: It depends. On the face of it, solution A appears to be more effective because it's...

How Reputation Intelligence Improves Application Security

Reputation intelligence is information about cyber entities known for specific activity, whether malicious or benign, which can be fed to and actioned on by a web application firewall WAF. It provides an additional application security layer by effectively identifying and blocking threats from...

subjack - Hostile Subdomain Takeover tool written in Go

subjack is a Hostile Subdomain Takeover tool written in Go designed to scan a list of subdomains concurrently and identify ones that are able to be hijacked. With Go's speed and efficiency, this tool really stands out when it comes to mass-testing. Always double check the results manually to rule...

DHS Alert on Dragonfly APT Contains IOCs, Rules Likely to Trigger False Positives

A joint Technical Alert, TA17–293A, released over the weekend by the FBI and Department of Homeland Security describing the activities of a Russian APT may contain signatures and rules likely to trigger false positives in some security systems. The alert, made available Saturday morning, dissects...

A week in security (September 4 – September 10)

Last week, we looked into expired domain names being used for malvertising, delved into dubious Facebook apps, and checked out Chinese seminar scams. We also explained the whys and wherefores of false positives, explained what Google is doing with HTTPs, warned you away from a fake DHS email, and...

A Hardware Privacy Monitor for iPhones

Andrew "bunnie" Huang and Edward Snowden have designed a hardware device that attaches to an iPhone and monitors it for malicious surveillance activities, even in instances where the phone's operating system has been compromised. They call it an Introspection Engine, and their use model is a...

Explained: False positives

What are false positives? False positive, which is sometimes written as f/p, is an expression commonly used in cybersecurity to denote that a file or setting has been flagged as malicious when it’s not. In statistics, false positives are called Type I errors, because they check for a particular...

The Myth of the self tuning / machine learning Web Application Firewall

There's an old adage that if something seems too good to be true, it probably is. If you're like me, you can apply this to your own experiences. For example, about 5 years ago a small chain of gyms that exclusively used vibrating exercise machines popped up near my home. Their gym goers would sta...

What to look for when considering a WAF?

When web based applications become important components of business IP, protecting these applications is a key part of doing business. Most of IT and DevOps professionals are not thinking whether they need a Web Application Firewall WAF. Instead, they are trying to decide which WAF is right for...