Stories by Roger A. Grimes

  • Be paranoid: 10 terrifying extreme hacks

    Any device with a computer chip can be hacked, but not all hacks are created equal. In fact, in a world where tens of millions of computers are compromised by malware every year and nearly every company's network is owned, truly innovative or thought-provoking hacks are few and far between.

  • 7 warning signs an employee has gone rogue

    For all the emphasis on tools and gizmos, IT is still very much about the people who develop and use said tools and gizmos. Collaboration, mutual respect, passion for the work -- all this and more are essential to a beneficial outcome, whether your IT group is shipping code, swatting bugs, working with business users, or securing company systems.

  • The BadUSB exploit is deadly, but few may be hit

    Nine years ago, I created what I believe was the world's first USB worm. By playing around with a USB thumb drive and placing a hidden file on it, I was able to make any computer in which the "infected" USB drive was plugged into automatically spread the file to the host computer, then back again when a new USB device was plugged in.

  • 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.

  • 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.

  • HoneyPoint: Honeypot for Windows, Linux or Mac

    After over 10 years of active participation in the honeypot community, I was surprised not to have heard of MicroSolved's HoneyPoint Security Server before I started planning this roundup. HoneyPoint runs on Windows, Linux, and Mac OS X, and offers some useful features -- such as "defensive fuzzing" and the ability to track alert status -- that KFSensor and Honeyd don't. But HoneyPoint is neither as easy and complete as KFSensor, nor as flexible and scalable as Honeyd.