10 social engineering exploits your users should be aware of

Hackers know your network security might be their toughest route to getting at your data. So they turn to other means... such as social engineering (SE). SE is a nontechnical method of intrusion that relies on human interaction to trick users into handing over the keys to the kingdom. Unfortunately, it works—and it works well. In fact, SE is one of the biggest threats to your company security.

What should you be on the lookout for? Here are 10 common SE ploys you and your users need to know about.

1: The familiarity exploit
2: The information exploit
3: The new hire exploit
4: The interview exploit
5: The hostile exploit
6: The body language exploit
7: The blind date exploit
8: The consultant exploit
9: The piggyback exploit
10: The tech talk exploit

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11 Sure Signs You've been Hacked

In today's threatscape, antivirus software provides little piece of mind. In fact, antimalware scanners on the whole are horrifically inaccurate, especially with exploits less than 24 hours old. After all, malicious hackers and malware can change their tactics at will. Swap a few bytes around, and a previously recognized malware program becomes unrecognizable.

To combat this, many antimalware programs monitor program behaviors, often called heuristics, to catch previously unrecognized malware. Other programs use virtualized environments, system monitoring, network traffic detection, and all of the above at once in order to be more accurate. And still they fail us on a regular basis.

Here are 11 sure signs you've been hacked and what to do in the event of compromise. Note that in all cases, the No. 1 recommendation is to completely restore your system to a known good state before proceeding. In the early days, this meant formatting the computer and restoring all programs and data. Today, depending on your operating system, it might simply mean clicking on a Restore button. Either way, a compromised computer can never be fully trusted again. The recovery steps listed in each category below are the recommendations to follow if you don't want to do a full restore -- but again, a full restore is always a better option, risk-wise.

1: Fake antivirus messages
2: Unwanted browser toolbars
3: Redirected Internet searches
4: Frequent random popups
5: Your friends receive fake emails from your email account
6: Your online passwords suddenly change
7: Unexpected software installs
8: Your mouse moves between programs and makes correct selections
9: Your antimalware software, Task Manager, or Registry Editor is disabled and can't be restarted
10: Your bank account is missing money
11: You get calls from stores about nonpayment of shipped goods

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Edward Snowden sharpened his hacking skills in Delhi

The hacker who shook the US intelligence machinery and had world leaders railing against Washington for spying on them picked up crucial skills in India. Edward Snowden, the National Security Agency contractor-turned-whistleblower, spent a week in New Delhi training in core Java programming and advanced ethical hacking. It's this training that got him certified as an EC-Council Certified Security Analyst (ECSA).

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IT's 9 Biggest Security Threats

Years ago the typical hacking scenario involved a lone attacker and maybe some buddies working late at night on Mountain Dew, looking for public-facing IP addresses. When they found one, they enumerated the advertising services (Web server, SQL server, and so on), broke in using a multitude of vulnerabilities, then explored the compromised company to their heart's content. Often their intent was exploratory. If they did something illegal, it was typically a spur-of-the-moment crime of opportunity.

My, how times have changed.

When describing a typical hacking scenario, these days you must begin well before the hack or even the hacker, with the organization behind the attack. Today, hacking is all crime, all the time, complete with bidding markets for malware, crime syndicates, botnets for hire, and cyber warfare gone amok.

Here are the nine biggest threats facing today's IT security pros as outlined by Roger A. Grimes.

Threat No. 1: Cyber crime syndicates
Threat No. 2: Small-time cons -- and the money mules and launders supporting them
Threat No. 3: Hacktivists
Threat No. 4: Intellectual property theft and corporate espionage
Threat No. 5: Malware mercenaries
Threat No. 6: Botnets as a service
Threat No. 7: All-in-one malware
Threat No. 8: The increasingly compromised Web
Threat No. 9: Cyber warfare

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10 Hacks that Made Headlines

There have been computer and network hacks for, well, pretty much as long as we've had computers and networks. The motives behind these intrusions have ranged from curiosity to paranoia , through today --when most high-profile hacks are driven by either greed or some form of ideology.

Here are the list of ten hacking incidents through history that made some of the biggest headlines.

• Markus Hess hacks on behalf of the KGB 
• Robert Morris hacks the Internet 
• Vladimir Levin hacks Citibank 
• Jonathon James hacks NASA 
• Adrian Lamo hacks the New York Times 
• Gary McKinnon hacks the US military 
• Albert Gonzalez hacks TJX (and many more) 
• Anonymous hacks HB 
• Gary Lulzsec hacks Sony 
• News of the World hacking scandal  

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Interesting Videos

All your devices can be hacked

Could someone hack your pacemaker? At TEDx Mid Atlantic, Avi Rubin explains how hackers are compromising cars, smartphones and medical devices, and warns us about the dangers of an increasingly hack-able world. Avi Rubin is a professor of computer science and director of Health and Medical Security Lab at Johns Hopkins University. His current research is focused on the security of electronic medical records. Watch this 17 min video

Robots that fly ... and cooperate

In his lab at the University of Pennsylvania, Vijay Kumar and his team build flying quadrotors, small, agile robots that swarm, sense each other, and form ad hoc teams -- for construction, surveying disasters and far more. Vijay Kumar studies the control and coordination of multi-robot formations. Watch this 17 min video

A primer on 3D printing

2012 may be the year of 3D printing, when this three-decade-old technology finally becomes accessible and even commonplace. Lisa Harouni gives a useful introduction to this fascinating way of making things -- including intricate objects once impossible to create. Lisa Harouni is the co-founder of Digital Forming, working in "additive manufacturing" -- or 3D printing. Watch this 15 min video

PowerPoint presentations How Not To Make

Watch this interesting 9 min 29 sec video presentation presented in a humorous way