Ever since Elon Musk spent $44 billion on Twitter and laid off a large percentage of the company’s staff, there have been concerns about data breaches. Now it appears a safety incident that predates Musk’s takeover is inflicting complications. This week, it emerged that hackers launched a trove of 200 million email addresses and their links to Twitter handles, which had been seemingly gathered between June 2021 and January 2022. The sale of the information could put nameless Twitter accounts in danger and heap additional regulatory scrutiny on the corporate.
WhatsApp has launched a brand new anti-censorship instrument that it hopes will assist folks in Iran to keep away from government-enforced blocks on the messaging platform. The corporate has made it doable for folks to use proxies to access WhatsApp and keep away from authorities filtering. The instrument is accessible globally. We’ve additionally explained what pig-butchering scams are and find out how to keep away from falling into their traps.
Additionally this week, cybersecurity agency Mandiant revealed that it has seen Russian cyberespionage group Turla using innovative new hacking tactics in Ukraine. The group, which is believed to be related to the FSB intelligence company, was noticed piggybacking on dormant USB infections of different hacker teams. Turla registered expired domains of years-old malware and managed to take over its command-and-control servers.
We additionally reported on the continued fallout of the EncroChat hack. In June 2020, police throughout Europe revealed they’d hacked into the encrypted EncroChat cellphone community and picked up greater than 100 million messages from its customers, lots of them doubtlessly severe criminals. Now 1000’s of individuals have been jailed primarily based on the intelligence gathered, however the bust is elevating wider questions round law enforcement hacking and the future of encrypted phone networks.
However that’s not all. Every week, we spherical up the safety tales we didn’t cowl in-depth ourselves. Click on on the headlines to learn the complete tales. And keep protected on the market.
On December 31, as thousands and thousands of individuals had been getting ready for the beginning of 2023, Slack posted a new security update to its blog. Within the submit, the corporate says it detected a “safety problem involving unauthorized entry to a subset of Slack’s code repositories.” Beginning on December 27, it discovered that an unknown risk actor had stolen Slack worker tokens and used them to entry its exterior GitHub repository and obtain among the firm’s code.
“When notified of the incident, we instantly invalidated the stolen tokens and started investigating potential affect to our prospects,” Slack’s disclosure says, including that the attacker didn’t entry buyer information and Slack customers don’t must do something.
The incident is just like a December 21 safety incident disclosed by authentication agency Okta, as cybersecurity journalist Catalin Cimpanu notes. Simply earlier than Christmas, Okta revealed its code repositories had been accessed and copied.
Slack shortly found the incident and reported it. Nevertheless, as noticed by Bleeping Computer, Slack’s safety disclosure didn’t seem on its common information weblog. And in some components of the world, the corporate included code to cease search engines like google and yahoo together with it of their outcomes. In August 2022, Slack pressured password resets after a bug had exposed hashed passwords for five years.
A Black man in Georgia spent virtually per week in jail after police reportedly relied on a face recognition match that was incorrect. Police in Louisiana used the know-how to acquire an arrest warrant for Randal Reid in a theft case they had been investigating. “I’ve by no means been to Louisiana a day in my life. Then they advised me it was for theft. So not solely have I not been to Louisiana, I additionally don’t steal,” Reid advised native information website Nola.
The publication says a detective “took the algorithm at face worth to safe a warrant” and says little is thought about police use of face recognition know-how in Louisiana. The names of any methods used haven’t been disclosed. Nevertheless, that is simply the most recent case of face recognition technology being used in wrongful arrests. Whereas police use of face recognition tech has quickly spread across US states, analysis has repeatedly proven it misidentifies folks of coloration and girls extra steadily than white males.
On the primary day of this yr, Ukraine launched its deadliest missile strike towards invading Russian troops to this point. An assault on a short lived Russian barracks in Makiivka, within the Russian-occupied Donetsk area, killed 89 troops, the Russian protection ministry claims. Ukrainian officers say round 400 Russian troopers had been killed. Within the aftermath, Russia’s protection ministry claimed the placement of troops was recognized as a result of they had been using mobile phones without permission.
Throughout the warfare, each side have stated they’re able to intercept and locate phone calls. Whereas Russia’s newest declare ought to be handled with warning, the battle has highlighted how open source data can be used to target troops. Drones, satellite tv for pc photos, and social media posts have been used to watch folks on the frontlines.
A brand new legislation in Louisiana requires porn websites to confirm the ages of holiday makers from the state to show they’re over 18. The legislation says age verification should be used when an internet site incorporates 33.3 p.c or extra pornographic content material. In response to the legislation, PornHub, the world’s largest porn web site, now offers folks the option to link their drivers license or government ID through a third-party service to show they’re authorized adults. PornHub says it doesn’t acquire person information, however the transfer has raised fears of surveillance.
World wide, nations are introducing legal guidelines that require porn website guests to show they’re sufficiently old to view the express materials. Lawmakers in Germany and France have threatened to block porn sites in the event that they don’t put the measures in place. In the meantime, in February 2022 Twitter started blocking adult content creators in Germany as a result of age verification methods weren’t in place. The UK tried to introduce comparable age-checking measures between 2017 and 2019; nonetheless, the plans collapsed due to porn website admins’ confusion, design flaws, and fears of data breaches.
The world of spies is, by its very nature, cloaked in secrecy. Nations deploy brokers to nations to assemble intelligence, recruit different belongings, and affect occasions. However sometimes these spies get caught. Since Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, extra of Russia’s spies throughout Europe have been recognized and expelled from nations. A new database from open supply researcher @inteltakes has pulled collectively identified circumstances of Russia’s spies in Europe since 2018. The database lists 41 entries of spies being uncovered and, the place doable, particulars every asset’s nationality, career, and the service they had been recruited by.
