Avsnitt
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This week in InfoSec
With content liberated from the “today in infosec” twitter account and further afield
27th April 2012: The Information Commissioner's Office (ICO) in the UK issued its first-ever data breach fine to an NHS (National Health Service) organisation, fining Aneurin Bevan Health Board in Wales £70,000.
https://www.digitalhealth.net/2012/04/first-nhs-fine-issued-by-ico/
Rant of the Week
Dropbox dropped the ball on security, haemorrhaging customer and third-party info
Dropbox has revealed a major attack on its systems that saw customers' personal information accessed by unknown and unauthorized entities.
The attack, detailed in a regulatory filing, impacted Dropbox Sign – a service it bills as an "eSignature solution [that] lets you send, sign, and store important documents in one seamless workflow, without ever leaving Dropbox." So basically a DocuSign clone.
The filing states that management became aware of the incident last week – on April 24 – and "immediately activated our cyber security incident response process to investigate, contain, and remediate the incident."
That effort led to the discovery that "the threat actor had accessed data related to all users of Dropbox Sign, such as emails and usernames, in addition to general account settings."
Billy Big Balls of the Week
Chinese government website security is often worryingly bad, say Chinese researchers
Five Chinese researchers examined the configurations of nearly 14,000 government websites across the country and found worrying lapses that could lead to malicious attacks, according to a not-yet-peer-reviewed study released last week.
The researchers concluded the investigation has uncovered "pressing security and dependency issues" that may not have a quick fix.
"Despite thorough analyses, practical solutions to bolster the security of these systems remain elusive," wrote the researchers. "Their susceptibility to cyber attacks, which could facilitate the spread of malicious content or malware, underscores the urgent need for real-time monitoring and malicious activity detection."
The study also highlights the need for "stringent vetting and regular updates" of third-party libraries and advocates "a diversified distribution of network nodes, which could substantially augment system resilience and performance."
The study will likely not go down well in Beijing, as China's government has urged improvements to government digital services and apps often issues edicts about improving cybersecurity.
Industry News
Google Blocks 2.3 Million Apps From Play Store Listing
Disinformation: EU Opens Probe Against Facebook and Instagram Ahead of Election
NCSC’s New Mobile Risk Model Aimed at “High-Threat” Firms
Lawsuits and Company Devaluations Await For Breached Firms
UnitedHealth CEO Confirms Breach Tied to Stolen Credentials, No MFA
REvil Ransomware Affiliate Sentenced to Over 13 Years in Prison
Security Breach Exposes Dropbox Sign Users
Indonesia is a Spyware Haven, Amnesty International Finds
North Korean Hackers Spoofing Journalist Emails to Spy on Policy Experts
Tweet of the Week
https://twitter.com/summer__heidi/status/1783829402574639187
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This week in InfoSec (07:04)
With content liberated from the “today in infosec” twitter account and further afield
23rd April 2005: The first video uploaded to YouTube, “Me at the zoo,” is posted on April 23, 2005 at 8:27 PM by co-founder Jawed Karim. For now being a piece of history, the video is actually pretty dumb.
Note to future entrepreneurs: what you do may be for posterity. Choose wisely.
22nd April 1988: 1988: The VIRUS-L email mailing list was created and moderated by Ken van Wyk while he was working at Lehigh University. It was the first electronic forum dedicated to discussing computer viruses.
https://twitter.com/todayininfosec/status/1782424224348446910
Rant of the Week (13:21)
Ring dinged for $5.6M after, among other claims, rogue insider spied on 'pretty girls'
The FTC today announced it would be sending refunds totaling $5.6 million to Ring customers, paid from the Amazon subsidiary's coffers.
The windfall stems from allegations made by the US watchdog that folks could have been, and were, spied upon by cybercriminals and rogue Ring workers via their Ring home security cameras.
The regulator last year accused Ring of sloppy privacy protections that allowed the aforementioned spying to occur or potentially occur.
Specifically, the FTC formally charged Ring with "compromising its customers' privacy by allowing any employee or contractor to access consumers' private videos and by failing to implement basic privacy and security protections, enabling hackers to take control of consumers' accounts, cameras, and videos."
Billy Big Balls of the Week (21:41)
Cops cuff man for allegedly framing colleague with AI-generated hate speech clipBaltimore police have arrested Dazhon Leslie Darien, the former athletic director of Pikesville High School (PHS), for allegedly impersonating the school's principal using AI software to make it seem as if he made racist and antisemitic remarks.
Darien, of Baltimore, Maryland, was subsequently charged with witness retaliation, stalking, theft, and disrupting school operations. He was detained late at night trying to board a flight at BWI Thurgood Marshall Airport. Security personnel stopped him because the declared firearm he had with him was improperly packed and an ensuing background check revealed an open warrant for his arrest.
He is quoted as saying “Arse cock pussy”. 😀
"On January 17, 2024, the Baltimore County Police Department became aware of a voice recording being circulated on social media," said Robert McCullough, Chief of Baltimore County Police, at a streamed press conference today. "It was alleged the voice captured on the audio file belong to Mr Eric Eiswert, the Principal at the Pikesville High School. We now have conclusive evidence that the recording was not authentic.
Industry News (30:51)
Quishing Attacks Jump Tenfold, Attachment Payloads Halve
Alarming Decline in Cybersecurity Job Postings in the US
NCSC Announces PwC’s Richard Horne as New CEO
NSA Launches Guidance for Secure AI Deployment
End-to-End Encryption Sparks Concerns Among EU Law Enforcement
Fifth of CISOs Admit Staff Leaked Data Via GenAI
US Congress Passes Bill to Ban TikTok
Online Banking Security Still Not Up to Par, Says Which?
Ring to Pay Out $5.6m in Refunds After Customer Privacy Breach
Tweet of the Week (38:56)
https://twitter.com/KimZetter/status/1783556843798671591
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Saknas det avsnitt?
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This week in InfoSec (08:49)
With content liberated from the “today in infosec” twitter account and further afield
7th April 1969: Steve Crocker, a graduate student at UCLA and part of the team developing ARPANET, writes the first “Request for Comments“. The ARPANET, a research project of the Department of Defense’s Advanced Research Projects Agency (ARPA), was the foundation of today’s modern Internet. RFC 1 defined the design of the host software for communication between ARPANET nodes. This host software would be run on Interface Message Processors or IMPs, which were the precursor to Internet routers. The “host software” defined in RFC 1 would later be known as the Network Control Protocol or NCP, which itself was the forerunner to the modern TCP/IP protocol the Internet runs on today.
https://thisdayintechhistory.com/04/07/rfc-1-defines-the-building-block-of-internet-communication/
7th April 2014: The Heartbleed Bug was publicly disclosed. The buffer over-read vulnerability had been discovered by Neel Mehta and later privately reported to the OpenSSL project, which patched it the next day. The vulnerability was inadvertently introduced into OpenSSL 2 years prior.
https://twitter.com/todayininfosec/status/1777136463882183076
Rant of the Week (17:09)
OpenTable is adding your first name to previously anonymous reviews
Restaurant reservation platform OpenTable says that all reviews on the platform will no longer be fully anonymous starting May 22nd and will now show members' profile pictures and first names.
OpenTable notified members of this new policy change today in emails to members who had previously left a review on the platform, stating the change was made to provide more transparency.
"At OpenTable, we strive to build a community in which diners can help other diners discover new restaurants, and reviews are a big part of that," reads the OpenTable email seen by BleepingComputer.
"We've heard from you, our diners, that trust and transparency are important when looking at reviews."
"To build on the credibility of our review program, starting May 22, 2024, OpenTable will begin displaying diner first names and profile photos on all diner reviews. This update will also apply to past reviews.
