human factor

Pierluigi Paganini May 03, 2019
Using the Human Factor in Cyber Attacks

The Human Factor has a fundamental importance for the success of a cyber attack, for this reason it is important to create a culture of cyber security within organizations. Every day we see a large number of tools being implemented within enterprises and institutions due to the need to keep their environments more secure, along […]

Pierluigi Paganini November 06, 2014
Can cybercrime use the services of the regular companies?

The attacks from humans against the humans as the preliminary phase of a bigger cyber attack will become harder to mitigate, let’s see how the cybercrime works. Standard incident response requires finding out the real extend of the incident. This is why we have all the monitoring tools where we can find any matching patterns. […]

Pierluigi Paganini July 20, 2014
WhatsApp profile picture: a risky feature? In the mind of a hacker

In this post I’ll show you how an apparently insignificant information on Whatsapp could be used by hackers in a more dangerous targeted attack. When you add a random phone number to your contact list, WhatsApp will show you the profile picture of that user. Given the fact that you don’t know that person, there […]

Pierluigi Paganini May 08, 2014
Reading 2014 Ponemon Cost of Data Breach Study

The Ponemon Institute has issued its ninth annual report ” Cost of Data Breach Study “, an analysis on the economic impact of data breaches. The Ponemon Institute has issued its annual report “Cost of Data Breach Study,”, a study on the economic impact of data breaches. The Cost of Data Breach Study is sponsored by IBM, […]

Pierluigi Paganini February 14, 2014
Unclassified NSA memorandum provides further details on Snowden case

An unclassified NSA memorandum disclosed by the NBC News reveals Snowden allegedly managed to access classified documentation stealing coworker’s passwords. The hypothesis that Edward Snowden has operated using a simple web-crawler is very curious, how is it possible that a lonely consultant had access to a so huge collection of documents from NSA archives? Why Does […]

Pierluigi Paganini January 21, 2014
Weak passwords, in 2013 it is still a frequent error

SplashData has issued its Annual “25 Worst Passwords of the Year” enumerating the list of the most common password chosen by users. It was October 2012 when for the first time I’ve seen a report from SpashData on most common passwords chosen by users to protect their account on various services. SplashData, which develops password […]

Pierluigi Paganini October 28, 2012
Is it really so simple crack your password?

The numerous attacks and data breaches occurred during the last 12 months demonstrated that despite high attentions in security the principal causes of the incidents are leak of authentication processes, absence of input validation on principal applications and of course the human factor is among the main accused. Last year different data breaches exposed millions […]

Pierluigi Paganini October 03, 2012
Why humans could be the weakest link in cyber security chain?

Last month I attended the Cyber Threat Summit in Dublin and I had the opportunity to assist to the interesting presentation “Humans The weakest link in cyber security” of Mark Johnson, Chairman, The Risk Management Group. The topic of presentation is one of the most interesting in cyber security, the massive introduction of technologies in […]