Just when you thought cyber criminals couldn’t get smarter, along comes a new scamming technique. Previously used for safeguarding browsing activity, encryption tools are now used by hackers in carrying out phishing scams. This means some fraudulent sites may have HTTPS on their address, giving users a false sense of security.

Most phishing attacks involve hiding malicious hyperlinks hidden behind enticing ad images or false-front URLs. Whatever the strategy is, phishing almost always relies on users clicking a link before checking where it really leads. But even the most cautious users may get caught up in the most recent scam.

“Easy-to-use,” “SEO-friendly,” “open-source,” and “customizable.” These are some of the words that best describe WordPress, currently the most popular Content Management Solutions (CMS) platform. With thousands of websites affected in a recently launched series of attacks, “easy to target,” “hackers’ favorite,” and “prone to attacks” could soon be used to define the experience of running a WordPress website.

Google Chrome is following through with a game plan it announced in February of last year. In an effort to punish slow-loading or lagging sites that use Flash, a web component known to take up resources and memory, Google’s browser will make a newer, faster player the default.

A security alert has been released for DRUPAL web sites. Drupal is one of the top 3 CMS (content management systems) for websites. These vulnerabilities have not been found in Joomla and WordPress (the other top 2 CMS’s). One of the issue vulnerabilities are found in the update process and allow hackers to upload “poisoned” content to the server or even take over the server.

With the vast majority of end users turning to Google as their search engine or default browser of choice, it comes as no surprise to learn that the company takes security seriously. But in a perpetually changing landscape where anti-virus and anti-malware tools are constantly chasing their tails in order to stay up to date with the latest threats, there cannot be many small to medium-sized business owners who can afford to ignore the issues surrounding cyber security.