Billy Big Balls of the Week (26:36)
Lloyds Bank axes risk staff after executives complain they are a ‘blocker’Lloyds Banking Group plans to cut jobs in risk management after an internal review found the function was a “blocker to our strategic transformation”.
The restructuring was outlined in a memo last month from Lloyds’ chief risk officer Stephen Shelley, who said two-thirds of executives believed risk management was blocking progress while “less than half our workforce believe intelligent risk-taking is encouraged”. The lender was “resetting our approach to risk and controls”, Shelley said in the memo, seen by the Financial Times, adding that “the initial focus is on non-financial risks”.
Industry News (33:55)
T: Famous YouTube Channels Hacked to Distribute Infostealers
A: US Federal Data Privacy Law Introduced by Legislators
J: Foreign Interference Drives Record Surge in IP Theft
T: Half of UK Businesses Hit by Cyber-Incident in Past Year, UK Government Finds
A: US Claims to Have Recovered $1.4bn in COVID Fraud
J: Women Experience Exclusion Twice as Often as Men in Cybersecurity
T: Threat Actors Game GitHub Search to Spread Malware
A: Data Breach Exposes 300k Taxi Passengers’ Information
J: Apple Boosts Spyware Alerts For Mercenary Attacks
Tweet of the Week (52:08)
https://x.com/ErrataRob/status/1778536622163984590
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This week in InfoSec (06:10)
With content liberated from the “today in infosec” twitter account and further afield
3rd April 2011: Email marketing and loyalty program management company Epsilon reported a data breach of names and email addresses of numerous companies' customers, totaling at least 60 million records. Dozens of companies were impacted, including Kroger, Walgreens, Verizon, and Chase.
https://twitter.com/todayininfosec/status/1775598288277835996
1st April 1995: US President Bill Clinton and Russian President Boris Yeltsin announced a pact to exchange their personal PGP keys and to make the technology available to all citizens worldwide. (April Fools' Day)
https://twitter.com/todayininfosec/status/1774994645053010184
Rant of the Week (13:06)
William Wragg honey trap scandal is ‘extremely troubling’ says minister
Explosive revelations that a senior Conservative MP leaked colleagues’ phone numbers to a man he had met on the gay dating app Grindr are “very serious”, a minister has warned, amid questions over whether the MP will face sanctions.
Vice chairman of the 1922 committee William Wragg admitted he sent the numbers after becoming concerned about the power the recipient had over him since he had sent intimate pictures of himself.
Treasury minister Gareth Davies said the situation was “incredibly troubling and very serious” but maintained that Mr Wragg would keep the party whip while the incident is being investigated.
Billy Big Balls of the Week (24:09)
Amazon Ditches 'Just Walk Out' Checkouts at Its Grocery StoresAmazon Fresh is moving away from a feature of its grocery stores where customers could skip checkout altogether.
Amazon is phasing out its checkout-less grocery stores with “Just Walk Out” technology, first reported by The Information Tuesday. The company’s senior vice president of grocery stores says they’re moving away from Just Walk Out, which relied on cameras and sensors to track what people were leaving the store with.
Just over half of Amazon Fresh stores are equipped with Just Walk Out. The technology allows customers to skip checkout altogether by scanning a QR code when they enter the store. Though it seemed completely automated, Just Walk Out relied on more than 1,000 people in India watching and labeling videos to ensure accurate checkouts. The cashiers were simply moved off-site, and they watched you as you shopped.
On Wednesday, GeekWire reported that Amazon Web Services is cutting a few hundred jobs in its Physical Stores Technology team, according to internal emails. The layoffs will allegedly impact portions of Amazon’s identity and checkout teams.
Industry News (29:46)
Dataset of 73 Million AT&T Customers Linked to Dark Web Data Breach
Firms Must Work Harder to Guard Children’s Privacy, Says UK ICO
Threat Actor Claims Classified Five Eyes Data Theft
Leicester Council Confirms Confidential Documents Leaked in Ransomware Attack
Jackson County IT Systems Hit By Ransomware Attack
LockBit Scrambles After Takedown, Repopulates Leak Site with Old Breaches
China Using AI-Generated Content to Sow Division in US, Microsoft Finds
Wiz Discovers Flaws in GenAI Models Enabling Customer Data Theft
Chinese Threat Actors Deploy New TTPs to Exploit Ivanti Vulnerabilities
Tweet of the Week (35:58)
https://twitter.com/belldotbz/status/1776187040813441272
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This week in InfoSec (07:32)
With content liberated from the “today in infosec” twitter account and further afield
20th March 2007: Dragos Ruiu announced the first Pwn2Own contest, which was held that April in Vancouver, Canada. The contest is still being held today - and in fact Pwn2Own Vancouver 2024 started today.
https://twitter.com/todayininfosec/status/1770592695255249038
16th March 1971: The first computer virus, Creeper, infected computers on the ARPANET, displaying "I'M THE CREEPER : CATCH ME IF YOU CAN." It was named after the Creeper - a villain from a 1970 episode of the TV series "Scooby-Doo, Where Are You!"
https://twitter.com/todayininfosec/status/1768973007555375317
Rant of the Week (14:29)
Majority of Americans now use ad blockers
More than half of Americans are using ad blocking software, and among advertising, programming, and security professionals that fraction is more like two-thirds to three-quarters.
According to a survey of 2,000 Americans conducted by research firm Censuswide, on behalf of Ghostery, a maker of software to block ads and online tracking, 52 percent of Americans now use an ad blocker, up from 34 percent according to 2022 Statista data.
Billy Big Balls of the Week (23:01)
Execs in Japan busted for winning dev bids then outsourcing to North KoreansTwo executives were issued arrest warrants in Japan on Wednesday, reportedly for charges related to establishing a business that outsourced work to North Korean IT engineers.
At least one of the individuals – a 53 year old named Pak Hyon-il – is a South Korean national. His alleged accomplice, 42-year old Toshiron Minomo, is Japanese and once worked for Hyon-il, according to local media.
Pak served as president of Fuchu-based IT firm ITZ, while Minomo was the head of Fukuyama-based Robast.
Industry News (29:09)
UK Blames China for 2021 Hack Targeting Millions of Voters' Data
Fake Ozempic Deals on the Rise as Experts Warn of Phishing Scams
Portugal Forces Sam Altman's Worldcoin to Stop Collecting Biometric Data
Only 5% of Boards Have Cybersecurity Expertise, Despite Financial Benefits
UK Law Enforcers Arrest 400 in Major Fraud Crackdown
Chinese Hackers Target ASEAN Entities in Espionage Campaign
NHS Trust Confirms Clinical Data Leaked by “Recognized Ransomware Group”
US Treasury Urges Financial Sector to Address AI Cybersecurity Threats
CISA Launches New Cyber Incident Reporting Rules for US Defense Contractors
Tweet of the Week (40:52)
https://twitter.com/bettersafetynet/status/1773626490384511113
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This week in InfoSec (14:26)
With content liberated from the “today in infosec” twitter account and further afield
7th March 2017: WikiLeaks began its new series of leaks on the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency (CIA). Code-named Vault 7 by WikiLeaks, it was the largest ever publication of confidential documents on the agency.
https://twitter.com/todayininfosec/status/1765828993713090565
14th March 2013: Security journalist Brian Krebs was swatted when police responded to a spoofed 911 call claiming Russians had broken into his home and had shot his wife.
One of several people who made the false report, Eric Taylor (aka Cosmo the God), was sentenced to probation in 2017.
https://twitter.com/todayininfosec/status/1768253237260435814
Rant of the Week (21:38)
US Congress goes bang, bang, on TikTok sale-or-ban plan
The United States House of Representatives on Wednesday passed the Protecting Americans from Foreign Adversary Controlled Applications Act – a law aimed at forcing TikTok's Chinese parent ByteDance to sell the app's US operations or face the prospect of a ban.
