Despite the classification of ride-hail drivers as “essential workers” during the early days of the pandemic, last April Uber’s business dropped by 80%. Drivers decided they’d rather not risk contracting or spreading COVID-19 for the measly revenue provided by the few rides per day they were getting, so when the federal CARES Act extended the Pandemic
How can organizations tackle the growing menace of attacks that shake trust in software? Cybersecurity is only as good as the weakest link, and in a supply chain this could be virtually anywhere. The big questions may be, “what and where is the weakest link?” and “is it something that you have control over and
No-code startups continue to see a lot of traction among enterprises, where employees — strictly speaking, non-technical, but still using software every day — are getting hands-on and building apps to take on some of the more repetitive aspects of their jobs, the so-called “citizen coders” of the working world. And in one of the
Executive Summary Cuba ransomware is an older ransomware, that has recently undergone some development. The actors have incorporated the leaking of victim data to increase its impact and revenue, much like we have seen recently with other major ransomware campaigns. In our analysis, we observed that the attackers had access to the network before the infection and were able to collect specific information
by Paul Ducklin The Dutch Data Protection Authority (DPA) – the country’s data protection regulator – has fined online travel and hotel booking company Booking.com almost half a million Euros over a data breach. Interestingly, the fine was issued not merely because there was a breach, but because the company didn’t report the breach quickly
Cyber attackers are actively setting their sights on unsecured SAP applications in an attempt to steal information and sabotage critical processes, according to new research. “Observed exploitation could lead in many cases to full control of the unsecured SAP application, bypassing common security and compliance controls, and enabling attackers to steal sensitive information, perform financial
Cyber-criminals behind a cyber-attack on a Florida school district are demanding a ransom payment of $40m in cryptocurrency. The computer system of Broward County Public Schools was compromised at the beginning of March by data-locking ransomware in a Conti gang operation. The attack caused a system shutdown but left classes undisturbed. Broward is the sixth-largest school district in
ESET Research uncovers a new threat that targets organizations operating in various sectors in Brazil ESET Research has been tracking a new banking trojan that has been targeting corporate users in Brazil since 2019 across many verticals affecting sectors such as engineering, healthcare, retail, manufacturing, finance, transportation, and government. This new threat, which we named
TechCrunch is embarking on a major new project to survey European founders and investors in cities outside the larger European capitals. Over the next few weeks, we will ask entrepreneurs in these cities to talk about their ecosystems, in their own words. This is your chance to put Belfast on the Techcrunch Map! If you
U.S. Department of Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas outlined broad Biden-Harris administration plans to strengthen and speed improvements in national cybersecurity defense at a pre-RSA Conference webinar. But, whether private enterprises will be able to rely on DHS for practical, tangible cybersecurity assistance remains an open question. The DHS cybersecurity strategy Mayorkas outlined consists of
Charles, a Berlin-based startup that offers a “conversational-commerce” SaaS for businesses that want to sell on WhatsApp and other chat apps, has raised €6.4 million in funding. Led by Accel and HV Capital, the seed funding will be used by the company to scale and meet existing demand for its conversational commerce platform. Launched in
The connection between cybersecurity and poet Ralph Waldo Emerson is not directly evident, however he once said, “money often costs too much.” This statement rings true across the financial services industry, as money is a key driver for cybercriminals acting with malicious intent. The always-on eye of Sauron on the financial services industry means there
The data is in. According to IBM Security’s 2020 Cost of a Data Breach Report, there is a 50% increase in cloud usage for enterprises across all industries. The number of threats targeting cloud services, predominantly collaboration services like Office 365,hasi ncreased 630%. Moreover, 75% of respondents report that discovery and recovery time from data
A septuagenarian pastor and retired educator living in Florida has been arrested for a second time on CSAM (child sexual abuse material) charges. Former Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University professor John Robert Griffin II was first arrested on January 6 on 30 felony charges of CSAM possession. The Daytona Beach Police Department (DBPD) said 200 sexually explicit
Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas flaunted a dangerous ignorance regarding matters digital in an opinion published today. In attempting to explain the legal difficulties of social media platforms, particularly those arising from Twitter’s ban of Trump, he makes an ill-informed, bordering on bizarre, argument as to why such companies may need their First Amendment rights
Meesho said on Monday it has raised $300 million in a new financing round led by SoftBank Vision Fund 2 as the Indian social commerce startup works to become the “single ecosystem that will enable all small businesses to succeed online.” The new round — a Series E — gives the five-year-old startup a valuation
The MITRE ATT&CK® Framework proves that authority requires constant learning and the actionable information it contains has never held greater currency. Likewise, XDR, the category of extended detection and response applications, is quickly becoming accepted by enterprises and embraced by Gartner analysts, because they “improve security operations productivity and enhance detection and response capabilities.” It is less well known how these tools align
In what’s likely to be a goldmine for bad actors, personal information associated with approximately 533 million Facebook users worldwide has been leaked on a popular cybercrime forum for free. The leaked data includes full names, Facebook IDs, mobile numbers, locations, email addresses, gender, occupation, city, country, marital status broken, account creation date, and other
American multinational technology company Microsoft has been hit by its second outage in two weeks. Striking the company on April Fool’s Day, the substantial cloud outage knocked Microsoft’s Azure cloud services, Teams, Office 365, and OneDrive offline. Skype, Xbox Live, and Bing were also impacted. News of the outage began emanating from Twitter users at around 5pm ET yesterday.
