The Host Unknown Podcast

This week in InfoSec  (06:43)

With content liberated from the “today in infosec” twitter account and further afield

18th August 2004: Text messages sent to promote the video game "Resident Evil: Outbreak" stated "Outbreak: I'm infecting you with t-virus". This scared recipients, who were only about 7% less technologically savvy than mobile phone users today.

https://x.com/todayininfosec/status/1825257955878641888   

20th August 2003: Philippe Oechslin shared his technique he called "rainbow tables" during a talk at the 23rd annual crypto conference, Crypto 2003.

It became a popular approach for cracking password hashes. Today it's less widely used due to adoption of practices that reduce its efficacy.

https://x.com/todayininfosec/status/1825865870716870802

Rant of the Week  (10:59)

This uni thought it would be a good idea to do a phishing test with a fake Ebola scare

University of California Santa Cruz (UCSC) students may be relieved to hear that an emailed warning about a staff member infected with the Ebola virus was just a phishing exercise.

The message, titled "Emergency Notification: Ebola Virus Case on Campus," went out to the university community on Sunday, August 18. It began, "We regret to inform you that a member of our staff, who recently returned from South Africa, has tested positive for the Ebola virus."

The message went on to say that the university has initiated a contact tracing protocol and asks message recipients to "Please Log In to the Access Information Page for more details" – the very activity phishing messages attempt to encourage in order to capture login credentials.

The simulated attack was similar to an actual phishing message sent on August 1, 2024, as shown on the UCSC Phish Bowl, a collection of real and test phishing attempts.

But the one sent on Sunday was intended to raise awareness of phishing rather than to actually steal information.

In that, it succeeded. The message prompted the UCSC Student Health Center to publish a notice about a "Phishing email with misleading health information."

On Monday, Brian Hall, chief information security officer for UCSC, sent out an apology to the university community.

Billy Big Balls of the Week (18:20)

Russia tells citizens to switch off home surveillance because the Ukrainians are coming

Russia's Ministry of Internal Affairs is warning residents of under-siege regions to switch off home surveillance systems and dating apps to stop Ukraine from using them for intel-gathering purposes.

Residents of the Bryansk, Kursk, and Belgorod regions were issued with the warnings amid what seems like Russia being thoroughly rattled by Ukraine's incursion into the country's southwest.

"The enemy is massively identifying IP ranges in our territories and connecting to unprotected video surveillance cameras remotely, viewing everything from private yards to roads and highways of strategic importance," said the ministry, according to Russian newswire Interfax. "In this regard, if there is no urgent need, it is better not to use video surveillance cameras.

"It is highly discouraged to use online dating services. The enemy actively uses such resources for the covert collection of information."

These warnings were just two of many included in a public memo aimed at protecting the identities of high-value Russian individuals, including military personnel, law enforcement agents, and nuclear energy workers.

Industry News (24:51)

Iran Behind Trump Campaign Hack, US Government Confirms

New DNS-Based Backdoor Threat Discovered at Taiwanese University

Most Ransomware Attacks Now Happen at Night

CISA to Get New Headquarters as $524M Contract Awarded

Australia Calls Off Clearview AI Investigation Despite Lack of Compliance

Backdoor in Mifare Smart Cards Could Open Doors Around the World

Security Flaws in UK Political Party Donation Platforms Exposed

Company Fined $1m for Fake Joe Biden AI Calls

FAA Admits Gaps in Aircraft Cybersecurity Rules: New Regulation Proposed

Tweet of the Week (32:19)

https://x.com/anon_opin/status/1826015107857416458?s=46&t=1-Sjo1Vy8SG7OdizJ3wVbg

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This week in InfoSec  (10:28)

10th July 1999 - Cult of the Dead Cow (cDc) member DilDog debuted the program Back Orifice 2000 (BO2k) at DEF CON 7. It was the successor to Back Orifice, released by cDc a year prior. DilDog proclaimed it "a remote administration tool for corporate America".

https://twitter.com/todayininfosec/status/1811133606015983680

9th July 1981 - The game that launched two of the most famous characters in video game history is released for sale. Donkey Kong was created by Nintendo, a Japanese playing card and toy company turned fledgling video game developer, who was trying to create a hit game for the North American market. Unable at the time to acquire a license to create a video game based on the Popeye character, Nintendo decides to create a game mirroring the characteristics and rivalry of Popeye and Bluto. Donkey Kong is named after the game’s villain, a pet gorilla gone rogue. The game’s hero is originally called Jumpman, but is retroactively renamed Mario once the game becomes popular and Nintendo decides to use the character in future games.

Due to the similarity between Donkey Kong and King Kong, Universal Studios sued Nintendo claiming Donkey Kong violated their trademark. Kong, however, is common Japanese slang for gorilla. The lawsuit was ruled in favor of Nintendo. The success of Donkey Kong helped Nintendo become one of the dominant companies in the video game market.

Rant of the Week (15:55)

Palestinians say Microsoft unfairly closing their accounts

Palestinians living abroad have accused Microsoft of closing their email accounts without warning - cutting them off from crucial online services.

They say it has left them unable to access bank accounts and job offers - and stopped them using Skype, which Microsoft owns, to contact relatives in war-torn Gaza.

Microsoft says they violated its terms of service - a claim they dispute.

Billy Big Balls of the Week (27:39)

Scalpers Work With Hackers to Liberate Ticketmaster's ‘Non-Transferable’ Tickets

A lawsuit filed in California by concert giant AXS has revealed a legal and technological battle between ticket scalpers and platforms like Ticketmaster and AXS, in which scalpers have figured out how to extract “untransferable” tickets from their accounts by generating entry barcodes on parallel infrastructure that the scalpers control and which can then be sold and transferred to customers.