The bill names only TikTok as a "foreign adversary controlled application" and prohibits "Providing services to distribute, maintain, or update" the app – including by offering it for sale in an app store. Even updates to the app aren't allowed.
If TikTok's US operations were locally owned and operated, none of the sanctions the bill mentions would be enforceable. And US lawmakers' fears that TikTok gives Beijing a way to gather intelligence and surveil citizens would be eased.
[Related or coincidental? Or a BBB?]
Former US Treasury secretary Steve Mnuchin thinking about buying TikTok
On the heels of the US House of Representatives passing a TikTok ban bill, former US Treasury secretary and private equity mogul Steve Mnuchin is apparently thinking about buying the platform.
Speaking to CNBC's pre-market team at Squawk Box, Mnuchin said he hoped the TikTok ban would pass in the Senate, forcing a sale of the platform to a US-based parent.
"It's a great business and I'm going to put together a group to buy TikTok," Mnuchin told CNBC. Mnuchin didn't mention whether partners had been identified, or what phase the purchase was in.
Billy Big Balls of the Week (32:14)
CEO of Data Privacy Company Onerep.com Founded Dozens of People-Search FirmsThe data privacy company Onerep.com bills itself as a Virginia-based service for helping people remove their personal information from almost 200 people-search websites. However, an investigation into the history of onerep.com finds this company is operating out of Belarus and Cyprus, and that its founder has launched dozens of people-search services over the years.
Onerep’s “Protect” service starts at $8.33 per month for individuals and $15/mo for families, and promises to remove your personal information from nearly 200 people-search sites. Onerep also markets its service to companies seeking to offer their employees the ability to have their data continuously removed from people-search sites.
Industry News (41:21)
UnitedHealth Sets Timeline to Restore Change Healthcare Systems After BlackCat Hit
Russia’s Midnight Blizzard Accesses Microsoft Source Code
Third-Party Breach and Missing MFA Contributed to British Library Cyber-Attack
Lawmakers Slam UK Government’s “Ostrich Strategy” for Cybersecurity
Google to Restrict Election-Related Answers on AI Chatbot Gemini
Meta Sues Former VP After Defection to AI Startup
Google Paid $10m in Bug Bounties to Security Researchers in 2023
French Employment Agency Data Breach Could Affect 43 Million People
TikTok Faces US Ban as House Votes to Compel ByteDance to Sell
Tweet of the Week (50:29)
https://twitter.com/andylapteff/status/1767952062279492006
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This week in InfoSec (06:53)
With content liberated from the “today in infosec” twitter account and further afield
1st March 1988: The MS-DOS boot sector virus "Ping-Pong" was discovered at the Politecnico di Torino (Turin Polytechnic University) in Italy.
The virus would show a small ball bouncing around the screen in both text mode (ASCII character "•") and graphical mode.
https://twitter.com/todayininfosec/status/1763540406443163705
26th February 2004: Antivirus firm F-Secure apologized for sending the Netsky.B virus to 1000s of its UK customers & partners via a mailing list. The unknown sender sent it through the email list server, which didn't scan for viruses. And there was no business reason to accept external emails.
https://twitter.com/todayininfosec/status/1762092359313936553
Rant of the Week (11:48)
Meta's pay-or-consent model hides 'massive illegal data processing ops': lawsuit
Consumer groups are filing legal complaints in the EU in a coordinated attempt to use data protection law to stop Meta from giving local users a "fake choice" between paying up and consenting to being profiled and tracked via data collection.
Billy Big Balls of the Week (20:16)
Fox News 'hacker' turns out to be journalist whose lawyers say was doing his job
A Florida journalist has been arrested and charged with breaking into protected computer systems in a case his lawyers say was less "hacking," more "good investigative journalism."
Tim Burke was arrested on Thursday and charged with one count of conspiracy, six counts of accessing a protected computer without authorization, and seven counts of intercepting or disclosing wire, oral or electronic communications for his supposed role in the theft of unedited video streams from Fox News.
Industry News (27:48)
UK Unveils Draft Cybersecurity Governance Code to Boost Business Resilience
34 Million Roblox Credentials Exposed on Dark Web in Three Years
Biden Bans Mass Sale of Data to Hostile Nations
US Government Warns Healthcare is Biggest Target for BlackCat Affiliates
Savvy Seahorse Targets Investment Platforms With DNS Scams
Pharma Giant Cencora Reports Cybersecurity Breach
UK Home Office Breached Data Protection Law with Migrant Tracking Program, ICO Finds
Five Eyes Warn of Ivanti Vulnerabilities Exploitation, Detection Tools Insufficient
Biden Warns Chinese Cars Could Steal US Citizens' Data
Tweet of the Week (35:17)
https://twitter.com/_FN8_/status/1762583435745402951
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This week in InfoSec (06:25)
With content liberated from the “today in infosec” twitter account and further afield
16th February 2010: Version 2.0 of the CWE/SANS Top 25 Most Dangerous Software Errors was released.
Take a look and decide which of these weaknesses have been eradicated over the last 14 years.
Web Archive
https://twitter.com/todayininfosec/status/1758712418601971748
20th February 2003: Alan Giang Tran, former network admin for 2 companies, was arrested after allegedly destroying data on the companies' networks. Two months later he pleaded guilty to a federal charge of intentionally causing damage to a protected computer.
https://twitter.com/todayininfosec/status/1760021831354896443
Rant of the Week (14:01)
Avast fined $16.5 million for ‘privacy’ software that actually sold users’ browsing data
Avast, the cybersecurity software company, is facing a $16.5 million fine after it was caught storing and selling customer information without their consent. The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) announced the fine on Thursday and said that it’s banning Avast from selling user data for advertising purposes.
From at least 2014 to 2020, Avast harvested user web browsing information through its antivirus software and browser extension, according to the FTC’s complaint. This allowed it to collect data on religious beliefs, health concerns, political views, locations, and financial status. The company then stored this information “indefinitely” and sold it to over 100 third parties without the knowledge of customers, the complaint says.
Billy Big Balls of the Week(25:02)
Husband 'made over a million' by eavesdropping on BP wifeThe husband of a BP employee has been charged with insider trading in the US following claims he overheard details of calls made by his wife while working from home.
The US Securities and Exchange Commission alleged Tyler Loudon made $1.76m (£1.39m) in illegal profits.
The regulator claimed Mr Loudon heard several of his wife's conversations about BP's takeover of TravelCenters of America and bought shares in the firm.
BP has declined to comment.
The SEC said: "We allege that Mr Loudon took advantage of his remote working conditions and his wife's trust to profit from information he knew was confidential."
His wife - a mergers and acquisitions manager at BP - worked on the oil giant's takeover of TravelCenters.
The SEC said Mr Loudon purchased 46,450 shares of TravelCenter's stock, without his wife's knowledge, before the deal was made public in February last year.
Following the announcement, TravelCenter's share price rose nearly 71% and Mr Loudon allegedly immediately sold all of his newly-bought shares for a profit, the SEC said.
Industry News (32:16)
Attacker Breakout Time Falls to Just One Hour
NCSC Sounds Alarm Over Private Branch Exchange Attacks
Biden Executive Order to Bolster US Maritime Cybersecurity
Ransomware Warning as CVSS 10.0 ScreenConnect Bug is Exploited
Chinese Duo Found Guilty of $3m Apple Fraud Plot
OWASP Releases Security Checklist for Generative AI Deployment
Russian-Aligned Network Doppelgänger Targets German Elections
Change Healthcare Cyber-Attack Leads to Prescription Delays
ICO Bans Serco Leisure's Use of Facial Recognition for Employee Attendance
Tweet of the Week (42:37)
https://twitter.com/lauriewired/status/1760751495073640705
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This week in InfoSec (08:40)
With content liberated from the “today in infosec” twitter account and further afield
14th February 2001: In a presentation at Black Hat Windows Security Conference 2001, Andrey Malyshev of ElcomSoft shared that Microsoft Excel uses a default encryption password of "VelvetSweatshop".
https://twitter.com/todayininfosec/status/1757782275406622835
16th February 2004: The Netsky worm first appeared. It spread via an email attachment which after opened would search the computer for email addresses then email itself to those addresses. Its dozens of variants accounted for almost a quarter of malware detected in 2004.
https://twitter.com/todayininfosec/status/1758497889972576608
Rant of the Week (5:10)
Air Canada must pay damages after chatbot lies to grieving passenger about discount
Air Canada must pay a passenger hundreds of dollars in damages after its online chatbot gave the guy wrong information before he booked a flight.
