Tech Minutes

Visa customers have reason to worry as a new research paper in the academic journal IEEE Security & Privacy revealed a weak spot in online credit card security that allows hackers virtually unlimited hacking attempts at Visa accounts. What's worse, the vulnerability lies in the way merchants accept online payments, meaning that there's little the average Visa card customer can do to protect themselves.

The vulnerability lies in the fact that the Visa payment system allows users to attempt all possible permutations and combinations of expiration dates and CVV numbers across hundreds of websites. To exploit this vulnerability, hackers can use a technique called Distributed Guessing Attack (which is similar to a DDoS attack). When this technique is executed properly, a hacker can recover a credit card's security information in as little as six seconds.

How Does Distributed Guessing Attacks Work?

At the heart of the issue is the fact that an online Visa payment system allows a maximum of 20 attempts per card in order to guess credentials like card numbers, expiration dates, and CVV numbers. That number may sound reasonable enough, but considering that all of the various payment websites do not coordinate their security efforts regarding the attempted use of a particular credit card, nothing stops a hacker from simultaneously running number combinations through the payment system on several websites until a working expiration date and CVV number is found.

Considering that it only takes 1,000 attempts to crack a three character CVV number and only 60 attempts to guess the correct expiration date, a hacker doesn't have to attempt their guesswork on many sites before successfully gaining access to the funds associated with that Visa account. Essentially, it plays out like a twisted version of the classic game 20 Questions.

In a historically large media merge, AT&T and Time Warner have come to an agreement in a proposal that has been discussed since as early as August 2016. The wireless provider intends to purchase Time Warner’s media holdings for a whopping total of $85.4 billion in cash and stocks, assuming the merger passes the inspection of antitrust regulators.

ONEONTA, NY - On November 8 - 11, 2016, Directive’s executive management team will be heading to Boston, MA to attend Hubspot's annual sales and marketing event, Inbound 2016. Directive, an agency that specializes in marketing, has been serving Oneonta and the surrounding region for more than two decades. Inbound 2016 aims to improve the knowledge and skills of its attendees by providing education, inspiring innovation, and creating networking and connection opportunities to improve effectivity of marketing initiatives and develop more compelling sales techniques.

Sometimes, you just need to take a closer look at the Internet. For this article, we are not referring to a search engine; instead, we're talking about literally taking a closer look by using your Web browser's zoom feature, and it's as easy as giving your mouse click wheel a spin.

Here at Directive, we love Joomla, the open source content management system that makes it easy to edit your website. Here's an intermediate Joomla trick that will let you load a module inside an article (instead of in one of your template's pre-defined positions). There can be numerous occasions where you might want to drop a module inside one of your Joomla articles. Maybe you want some tabbed content inside your article or an image rotator that shows off your latest photos, or embed a JoomConnect form. This can all be done very easily with Joomla's loadposition tag. Hit the jump to find out how this is done.