by Paul Ducklin Stories about privacy blunders by big companies always attract a lot of attention. When that big company is Apple, you can replace ‘a lot’ with ‘a whole lot’. And Apple likes to make public pitches about the privacy its products provide, like the video here: So, when renowned investigative cybersecurity journalist Brian
Philip Choo
Netflix and Apple TV+ have good news to report following this morning’s release of the Golden Globe nominations. Netflix landed on top with 34 nominations across film and TV, while Apple TV+ earned its first nods only weeks after the service’s launch. Despite lukewarm reviews from critics, Apple TV+ received multiple Golden Globe nominations for
How can people who didn’t grow up with technology protect themselves against some of the most common types of online fraud? The conventional thinking is that aging people tend to be at a higher risk of falling prey to scam artists than their children or grandchildren. Regardless of whether this is true or not, older
Cybersecurity researchers have uncovered a new, previously undiscovered destructive data-wiping malware that is being used by state-sponsored hackers in the wild to target energy and industrial organizations in the Middle East. Dubbed ZeroCleare, the data wiper malware has been linked to not one but two Iranian state-sponsored hacking groups—APT34, also known as ITG13 and Oilrig,
Sign up here to receive Max Q weekly in your inbox, starting December 15. This week saw a ton of activity in the space industry, with multiple launches, key preparations for commercial crew missions, robots and much more. Besides all the real space news, there’s also some extreme fan service for Star Wars lovers, courtesy
The end of 2019 is rapidly approaching, and with the coming of a new year comes the perfect opportunity to reflect on the past and plan for the months ahead. What will 2020 bring when it comes to cybersecurity and what can users do to ensure that they’re protected in the upcoming year? From new
One of the largest data center providers in America has become the victim of a ransomware attack. Texas company CyrusOne confirmed yesterday that an attack involving REvil (Sodinokibi) ransomware had taken place on Wednesday. Customers of the company’s New York data center, located in Wappingers Falls, suffered a loss of service as a result of the incident. A
by Lisa Vaas No pretty Instagram pics for you, young ones who haven’t already got an account: the platform has started asking what your birthday is in order to keep underage users from signing up. On Wednesday, Instagram said that starting that same day, it would be collecting dates of birth for new users. It’s
After more than a year of teasing, Apple finally unveiled the new Mac Pro at WWDC in June. The long wait was finally over — though Apple left out one key detail: when, precisely the high end desktop would arrive, beyond a purposefully vague fall timeframe Earlier this, however, the company began sending out pre-pre-order
The United States Department of Justice today disclosed the identities of two Russian hackers and charged them for developing and distributing the Dridex banking Trojan using which the duo stole more than $100 million over a period of 10 years. Maksim Yakubets, the leader of ‘Evil Corp’ hacking group, and his co-conspirator Igor Turashev primarily
“The Crown” has returned to Netflix with a new cast — Olivia Colman as a middle-aged Queen Elizabeth, Tobias Menzies as her husband Prince Philip and Helena Bonham Carter as her sister Princess Margaret. Loyal listeners of the Original Content podcast may recall that we reviewed the show’s first two seasons last year. We didn’t
Initial Discovery This year seems to again be the year for ransomware. Notorious attacks were made using ransomware and new families are being detected almost on a weekly basis. The McAfee ATR team has now analyzed a new ransomware family with some special features we would like to showcase. LooCipher represents how a new actor
US and UK authorities have indicted the leader of a notorious cybercrime gang that stole $70m from bank accounts around the world using malware. Ukrainian-born Russian national Maksim V. Yakubets allegedly headed up an organized crime syndicate that used Bugat malware—also known as Cridex and Dridex—to drain money from the customers of just under 300 organizations
For most enterprise businesses, an effective modern threat management strategy requires a two-pronged approach. Security professionals must protect against traditional threats, while also keeping an eye on future threats and vulnerabilities that may not yet have emerged. From a traditional threat perspective, the need to satisfy regulatory and compliance requirements is a top priority for
by Lisa Vaas Parents and legal guardians in the US have their knives out for the insanely popular, oft-investigated social video app TikTok: they’ve filed a class action suit alleging that its parent company, ByteDance, is illegally collecting young users’ data in violation of child privacy law. Named in the suit were Sherri LeShore and