Jake Moffatt took the airline to a small-claims tribunal after the biz refused to refund him for flights he booked from Vancouver to Toronto following the death of his grandmother in November last year. Before he bought the tickets, he researched Air Canada's bereavement fares – special low rates for those traveling due to the loss of an immediate family member – by querying its website chatbot.
The virtual assistant told him that if he purchased a normal-price ticket he would have up to 90 days to claim back a bereavement discount. Following that advice, Moffatt booked a one-way CA$794.98 ticket to Toronto, presumably to attend the funeral or attend to family, and later an CA$845.38 flight back to Vancouver.
He also spoke to an Air Canada representative who confirmed he would be able to get a bereavement discount on his flights and that he should expect to pay roughly $380 to get to Toronto and back. Crucially, the rep didn't say anything about being able to claim the discount as money back after purchasing a ticket.
When Moffatt later submitted his claim for a refund, and included a copy of his grandmother's death certificate, all well within that 90-day window, Air Canada turned him down.
Staff at the airline told him bereavement fare rates can't be claimed back after having already purchased flights, a policy at odds with what the support chatbot told Moffatt. It's understood the virtual assistant was automated, and not a person sat at a keyboard miles away.
Billy Big Balls of the Week (22:06)
Australia passes Right To Disconnect law, including (for now) jail time for bosses who email after-hoursAustralia last week passed a Right To Disconnect law that forbids employers contacting workers after hours, with penalties including jail time for bosses who do the wrong thing.
The criminal sanction will soon be overturned – it was the result of parliamentary shenanigans rather than the government's intent – and the whole law could go too if opposition parties and business groups have their way.
European companies have already introduced Right To Disconnect laws in response to digital devices blurring the boundaries between working hours and personal time. The laptops or phones employers provide have obvious after-hours uses, but also mean workers can find themselves browsing emailed or texted messages from their boss at all hours – sometimes with an expectation of a response. That expectation, labor rights orgs argue, extends the working day without increasing pay.
Right To Disconnect laws might better be termed "Right to not read or respond to messages from work" laws because that's what they seek to guarantee.
Industry News (31:45)
US, UK and India Among the Countries Most At Risk of Election Cyber Interference
Southern Water Notifies Customers and Employees of Data Breach
Cybersecurity Spending Expected to be Slashed in 41% of SMEs
GoldPickaxe Trojan Blends Biometrics Theft and Deepfakes to Scam Banks
Microsoft, OpenAI Confirm Nation-States are Weaponizing Generative AI in Cyber-Attacks
Prudential Financial Faces Cybersecurity Breach
Google Warns Unfair AI Rules Could Empower Hackers, Harming Defense
Hackers Exploit EU Agenda in Spear Phishing Campaigns
New Ivanti Vulnerability Observed as Widespread Security Concerns Grow
Tweet of the Week (39:24)
https://twitter.com/MalwareJake/status/1758454999380557885
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This week in InfoSec (08:59)
With content liberated from the “today in infosec” twitter account and further afield
8th February 2000: A 15-year-old Canadian identified at the time only by his handle "MafiaBoy" launched a 4-hour DDoS attack against http://cnn.com. The attacks also targeted Yahoo, eBay, Amazon and other sites over a 3 day period. In 2001 a Canadian court sentenced him to 8 months.
https://twitter.com/todayininfosec/status/1755576730306089245
7th February 2000: Dennis Michael Moran (aka Coolio) performed a smurf attack against Yahoo's routers, causing its websites to be inaccessible for hours. Conversations on an IRC channel led to him being identified and convicted for a series of DDoS and website defacement crimes.
https://twitter.com/todayininfosec/status/1755267532540244316
Rant of the Week (14:35)
Viral news story of botnet with 3 million toothbrushes was too good to be true
In recent days you may have heard about the terrifying botnet consisting of 3 million electric toothbrushes that were infected with malware. While you absent-mindedly attended to your oral hygiene, little did you know that your toothbrush and millions of others were being controlled remotely by nefarious criminals.
Alas, fiction is sometimes stranger than truth. There weren't really 3 million Internet-connected toothbrushes accessing the website of a Swiss company in a DDoS attack that did millions of dollars of damage. The toothbrush botnet was just a hypothetical example that some journalists wrongly interpreted as having actually happened.
It apparently started with a January 30 story by the Swiss German-language daily newspaper Aargauer Zeitung. Tom's Hardware helped spread the tale in English on Tuesday this week in an article titled, "Three million malware-infected smart toothbrushes used in Swiss DDoS attacks."
https://www.malwarebytes.com/blog/awareness/2024/02/how-to-tell-if-your-toothbrush-is-being-used-in-a-ddos-attack
Billy Big Balls of the Week (21:50)
Finance worker pays out $25 million after video call with deepfake ‘chief financial officer’
A finance worker at a multinational firm was tricked into paying out $25 million to fraudsters using deepfake technology to pose as the company’s chief financial officer in a video conference call, according to Hong Kong police.
The elaborate scam saw the worker duped into attending a video call with what he thought were several other members of staff, but all of whom were in fact deepfake recreations, Hong Kong police said at a briefing on Friday.
“(In the) multi-person video conference, it turns out that everyone [he saw] was fake,” senior superintendent Baron Chan Shun-ching told the city’s public broadcaster RTHK.
Chan said the worker had grown suspicious after he received a message that was purportedly from the company’s UK-based chief financial officer. Initially, the worker suspected it was a phishing email, as it talked of the need for a secret transaction to be carried out.
However, the worker put aside his early doubts after the video call because other people in attendance had looked and sounded just like colleagues he recognized, Chan said.
Believing everyone else on the call was real, the worker agreed to remit a total of $200 million Hong Kong dollars – about $25.6 million, the police officer added.
Industry News (28:58)
Clorox and Johnson Controls Reveal $76m Cyber-Attack Bill
Meta's Oversight Board Urges a Policy Change After a Fake Biden Video
Malware-as-a-Service Now the Top Threat to Organizations
Chinese Spies Hack Dutch Networks With Novel Coathanger Malware
Meta to Introduce Labeling for AI-Generated Images Ahead of US Election
Governments and Tech Giants Unite Against Commercial Spyware
France: 33 Million Social Security Numbers Exposed in Health Insurance Hack
20 Years of Facebook, but Trust in Social Media Remains Rock Bottom
AI-Powered Robocalls Banned Ahead of US Election
Tweet of the Week (37:15)
https://x.com/gossithedog/status/1755282171198054805?s=46&t=1-Sjo1Vy8SG7OdizJ3wVbg
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This week in InfoSec (08:19)
With content liberated from the “today in infosec” twitter account and further afield
31st Jan 2011 (13 years ago): Chris Russo reported a vulnerability to dating website PlentyOfFish's CEO Markus Frind's wife. Yada yada yada Markus Frind then accused Russo of extortion and emailed Russo's mother.
https://techcrunch.com/2011/01/31/plentyoffish-ceo-we-were-hacked-almost-extorted-so-i-emailed-the-hackers-mom/
https://krebsonsecurity.com/2011/01/plentyoffish-com-hacked-blames-messenger/
Rant of the Week (13:56)
The TikTok Hearing Revealed That Congress Is the Problem
For some, the job on Thursday was casting the hearing's only witness, TikTok CEO Shou Zi Chew, as a stand-in for the Chinese government—in some cases, for communism itself—and then belting him like a side of beef. More than a few of the questions lawmakers put to Chew were vague, speculative, and immaterial to the allegations against his company. But the members of Congress asking those questions feigned little interest in Chew’s responses anyway.