At the end of 2020, I argued that edtech needs to think bigger in order to stay relevant after the pandemic. I urged founders to think less about how to bundle and unbundle lecture experience, and more about how to replace outdated systems and methods with new, tech-powered solutions. In other words, don’t simply put
Welcome back to The TechCrunch Exchange, a weekly startups-and-markets newsletter. It’s broadly based on the daily column that appears on Extra Crunch, but free, and made for your weekend reading. Want it in your inbox every Saturday? Sign up here. Happy Saturday, everyone. I do hope that you are in good spirits and in good
Myth-busting Antivirus Assumptions The number of new viruses grows every day. In fact, McAfee recently registered a 605% increase in total Q2 COVID-19 themed threat detections, contributing to the millions already in existence. While there is no way to know when or how cyberattacks will occur, it’s clear that antivirus software is one of the best ways
Many enterprises rely on more than one security tool to protect their technology assets, devices, and networks. This is particularly true for organizations that use hybrid systems or a combination of cloud and local applications. Likewise, companies whose networks include a multitude of smartphones and IoT devices are likely to deploy multiple security solutions suitable
A cyber-bully has been fined for sending hateful messages to a professional wrestler before she took her own life. Japanese wrestler and Netflix reality show star Hana Kimura was just 22 years old when she killed herself on May 23 last year by inhaling toxic gas in her Tokyo home. Kimura became a target for internet trolls
Amazon kicked off the holiday weekend by backtracking slightly on a social media offensive that unfolded in the waning days of a historic unionization vote. The earlier comments reportedly arrived as Jeff Bezos was pushing for a more aggressive strategy. Along with taking on Senators Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren, the Amazon News Twitter account
Companies planning to use vaccine credentials to reopen offices will face a new challenge that will require an all-teams-on-deck approach — how to manage vaccination data. That’s according to Heidi Shey, principal analyst at Forrester Research and co-author of the report “The opportunity, the unknowns, and the risks of vaccine passports in the workplace,” which
Apple adds classic titles to Apple Arcade, Microsoft experiences an outage and Coinbase is going public. This is your Daily Crunch for April 2, 2021. The big story: Apple Arcade expands with classic games Until now, Apple’s game subscription service was limited to exclusive new titles, but today it’s introducing two new categories: App Store
Welcome to reality Ever since I started working in IT Security more than 10 years ago, I wondered, what helps defend against malware the best? This simple question does not stand on its own, as there are several follow-up questions to that: How is malware defined? Are we focusing solely on Viruses and Trojans, or
by Paul Ducklin Why Apple had to rush out a security update for iDevices. Two cryptographic security holes patched in OpenSSL. How PHP nearly got backdoored by crooks. With Doug Aamoth and Paul Ducklin. Intro and outro music by Edith Mudge. LISTEN NOW Click-and-drag on the soundwaves below to skip to any point in the
A 22-year-old man from the U.S. state of Kansas has been indicted on charges that he unauthorizedly accessed a public water facility’s computer system, jeopardizing the residents’ safety and health in the local community. Wyatt A. Travnichek, 22, of Ellsworth County, Kansas, has been charged with one count of tampering with a public water system