Information

China’s ByteDance Admits Using TikTok Data to Track Journalists

Employees of Chinese tech giant ByteDance improperly accessed data from social media platform TikTok to track journalists in a bid to identify the source of leaks to the media, the company admitted Friday. TikTok has gone to great lengths to convince customers and governments of major markets like the United States that users’ data privacy is protected and that it poses no threat to national security. But parent company ByteDance told AFP on Friday that…

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‘Tis the season for gaming: Keeping children safe (and parents sane)

It’s all fun and games over the holidays, but is your young gamer safe from the darker side of the action? As Christmas draws nearer, parents are handling a barrage of requests from their kids for the latest gaming titles and consoles. Despite gathering macro-economic headwinds, US consumers are set to increase their total retail spending by around 7% year-on-year this holiday season, and by 3.5% on electronics. But while several weeks of uninterrupted gaming…

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“Suspicious login” scammers up their game – take care at Christmas

by Paul Ducklin Black Friday is behind us, that football thing they have every four years is done and dusted (congratulations – spoiler alert! – to Argentina), it’s the summer/winter solstice (delete as inapplicable)… …and no one wants to get locked out of their social media accounts, especially when it’s the time for sending and receiving seasonal greetings. So, even though we’ve written about this sort of phishing scam before, we thought we’d present a…

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Zerobot IoT Botnet Adds More Exploits, DDoS Capabilities

The recently detailed Internet of Things (IoT) botnet Zerobot has been updated with an expanded list of exploits and distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) capabilities. Initially detailed two weeks ago, Zerobot is a self-replicating and self-propagating piece of malware written in the Golang (Go) programming language, which can target twelve device architectures. Fortinet, which first warned of the threat’s capabilities, analyzed two variants of the malware, one of which contained exploits targeting 21 known vulnerabilities, including the…

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Microsoft dishes the dirt on Apple’s “Achilles heel” shortly after fixing similar Windows bug

by Paul Ducklin When we woke up this morning, our cybersecurity infofeed was awash with “news” that Apple had just patched a security hole variously described a “gnarly bug”, a “critical flaw” that could leave your Macs “defenceless”, and the “Achilles’ heel of macOS”. Given that we usually check our various security bulletin mailing lists before even looking outside to check the weather, primarily to see if Apple has secretly unleashed a new advisory overnight……

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Cyber Insurance Analytics Firm CyberCube Raises $50 Million

CyberCube, a provider of cyber risk analytics for insurance companies, this week announced that it has raised $50 million in a new funding round that brings the total raised by the firm to $105 million. The new investment round was led by Morgan Stanley, with participation from Forgepoint Capital, Hudson Structured Capital Management (Bermuda) Ltd., MTech Capital, and angel investors. Founded in 2015, the San Francisco-based CyberCube helps insurers and brokers understand their portfolios’ exposure…

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The Equifax Breach Settlement Offer is Real, For Now

Millions of people likely just received an email or snail mail notice saying they’re eligible to claim a class action payment in connection with the 2017 megabreach at consumer credit bureau Equifax. Given the high volume of reader inquiries about this, it seemed worth pointing out that while this particular offer is legit (if paltry), scammers are likely to soon capitalize on public attention to the settlement money. One reader’s copy of their Equifax Breach…

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How to set up parental controls on your child’s new smartphone

Give yourself peace of mind and help create a safe online space for your child using Android or iOS parental controls So you’re about to give your kid their first smartphone. While your child will be over the moon with their shiny new device, you begin to wonder how to stop the kid from spending every waking hour glued to the gadget. Chances are that somewhere along the way, you’ll start to discover the world…

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OneCoin scammer Sebastian Greenwood pleads guilty, “Cryptoqueen” still missing

by Paul Ducklin The “Missing Cryptoqueen” saga has made long-term headlines since co-founders Ruja Ignatova and Karl Sebastian Greenwood started a cryptocurrency scam known as OneCoin, way back in 2014. Ignatova, who hails from Bulgaria, and who apparently liked to be known as The Cryptoqueen (her charge sheet even shows that name as an alias), has been wanted in the US on various wire fraud, money laundering and securities fraud charges since October 2017. According…

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DraftKings Data Breach Impacts Personal Information of 68,000 Customers

Sports betting firm DraftKings says the personal data of 68,000 individuals has been compromised in a recent data breach. The incident, initially disclosed in November, was the result of a credential stuffing attack and not a breach of DraftKings’ systems, the company says. Credential stuffing involves the use of leaked credentials (usernames, email addresses, and passwords) obtained from a third-party source to access an account on a different service. Such attacks are successful only because…

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