Attempts by Chew, a 40-year-old former Goldman Sachs banker, to elaborate on TikTok’s business practices were frequently interrupted, and his requests to remark on matters supposedly of considerable interest to members of Congress were blocked and occasionally ignored. These opportunities to get the CEO on record, while under oath, were repeatedly blown in the name of expediency and for mostly theatrical reasons. Chew, in contrast, was the portrait of patience, even when he was being talked over. Even when some lawmakers began asking and, without pause, answering their own questions.
The hearing might’ve been a flop, had lawmakers planned to dig up new dirt on TikTok, which is owned by China-based ByteDance, or even hash out what the company could do next to allay their concerns. But that wasn't the aim. The House Energy and Commerce Committee was gathered, it said, to investigate “how Congress can safeguard American data privacy and protect children from online harms.” And on that, the hearing revealed plenty.
Billy Big Balls of the Week (23:41)
ICBC Partners Wary to Resume Trading With Bank After Cyberattack
Industrial & Commercial Bank of China Ltd., the world’s largest lender by assets, has been unable to convince some market participants that it’s safe to reconnect their computer networks to the bank’s US unit after a ransomware attack disrupted its systems, according to people familiar with the matter.
The attack, which was claimed by the Russia-linked LockBit cybercrime and extortion gang earlier this month, impeded trading in the $26 billion Treasury market and, the people said, it has left users of the bank’s US arm skittish about trading with the bank.
For its part, ICBC has told users that its US division is back online and operational, the people said. One person familiar with the hack and investigation said a reason the bank could get back online quickly was that a key part of its trading system was unaffected by the attack — a server that was more than 20 years old, made by now-defunct IT equipment maker Novell Inc.. That server contained much of the bank’s trading data and capabilities and is so old that LockBit’s ransomware didn’t work on it, the person said.
Industry News (35:28)
US Agencies Failure to Oversee Ransomware Protections Threaten White House Goals
US Thwarts Volt Typhoon Cyber Espionage Campaign Through Router Disruption
Interpol-Led Initiative Targets 1300 Suspicious IPs
Ivanti Releases Zero-Day Patches and Reveals Two New Bugs
Pump-and-Dump Schemes Make Crypto Fraudsters $240m
Google’s Bazel Exposed to Command Injection Threat
Tweet of the Week (41:51)
https://x.com/MikeIrvo/status/1752123455125016839?s=20
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This week in InfoSec (04:51)
With content liberated from the “today in infosec” twitter account and further afield
25th January 2003: The SQL Slammer worm was first observed. It relied on a vulnerability Microsoft reported a whopping 6 months earlier via security bulletin MS02-039. Despite the long-available patch, 75,000 systems were compromised within 10 minutes..
https://twitter.com/todayininfosec/status/1750529757903790431
21st January 1992: Former General Dynamics employee Michael John Lauffenburger was sentenced. He had created a logic bomb, which was programmed to go off on May 24, 1991. Unfortunately for him, an employee accidentally discovered it, dismantled it, and contacted authorities.
https://twitter.com/todayininfosec/status/1749184231752802757
Rant of the Week (11:10)
Third-party ink cartridges brick HP printers after ‘anti-virus’ updateHP is pushing over-the-air firmware updates to its printers, bricking them if they are using third-party ink cartridges. But don’t worry, it’s not a money-grab, says the company – it’s just trying to protect you from the well-known risk of viruses embedded in ink cartridges …
HP has long been known for sketchy practices in its attempt to turn ink purchases into a subscription service. If you cancel a subscription, for example, the company will immediately stop the printer using the ink you’ve already paid for.
CEO Enrique Lores somehow managed to keep a straight face while explaining to CNBC that the company was only trying to protect users from viruses which might be embedded into aftermarket ink cartridges.
It can create issues [where] the printers stop working because the inks have not been designed to be used in our printers, to then create security issues. We have seen that you can embed viruses in the cartridges, and through the cartridge, go to the printer; from the printer, go to the network.
ArsTechnica asked several security experts whether this could happen, and they said this is so out-there, it would have to be a nation-state attack on a specific individual.
Billy Big Balls of the Week (19:04)
British man Aditya Verma appears in Spanish court over plane-bomb hoax
A British man accused of public disorder after joking about blowing up a flight has gone on trial in Spain.
Aditya Verma made the comment on Snapchat on his way to the island of Menorca with friends in July 2022.
The message, sent before Mr Verma departed Gatwick airport, read: "On my way to blow up the plane (I'm a member of the Taliban)."
Mr Verma told a Madrid court on Monday: "The intention was never to cause public distress or cause public harm."
If found guilty, the university student faces a hefty bill for expenses after two Spanish Air Force jets were scrambled.
Mr Verma's message was picked up by the UK security services who flagged it to Spanish authorities while the easyJet plane was still in the air.
A court in Madrid heard it was assumed the message triggered alarm bells after being picked up via Gatwick's Wi-Fi network.
Industry News (27:39)
Thai Court Blocks 9near.org to Avoid Exposure of 55M Citizens
Mega-Breach Database Exposes 26 Billion Records
French Watchdog Slams Amazon with €32m Fine for Spying on Workers
AI Set to Supercharge Ransomware Threat, Says NCSC
X Makes Passkeys Available for US-Based Users
ChatGPT Cybercrime Surge Revealed in 3000 Dark Web Posts
HPE Says SolarWinds Hackers Accessed its Emails
Southern Water Confirms Data Breach Following Black Basta Claims
China-Aligned APT Group Blackwood Unleashes NSPX30 Implant
Tweet of the Week (33:12)
https://x.com/TheHornetsFury/status/1750612652873928949?s=20
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This week in InfoSec (09:34)
With content liberated from the “today in infosec” twitter account and further afield
11th January 2000: Newly declassified documents proved the existence of ECHELON, a global eavesdropping network run by the NSA.
https://twitter.com/todayininfosec/status/1745518896495390826
13th January 2009: The domain name http://clintonemail.com was registered - the one used for email addresses on the Clinton family's private email server, which drew controversy when it was revealed that then Secretary of State Hillary Clinton used it for official communications.
https://twitter.com/todayininfosec/status/1746214861091053961
Rant of the Week (15:53)
The 'nothing-happened' Y2K bug – how the IT industry worked overtime to save world's computers
Forty years ago, both Jerome and Marilyn Murray saw their brainchild reach the light of day. In 1984, their book, Computers in Crisis, was published, becoming the first authoritative guide to the Millennium Bug coding problem, which, in the final year of the century, would consume media, political and business attention.
Today, more than 20 years after the date-field imposed deadline passed, the Millennium Bug — or Y2K problem — still gets a mixed reception.
While many in the industry see it as a job well done — or at least adequately done — it has also become a byword for the over-reach of experts.
Billy Big Balls of the Week (26:55)
Woman films herself being fired by HR to expose how cold U.S. corporate culture can be (Link to actual TikTok video in here)
Forbes article: Viral TikTok Video Of Cloudflare Employee Is A Lesson On How To Not Fire Workers
Recently, many of the new workplace trends have emanated from TikTok. Influencers have ushered in new themes, such as bare minimum Mondays, acting your wage, quiet quitting and rage applying. A new phenomenon has arisen where employees are now documenting their layoffs on the social media platform.
