Yuri Ilyin

Musician and technology enthusiast.

355 articles

With the doors wide open: yet another Sony megahack

Sony Pictures Entertainment fell victim to a massive hack. Attackers used destructive malware to bring SPE networks down, while stealing up to 11 TB of data, which included both trade secrets, yellow press fodder, passwords to social networks accounts, and a lot of private information.

Protecting the future: the roots of security

Today’s information technologies are a rather mishmashed system comprised of top-notch innovations interspersed with legacy technologies, some of which have been in use for decades and rarely changed. This “coexistence” of new and old led to the discovery of dramatic bugs that had stayed below the radar for years.

A legacy bug in a legacy code: today’s problem

Microsoft has patched yet another bug in OLE, this time one that’s 19-years-old. While it is extremely surprising this bug hadn’t been discovered earlier, the crucial question here is the use of the underreviewed legacy code that developers have to drag along for decades.

Picturing the future to protect

Will mankind become overrun by technological and information threats while future humans’ raison d’etre would be to keep the machines going “Metropolis” or “Matrix” style? We don’t know. The future remains a product of our imagination until it comes true, while our reality is the consequence of actions.

Hotel IT security: quo vadis?

The newly disclosed Darkhotel APT campaign will surely draw increased scrutiny to hospitality systems’ security worldwide. Hoteliers acknowledge the existence of security problems in their software systems, and many are opting to move these systems into the cloud. Is this a viable solution?

BlackEnergy 2: a good set or bad deeds

Securelist has published extensive research on BlackEnergy. Initially a DDoS crimeware, it turned into a huge collection of various tools currently used in various APT-type activities, including some “significant geopolitical operations”.

The dark story of Darkhotel

Kaspersky Lab has just announced the discovery of an alarming APT campaign codenamed “Darkhotel,” targeted mainly at business executives staying at certain hotels in Asia. Luxury hotels offer not just places to stay, but also comfort and privacy. However, their cybersecurity occasionally fails.