My phone and email have been flooded with requests from various media outlets over the past 12 hours since security consultancy Hold Security dropped the news that a Russian gang has stolen more than a billion email account credentials. Rather than respond to each of them in turn, allow me to add a bit of perspective here in the most direct way possible: The Q&A.
If you’re taking an exam to test your skills as an Internet security professional, do you get extra credit for schooling the organization that hosts the test? If that organization is the International Information Systems Security Certification Consortium (ISC)² — the non-profit that administers the Certified Information Systems Security Professional (CISSP) exam — the answer is “no,” but you might get a nice ‘thank you’ from the head of the organization.
Microsoft today issued security updates to fix at least 19 vulnerabilities in its software, including a zero-day flaw in Internet Explorer that is already being actively exploited. Separately, Adobe has released a critical update that plugs at least two security holes in its Flash Player software.