This week, Brittany Pietsch, a mid-market account executive at Cloudflare, an Internet infrastructure provider that offers a variety of security, performance and reliability services for websites and applications, went viral after posting a video of her being let go from the tech company.
Pietsch anticipated her firing, as her “work bff” had been given the pink slip 30 minutes prior to her meeting. The account executive was joined on a video call by a member of the human resources team and another individual, who didn’t introduce himself and jumped right into the purpose of the call, “We have an important meeting today. We finished our evaluations of 2023 performance. This is where you have not met Cloudflare expectations for performance. We have decided to part ways with you.”
Industry News (36:02)
1.3 Million FNF Customers' Data Potentially Exposed in Ransomware Attack
HelloFresh Fined £140K After Sending 80 Million Spam Messages
British Library Catalogue Back Online After Ransomware Attack
Senators Demand Probe into SEC Hack After Bitcoin Price Spike
Tool Identifies Pegasus and Other iOS Spyware
Majorca Tourist Hotspot Hit With $11m Ransom Demand
AI, Gaming, FinTech Named Major Cybersecurity Threats For Kids
NCSC Builds New “Cyber League” Threat Tracking Community
Iranian Phishing Campaign Targets Israel-Hamas War Experts
Tweet of the Week (42:01)
https://twitter.com/0xdade/status/1747820425693045014
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This week in InfoSec (06:16)
With content liberated from the “today in infosec” twitter account and further afield
6th January 2014: Intel renamed its McAfee subsidiary Intel Security, distancing itself from the name of McAfee's founder, John McAfee. In 2017 Intel spun off McAfee as a separate company...then several months later John McAfee and Intel settled a lawsuit over Intel's use of the McAfee name.
https://twitter.com/todayininfosec/status/1743711096559554607
10th January 2000: The FBI was after the hacker Maxim after he posted credit card numbers online when CD Universe refused to pay $100,000 in extortion. 6 months later it was shared that he'd likely never be prosecuted b/c 1 or more of the firms which performed IR screwed up chain of custody.
Data thief threatens to strike again
https://twitter.com/todayininfosec/status/1745207259058081942
8th January 1986: "The Hacker Manifesto" was written by Loyd Blankenship (aka The Mentor) and originally titled "The Conscience of a Hacker".
8 months later it was published in issue 7 of the hacker zine Phrack.
Read it [again].
http://phrack.org/issues/7/3.html#article
https://twitter.com/todayininfosec/status/1744413963696161010
Rant of the Week (16:44)
Cybercrooks play dress-up as 'helpful' researchers in latest ransomware ruse
Posing as cyber samaritans, scumbags are kicking folks when they're down
Ransomware victims already reeling from potential biz disruption and the cost of resolving the matter are now being subjected to follow-on extortion attempts by criminals posing as helpful security researchers.
Researchers at Arctic Wolf Labs publicized two cases in which casulaties of the Royal and Akira ransomware gangs were targeted by a third party, believed to be the same individual or group in both scenarios, and extorted by a fake cyber samaritan.
Victims were approached by a "security researcher" who offered post-exploitation services. In one case, the mark was told the ransomware gang's server could be hacked and their stolen data could be deleted.
Another victim was told the "researcher," who used different monikers in each attempt, gained access to the servers used to store victims' stolen data, offering the chance to either delete it or grant the victim access to the server themselves.
In return, the hacked customers were asked for a fee of approximately 5 Bitcoin ($225,823 at today's exchange rate).
"As far as Arctic Wolf Labs is aware, this is the first published instance of a threat actor posing as a legitimate security researcher offering to delete hacked data from a separate ransomware group," Stefan Hostetler and Steven Campbell, both senior threat intelligence researchers at Arctic Wolf, blogged.
"While the personalities involved in these secondary extortion attempts were presented as separate entities, we assess with moderate confidence that the extortion attempts were likely perpetrated by the same threat actor."
Billy Big Balls of the Week (21:34)
All India Pregnant Job service: Indian men conned by 'impregnating women' scam
As cyber scams go, this one is rather unique.
In early December Mangesh Kumar (name changed) was scrolling on Facebook when he came across a video from the "All India Pregnant Job Service" and decided to check it out.
The job sounded too good to be true: money - and lots of it - in return for getting a woman pregnant.
It was, of course, too good to be true. So far, the 33-year-old, who earns 15,000 rupees ($180; £142) per month working for a wedding party decoration company, has already lost 16,000 rupees to fraudsters - and they are asking for more.
But Mangesh, from the northern Indian state of Bihar, is not the only person to fall for the scam.
Deputy superintendent of police Kalyan Anand, who heads the cyber cell in Bihar's Nawada district, told the BBC there were hundreds of victims of an elaborate con where gullible men were lured to part with their cash on the promise of a huge pay day, and a night in a hotel with a childless woman.
So far, his team have arrested eight men, seized nine mobile phones and a printer, and are still searching for 18 others.
But finding the victims has proved more tricky.
Industry News (29:21)
23andMe Blames User “Negligence” for Data Breach
Merck Settles With Insurers Over $700m NotPetya Claim
North Korean Hackers Stole $600m in Crypto in 2023
Anti-Hezbollah Groups Hack Beirut Airport Screens
Ukrainian “Blackjack” Hackers Take Out Russian ISP
Cyber Insurance Market to be Worth Over $90bn by 2033
Only 4% of US States Fully Prepared for Cyber-Attacks Targeting Elections
NCSC Publishes Practical Security Guidance For SMBs
Mandiant's X Account Was Hacked in Brute-Force Password Attack
Tweet of the Week (38:11)
https://twitter.com/chris_walker_/status/1744805492273430886
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This week in InfoSec (12:55)
With content liberated from the “Today in infosec” Twitter account and further afield
11th December 2010: The hacker group Gnosis released the source code for Gawker's website and 1.3 million of its users' password hashes.
After a jury found Gawker's parent company liable in a lawsuit filed by Hulk Hogan and awarded him $140 million, Gawker shut down in 2016.
https://twitter.com/todayininfosec/status/1734217170173763907
14th December 2009: RockYou admitted that 32 million users' passwords (stored as plain text) and email addresses were compromised via a SQL injection vulnerability. RockYou's customer notification said "it was important to notify you of this immediately"...10 days after they became aware.
https://twitter.com/todayininfosec/status/1735357287147995514
Not really infosec https://x.com/depthsofwiki/status/1735147763447595024?s=20 but 14th Dec 2008 was the infamous Bush shoeing incident. Where Bush ducked the shoes thrown by Al-Zaidi while the Iraqi PM Nouri Al-Maliki tried to parry it.
Rant of the Week (22:10)
UK government woefully unprepared for 'catastrophic' ransomware attack
The UK has failed to address the threat posed by ransomware, leaving the country at the mercy of a catastrophic ransomware attack that the Joint Committee on National Security Strategy (JCNSS) yesterday warned could occur "at any moment."
The Parliamentary Select Committee reached this conclusion in a scathing report released December 13 that accused the government of failing to take ransomware seriously, and of providing "next-to-no support" to victims of ransomware attacks.
"There is a high risk that the government will face a catastrophic ransomware attack at any moment, and that its planning will be found lacking," the report concluded. "There will be no excuse for this approach when a major crisis occurs, and it will rightly be seen as a strategic failure."
Recent examples of ransomware infections at UK government institutions and critical private infrastructure are not hard to find.
Manchester Police, Royal Mail and the British Library have all fallen victim to ransomware attacks since September 2023.
In July 2023, the Barts Health NHS Trust hospital group was hit by the BlackCat ransomware gang. The NHS had already been taught a lesson about the vicious power of ransomware in 2017 when multiple Brit hospitals stopped taking new patients, other than in emergencies, after being hobbled by WannaCry.
Third-party providers of NHS software systems have been hit as well, taking systems offline and forcing care providers to revert to pen and paper.