Boeing might be taking the last crucial steps to prepare for its first crewed Starliner capsule spaceflight, but it’s also busy turning sci-fi into reality right here on Earth – by helping Disney build X-Wing large-scale starfighters to celebrate the opening of the ‘Rise of the Resistance’ ride at Disney World in Florida. Earlier this
Google keeps pushing in its mission for broader encryption adoption Android commands the lion’s share of the mobile operating system market. And with so many users under its wings, it should come as no surprise that Google has been doubling down on security. In a blog post this week, the tech behemoth announced that 80%
Following its efforts to take legal action against those misusing its social media platform, Facebook has now filed a new lawsuit against a Hong Kong-based advertising company and two Chinese individuals for allegedly abusing its ad platform to distribute malware and Ad fraud. Facebook filed the lawsuit on Thursday in the Northern District of California
After a three-day trial, Elon Musk was found not liable for defamation in a federal court today in Los Angeles, where Musk reportedly owns a cluster of six homes as well as oversees the operations of both SpaceX and Tesla. British diver Vernon Unsworth had brought the suit against Musk in the fall of 2018
I recently had the honor of testifying before the House Financial Services Committee’s Taskforce on Artificial Intelligence about two critical emerging issues in the financial services sector – cloud and artificial intelligence (AI). Both have incredible potential for energizing the financial sector, but they also raise important security concerns. Financial services organizations are migrating to
US presidential candidate Bernie Sanders today released a plan to introduce high-speed internet to every American household if he wins the 2020 election. The High-Speed Internet for All proposal suggests giving local and state governments $150bn in grants and aid to create publicly owned broadband networks. Of this funding, $7.5bn would be ring-fenced to “expand high-speed broadband in
by John E Dunn The Lazarus hacking group has been caught trying to sneak a new ‘fileless’ Trojan on to Apple macOS computers disguised as a fake cryptocurrency trading application. The discovery was reported by K7 Computing’s Dinesh Devadoss to Mac security expert Patrick Wardle, who immediately spotted similarities to previous attacks. The first of
What are some of the most common warning signs that your child is experiencing online harassment? Cyberbullying is by no means a new phenomenon; in fact, the term was added to the Oxford Dictionary back in 2011. However, as technology permeates almost every facet of our lives, the threat of online harassment is becoming more
A team of cybersecurity researchers has disclosed a new severe vulnerability affecting most Linux and Unix-like operating systems, including FreeBSD, OpenBSD, macOS, iOS, and Android, that could allow remote ‘network adjacent attackers’ to spy on and tamper with encrypted VPN connections. The vulnerability, tracked as CVE-2019-14899, resides in the networking stack of various operating systems
Hello and welcome back to Equity, TechCrunch’s venture capital-focused podcast, where we unpack the numbers behind the headlines. This week was a bit different than usual. First, we managed to come close to our old time target (20 minutes) instead of our regular length (30 minutes). And, second, Alex is coming back to TechCrunch starting next
Uber’s just-released U.S. Safety Report sets forth in some detail the number of fatal accidents, and the good news is that the overall rate per mile is about half the national average. But the report makes some puzzling choices as far as what is included and excluded. To create the report, Uber took its internal
The Federal Bureau of Investigation has issued a warning after a family from Oregon lost their life savings in a business email compromise scam involving money mules. Aaron Cole and his wife decided to move into a bigger house after welcoming two children into their family. The couple sold their existing home, and the title company told
by Alice Duckett This week Peter Mackenzie shares a happy ransomware story where he saved a casino from attack. We also discuss the children’s smartwatch that leaks sensitive location data and HPE’s warning of impending SSD disk doom. Host Anna Brading is joined by Peter Mackenzie, Paul Ducklin and Mark Stockley. Listen below, or wherever
What issues would face scanning attached to a mobile device resolve and, if used correctly, would it make the incursion into my privacy acceptable? On December 1st, China’s regulation requiring people to have their face scanned when subscribing for a new mobile phone took effect. If you were not aware of this regulation your initial
OpenBSD, an open-source operating system built with security in mind, has been found vulnerable to four new high-severity security vulnerabilities, one of which is an old-school type authentication bypass vulnerability in BSD Auth framework. The other three vulnerabilities are privilege escalation issues that could allow local users or malicious software to gain privileges of an