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Finnish psychotherapy extortion suspect arrested in France

by Naked Security writer In October 2022, we asked you to imagine being stuck in the following awful situation: Imagine that you’d spoken in what you thought was total confidence to a psychotherapist, but the contents of your sessions had been saved for posterity, along with precise personal identification details such as your unique national ID number, and perhaps including additional information such as notes about your relationship with your family… …and then, as if…

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Tracers in the Dark: The Global Hunt for the Crime Lords of Crypto

by Paul Ducklin DO WE REALLY NEED A NEW “WAR AGAINST CRYPTOGRAPHY”? We talk to renowned cybersecurity author Andy Greenberg about his tremendous new book, Tracers in the Dark. Hear Andy’s thoughtful commentary on cybercrime, law enforcement, anonymity, privacy, and whether we really need a “war against cryptography” – codes and ciphers that the government can easily crack if it thinks there’s an emergency – to cement our collective online security. Click-and-drag on the soundwaves…

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Comcast Wants a Slice of the Enterprise Cybersecurity Business

Telco and media conglomerate Comcast has jumped headfirst into the enterprise cybersecurity business, betting that its internal security tools and inventions can find traction in an expanding marketplace. The Philadelphia technology giant has created a new cybersecurity business unit led by former Zscaler executive Nicole Bucala to develop and sell what Comcast is describing as a “security data fabric platform. In a note announcing the new business unit, Comcast said the long-term plan is to…

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Finland’s Most-Wanted Hacker Nabbed in France

Julius “Zeekill” Kivimäki, a 25-year-old Finnish man charged with extorting a local online psychotherapy practice and leaking therapy notes for more than 22,000 patients online, was arrested this week in France. A notorious hacker convicted of perpetrating tens of thousands of cybercrimes, Kivimäki had been in hiding since October 2022, when he failed to show up in court and Finland issued an international warrant for his arrest. In late October 2022, Kivimäki was charged (and…

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Fraudulent “CryptoRom” Apps Slip Through Apple and Google App Store Review Process

Pig Butchering, also known as Sha Zhu Pan and CryptoRom, is an ugly name for an ugly scam. It is not new. What is new is that apps perpetrating the scam can be downloaded from the official Apple and Android app stores – giving them greater apparent validity to targets. The scam is a version of romance scam, where targets are befriended, lured in, persuaded to download a disguised malicious app, drawn into false cryptocurrency…

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Key takeaways from ESET’s new APT Activity Report – Week in security with Tony Anscombe

As our latest APT Activity Report makes abundantly clear, the threat of cyberespionage and stealthy attacks remains very real The threat of cyberespionage and stealthy cyberattacks remains very real, and the data from ESET’s T3 2022 APT Activity Report released this week backs this up. In this video, Tony shares some of the key takeaways from the report, which reviews the operations of some of the world’s most notorious nation state-affiliated and state-sponsored hacking collectives…

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Is that survey real or fake? How to spot a survey scam

“Can I tell a legitimate survey apart from a fake one?” is the single most important question you need to answer for yourself before taking any surveys online Online surveys and quizzes are all over the internet. They’re quick and cheap to set up, easy for recipients to fill out, and simple for researchers to interpret. It’s no wonder that they remain a popular tool for marketers to reach and research their target audiences. Many…

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OpenSSH fixes double-free memory bug that’s pokable over the network

by Paul Ducklin The open source operating system distribution OpenBSD is well-known amongst sysadmins, especially those who manage servers, for its focus on security over speed, features and fancy front-ends. Fittingly, perhaps, its logo is a puffer fish – inflated, with its spikes ready to repel any wily hackers who might come along. But the OpenBSD team is probably best known not for its entire distro, but for the remote access toolkit OpenSSH that was…

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Big China Spy Balloon Moving East Over US, Pentagon Says

The Pentagon said at midday Friday that a Chinese spy balloon had moved eastward and was over the central United States, and that the U.S. rejected China’s claims that it was not being used for surveillance. Brig. Gen. Pat Ryder, Pentagon press secretary, refused to provide details on exactly where the balloon was or whether there was any new consideration of shooting it down. The military had ruled that option out, officials had said, due…

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Former Ubiquiti Employee Who Posed as Hacker Pleads Guilty

Former Ubiquiti employee Nickolas Sharp has admitted in court to abusing company-provided credentials to steal data and then attempting to extort the company, the Department of Justice announced. Sharp, 37, of Portland, Oregon, worked at the New York City-based IoT device maker between August 2018 and April 2021, as a senior developer who had access credentials for Ubiquiti’s AWS and GitHub servers. In December 2020, he abused his administrative credentials to download confidential data using…

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