In short, the situation with ransomware in the UK is already bad, and the JCNSS has predicted things will likely get worse.
Billy Big Balls of the Week (29:54)
Polish Hackers Repaired Trains the Manufacturer Artificially Bricked.
After breaking trains simply because an independent repair shop had worked on them, NEWAG is now demanding that trains fixed by hackers be removed from service.
They did DRM to a train.
In one of the coolest and more outrageous repair stories in quite some time, three white-hat hackers helped a regional rail company in southwest Poland unbrick a train that had been artificially rendered inoperable by the train’s manufacturer after an independent maintenance company worked on it. The train’s manufacturer is now threatening to sue the hackers who were hired by the independent repair company to fix it.
The fallout from the situation is currently roiling Polish infrastructure circles and the repair world, with the manufacturer of those trains denying bricking the trains despite ample evidence to the contrary. The manufacturer is also now demanding that the repaired trains immediately be removed from service because they have been “hacked,” and thus might now be unsafe, a claim they also cannot substantiate.
Industry News (38:38)
EU Reaches Agreement on AI Act Amid Three-Day Negotiations
Europol Raises Alarm on Criminal Misuse of Bluetooth Trackers
Widespread Security Flaws Blamed for Northern Ireland Police Data Breach
UK Ministry of Defence Fined For Afghan Data Breach
UK at High Risk of Catastrophic Ransomware Attack, Government Ill-Prepared
MITRE Launches Critical Infrastructure Threat Model Framework
Microsoft Targets Prolific Outlook Fraudster Storm-1152
Vulnerabilities Now Top Initial Access Route For Ransomware
Cozy Bear Hackers Target JetBrains TeamCity Servers in Global Campaign
Tweet of the Week (46:06)
https://x.com/WorkRetireDie/status/1732108681087508947?s=20
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This week in InfoSec (07:51)
With content liberated from the “today in infosec” twitter account and further afield
5th December 2011: Fyodor reported that CNET's http://Download.com had been wrapping its Nmap downloads in a trojan installer...in order to monetize spyware and adware. CNET quickly stopped, then resumed within days, it affected other downloads, and was a debacle.
Download.com Caught Adding Malware to Nmap & Other Software
https://twitter.com/todayininfosec/status/1732073893912047860
4th December 2013: Troy Hunt launched the site "Have I Been Pwned? (HIBP)". At launch, passwords from the Adobe, Stratfor, Gawker, Yahoo! Voices, and Sony Pictures breaches were indexed. Today? Billions of compromised records from hundreds of breaches. Search your email addresses for free.
https://twitter.com/todayininfosec/status/1731673318560801228
Rant of the Week (13:29)
It's ba-ack... UK watchdog publishes age verification proposals
The UK's communications regulator has laid out guidance on how online services might perform age checks as part of the Online Safety Act.
The range of proposals from Ofcom are likely to send privacy activists running for the hills. These include credit card checks, facial age estimation, and photo ID matching.
The checks are all in the name of protecting children from the grot that festoons large swathes of the world wide web. However, service providers will likely be stuck between a rock and a hard place in implementing the guidance without also falling foul of privacy regulations. For example, Ofcom notes the following age checks as potentially "highly effective":
Open banking, where a bank confirms a user is over 18 without sharing any other personal information.Mobile network operator (MNO) age check, where the responsibility is shunted onto an MNO content restriction filter that can only be removed if the device user can prove to the MNO that they are over 18.Photo ID matching, where an image of the user is compared to an uploaded document used as proof of age to verify that they are the same person.Credit card checks, where a credit card account is checked for validity – in the UK, credit card holders must be over 18.Digital identity wallets and, our favorite, facial age estimation, where the features of a user's face are analyzed to estimate the user's age.It doesn't take a genius to imagine how a determined teenager might circumvent many of these restrictions, nor the potential privacy nightmare inherent in many of them if an adult is forced to share this level of info when accessing age-restricted sites.
Billy Big Balls of the Week (23:12)
WhatsApp's New Secret Code Feature Lets Users Protect Private Chats with Password
Meta-owned WhatsApp has launched a new Secret Code feature to help users protect sensitive conversations with a custom password on the messaging platform.
The feature has been described as an "additional way to protect those chats and make them harder to find if someone has access to your phone or you share a phone with someone else."
Secret Code builds on another feature called Chat Lock that WhatsApp announced in May, which moves chats to a separate folder of their own such that they can be accessed only upon providing their device password or biometrics.
By setting a unique password for these locked chats that are different from the password used to unlock the phone, the aim is to give users an additional layer of privacy, WhatsApp noted.
"You'll have the option to hide the Locked Chats folder from your chatlist so that they can only be discovered by typing your secret code in the search bar," it added.
The development comes weeks after WhatsApp introduced a "Protect IP Address in Calls" feature that masks users' IP addresses to other parties by relaying the calls through its servers.
Industry NewsSellafield Accused of Covering Up Major Cyber Breaches
Porn Age Checks Threaten Security and Privacy, Report Warns
US Federal Agencies Miss Deadline for Incident Response Requirements
Disney+ Cyber Scheme Exposes New Impersonation Attack Tactics
Police Arrest 1000 Suspected Money Mules
Deutsche Wohnen Ruling Set to Drive Up GDPR Fines
Cambridge Hospitals Admit Two Excel-Based Data Breaches
Governments Spying on Apple and Google Users, Says Senator
Liability Fears Damaging CISO Role, Says Former Uber CISO
Tweet of the Week
https://twitter.com/MalwareJake/status/1732463774949310547
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This week in InfoSec (09:40)
With content liberated from the “today in infosec” twitter account and further afield
24th November 2014: The Washington Post published an article which included a photo of TSA master keys. A short time later functional keys were 3-d printed using the key patterns in the photo.
https://twitter.com/todayininfosec/status/1728048404452782497
26th November 2001: "In an effort to turn the tide in the war on terrorism", Cult of the Dead Cow offered its expertise to the FBI. How did it plan on helping? By architecting a new version of Back Orifice for use by the US federal government.
"THE CULT OF THE DEAD COW OFFERS A HELPING HAND IN AMERICA'S TIME OF NEED"
https://twitter.com/todayininfosec/status/1728998509033238952
Rant of the Week (18:55)
Interpol makes first border arrest using Biometric Hub to ID suspect
European police have for the first time made an arrest after remotely checking Interpol's trove of biometric data to identify a suspected smuggler.
The fugitive migrant, we're told, gave a fake name and phony identification documents at a police check in Sarajevo, Bosnia and Herzegovina, while traveling toward Western Europe. And he probably would have got away with it, too, if it weren't for you meddling kids Interpol's Biometric Hub – a recently activated tool that uses French identity and biometrics vendor Idemia's technology to match people's biometric data against the multinational policing org's global fingerprint and facial recognition databases.
"When the smuggler's photo was run through the Biometric Hub, it immediately flagged that he was wanted in another European country," Interpol declared. "He was arrested and is currently awaiting extradition."
Interpol introduced the Biometric Hub – aka BioHub – in October, and it is now available to law enforcement in all 196 member countries.
Billy Big Balls of the Week (27:42)
https://www.theregister.com/2023/11/28/cert_in_rti_exemption/
India's government has granted its Computer Emergency Response Team, CERT-In, immunity from Right To Information (RTI) requests – the nation's equivalent of the freedom of information queries in the US, UK, or Australia.
Reasons for the exemption have not been explained, but The Register has reported on one case in which an RTI request embarrassed CERT-In.
That case related to India's sudden decision, in April 2022, to require businesses of all sizes to report infosec incidents to CERT-in within six hours of detection. The rapid reporting requirement applied both to serious incidents like ransomware attacks, and less critical messes like the compromise of a social media account.
CERT-In justified the rules as necessary to defend the nation's cyberspace and gave just sixty days notice for implementation.
The plan generated local and international criticism for being onerous and inconsistent with global reporting standards such as Europe's 72-hour deadline for notifying authorities of data breaches.
The reporting requirements even applied to cloud operators, who were asked to report incidents on tenants' servers. Big Tech therefore opposed the plan.
Industry News (34:04)
Cybersecurity Incident Hits Fidelity National Financial
Cybercriminals Hesitant About Using Generative AI
Google Fixes Sixth Chrome Zero-Day Bug of the Year
DeleFriend Weakness Puts Google Workspace Security at Risk
Okta Admits All Customer Support Users Impacted By Breach
Thousands of Dollar Tree Staff Hit By Supplier Breach
Booking.com Customers Scammed in Novel Social Engineering Campaign
Manufacturing Top Targeted Industry in Record-Breaking Cyber Extortion Surge
North Korean Hackers Amass $3bn in Cryptocurrency Heists
Tweet of the Week (43:12)
https://twitter.com/JamesGoz/status/1730498780812767350
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This week in InfoSec (06:40)
23rd November 2011: KrebsonSecurity reported that Apple took over 3 years to fix the iTunes software update process vulnerability which the FinFisher remote spying Trojan exploited. Evilgrade toolkit author Francisco Amato had reported it to Apple in 2008.
Apple Took 3+ Years to Fix FinFisher Trojan Hole
https://twitter.com/todayininfosec/status/1727687798017106025
12th November 2009: John Matherly announced the public beta launch of Shodan (@shodanhq) - the first search engine for internet-connected devices.
https://twitter.com/todayininfosec/status/1727462790330232951
Rant of the Week (10:51)
Former infosec COO pleads guilty to attacking hospitals to drum up business
An Atlanta tech company's former COO has pleaded guilty to a 2018 incident in which he deliberately launched online attacks on two hospitals, later citing the incidents in sales pitches.
Under a plea deal he signed last week, Vikas Singla, a former business leader at network security vendor Securolytics – a provider to healthcare institutions, among others – admitted that in September 2018 he rendered the Ascom phone system of Gwinnett Medical Center inoperable.
Gwinnett Medical Center operates hospitals in Duluth and Lawrenceville and the deliberate disablement of the Ascom phone system meant the main communication line between doctors and nurses was unavailable to them.
More than 200 phones were taken offline, which were used for internal communications, including "code blue" incidents that often relate to cardiac or respiratory emergencies.
Billy Big Balls of the Week (18:52)
UK's cookie crumble: Data watchdog serves up tougher recipe for consent banners
The UK's Information Commissioner's Office (ICO) is getting tough on website design, insisting that opting out of cookies must be as simple as opting in.
At question are advertising cookies, where users should be able to "Accept All" advertising cookies or reject them. Users will still see adverts regardless of their selection, but rejecting advertising cookies means ads must not be tailored to the person browsing.
However, the ICO noted that: "Some websites do not give users fair choices over whether or not to be tracked for personalized advertising." This is despite guidance issued in August regarding harmful designs that can trick users into giving up more personal information than intended.
A few months on, the ICO has upped the ante. It has now given 30 days' notice to companies running many of the UK's most visited sites that they must comply with data protection regulations or face enforcement action.
Industry News (26:16)
Cybersecurity Executive Pleads Guilty to Hacking Hospitals
Regulator Issues Privacy Ultimatum to UK’s Top Websites
Microsoft Launches Defender Bug Bounty Program
Why Ensuring Supply Chain Security in the Space Sector is Critical
British Library: Ransomware Attack Led to Data Breach
North Korea Blamed For CyberLink Supply Chain Attacks
US Seizes $9m From Pig Butchering Scammers
North Korean Software Supply Chain Threat is Booming, UK and South Korea Warn
InfectedSlurs Botnet Resurrects Mirai With Zero-Days
Tweet of the Week (32:28)
https://twitter.com/MichaelaOkla/status/1721715089970274542
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6:48 This week in InfoSec
With content liberated from the “today in infosec” twitter account and further afield
15th November 1994: The earliest known example of the Good Times email hoax virus was posted to the TECH-LAW mailing list. Variants of the hoax spread for several years. In 1997, Cult of the Dead Cow (cDc) claimed responsibility for initiating the hoax..https://twitter.com/todayininfosec/status/1724867863725412627
12th November 2012: John McAfee went into hiding because his neighbor, Gregory Faull, was found dead from a gunshot. Belize police wanted him to come in for questioning, but he fled to Guatemala where he was then arrested. He was never charged, though he lost a $25 million wrongful death suit.https://twitter.com/todayininfosec/status/1723790884053938623
11:57 Rant of the Week
Clorox CISO flushes self after multimillion-dollar cyberattack
The Clorox Company's chief security officer has left her job in the wake of a corporate network breach that cost the manufacturer hundreds of millions of dollars.
18:15 Billy Big Balls
BlackCat plays with malvertising traps to lure corporate victims
Ads for Slack and Cisco AnyConnect actually downloaded Nitrogen malware
AlphV files SEC complaint
Affiliates of ransomware gang AlphV (aka BlackCat) claimed to have compromised digital lending firm MeridianLink – and reportedly filed an SEC complaint against the fintech firm for failing to disclose the intrusion to the US watchdog.
First reported by DataBreaches, the break-in apparently happened on November 7. AlphaV’s operatives claimed they did not encrypt any files but did steal some data – and MeridianLink was allegedly aware of the intrusion the day it occurred.
24:15 Industry news
MPs Dangerously Uninformed About Facial Recognition – Report
Cyber-Attack Could Have “Devastating” Impact on Aussie Exports
NCSC: UK Facing “Enduring and Significant” Cyber-Threat
UK Privacy Regulator Issues Black Friday Smart Device Warning
US Government Unveils First AI Roadmap For Cybersecurity
European Police Take Down $9m Vishing Gang
BlackCat Ransomware Group Reports Victim to SEC
Russian Hacking Group Sandworm Linked to Unprecedented Attack on Danish Critical Infrastructure
Cyber-Criminals Exploit Gaza Crisis With Fake Charity
30:56 Tweet of the Week
https://twitter.com/FadzaiVeanah/status/1724825417196904743
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This Week in InfoSec (05:41)
2002: In response to a report which insinuated Mac is less vulnerable than Windows, Microsoft suggested few focus on discovering Mac vulnerabilities and that products with more customers will have more vulnerabilities reported.
https://t.co/WOUUDOB0g6
https://x.com/todayininfosec/status/1721895407545143382?s=20
Rant of the Week (11:09)
Photos of naked patients and medical records have been posted online by extortionists who hacked a Las Vegas plastic surgery, driving victims to file a lawsuit claiming not enough care was taken to protect their private information.
https://www.bitdefender.com/blog/hotforsecurity/women-sue-plastic-surgery-after-hack-saw-their-naked-photos-posted-online/
Billy Big Balls of the Week (20:48)
A federal judge on Tuesday refused to bring back a class action lawsuitalleging four auto manufacturers had violated Washington state’s privacy laws by using vehicles’ on-board infotainment systems to record and intercept customers’ private text messages and mobile phone call logs.
https://therecord.media/class-action-lawsuit-cars-text-messages-privacy
Industry News (29:28)
SentinelOne to acquire cybersecurity consulting firm Krebs Stamos Group
NATO allies express support for collective response to cyberattacks
Council for Scottish islands faces IT outage after ‘incident’
Mortgage giant Mr. Cooper using alternative payment options after cyberattack
Serbian pleads guilty to running ‘Monopoly’ darknet marketplace
Japan Aviation Electronics says servers accessed during cyberattack
Tweet of the Week (42:39)
https://twitter.com/j4vv4d/status/1722916507653394575?s=61&t=0s-EyC1T6uSS3Lo_cyqI4w
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- Visa fler