By reverse-engineering how Ticketmaster and AXS actually make their electronic tickets, scalpers have essentially figured out how to regenerate specific, genuine tickets that they have legally purchased from scratch onto infrastructure that they control. In doing so, they are removing the anti-scalping restrictions put on the tickets by Ticketmaster and AXS. 

'Gay furry hackers' breach conservative US think tank behind Project 2025

A collective of self-described "gay furry hackers" have released 2GB of data lifted from the Heritage Foundation, the conservative think-tank behind Project 2025 - a set of proposals that would bring the USA closer to being an authoritarian state.

The hacktivist group, known as SiegedSec, has been running a campaign it calls "OpTransRights," targeting (mostly government) websites to disrupt efforts to enact or enforce anti-trans and anti-abortion laws.

Industry News (33:26)

10 Billion Passwords Leaked on Hacking Forum

Crypto Thefts Double to $1.4 Billion, TRM Labs Finds

Russia Blocks VPN Services in Information Crackdown

Ticketmaster Extortion Continues, Threat Actor Claims New Ticket Leak

Cyber-Attack on Evolve Bank Exposed Data of 7.6 Million Customers

Most Security Pros Admit Shadow SaaS and AI Use

Russian Media Uses AI-Powered Software to Spread Disinformation

Smishing Triad Targets India with Fraud Surge

Fraud Campaign Targets Russians with Fake Olympics Tickets

Tweet of the Week (41:18)

https://x.com/dennishegstad/status/1810044171765645568

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This week in InfoSec  (07:40)

With content liberated from the “today in infosec” twitter account and further afield

3 July 1996 - a mere 28 years ago the movie Independence Day was released.  In it, Jeff Goldblum and Will Smith fly into an alien vessel in a 50-year-old space junker, then upload a computer virus in less than 5 minutes

https://twitter.com/todayininfosec/status/1808464060972667170

Rant of the Week (11:07)

Cancer patient forced to make terrible decision after Qilin attack on London hospitals

https://www.theregister.com/2024/07/05/qilin_impacts_patient/

EXCLUSIVE The latest figures suggest that around 1,500 medical procedures have been canceled across some of London's biggest hospitals in the four weeks since Qilin's ransomware attack hit pathology services provider Synnovis. But perhaps no single person was affected as severely as Johanna Groothuizen.

Hanna – the name she goes by – is now missing her right breast after her skin-sparing mastectomy and immediate breast reconstruction surgery was swapped out for a simple mastectomy at the last minute.

Billy Big Balls of the Week (18:20)

Ransomware scum who hit Indonesian government apologizes, hands over encryption key

https://www.theregister.com/2024/07/04/hackers_of_indonesian_government_apologize/

Industry News (24:28)

Vinted Fined €2.3m Over Data Protection Failure

Europol Warns of Home Routing Challenges For Lawful Interception

Meta Faces Suspension of AI Data Training in Brazil

New Ransomware Group Phones Execs to Extort Payment

UK’s NCA Leads Major Cobalt Strike Takedown

Cyber Extortion Soars: SMBs Hit Four Times Harder

New RUSI Report Exposes Psychological Toll of Ransomware, Urges Action

Dozens of Arrests Disrupt €2.5m Vishing Gang

Health Tech Execs Get Jail Time For $1bn Fraud Scheme

Tweet of the Week (31:07)

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This Week in InfoSec (12:30)

With content liberated from the “today in infosec” twitter account and further afield

24th June 1987: The movie Spaceballs was released. With a budget of $23 million, it grossed $38 million at the box office in North America. Though 37 years have passed, the secret code scene remains a reminder of why security is hard.

Watch the secret code scene from Spaceballs and weep. Or laugh. Or both. Has much changed when it comes to password security since the movie was released 37 years ago today?

The 64 second scene: https:///youtu.be/a6iW-8xPw3k

https://x.com/todayininfosec/status/1805302016451002501  

27th June 2011: Anonymous released its first cache from Operation AntiSec, information from a US anti-cyberterrorism program.

https://x.com/todayininfosec/status/1806302186487345226

Rant of the Week (18:15)

Korean telco allegedly infected its P2P users with malware
A South Korean media outlet has alleged that local telco KT deliberately infected some customers with malware due to their excessive use of peer-to-peer (P2P) downloading tools.

The number of infected users of “web hard drives” – the South Korean term for the online storage services that allow uploading and sharing of content – has reportedly reached 600,000.

Billy Big Balls of the Week (26:33)

Crypto scammers circle back, pose as lawyers, steal an extra $10M in truly devious plan
The FBI says in just 12 months, scumbags stole circa $10 million from victims of crypto scams after posing as helpful lawyers offering to recover their lost tokens.

Between February 2023-2024, scammers were kicking US victims while they were already down, preying on their financial vulnerability to defraud them for a second time in what must be seen as a new low, even for that particular breed of dirtball.

It's the latest update from the FBI's Internet Crime Complaint Center (IC3) on the ongoing issue which was first publicized in August last year. 

Industry News (34:24)

US Bans Kaspersky Over Alleged Kremlin Links

Sellafield Pleads Guilty to Historic Cybersecurity Offenses

Polish Prosecutors Step Up Probe into Pegasus Spyware Operation

Credential Stuffing Attack Hits 72,000 Levi’s Accounts

Google's Naptime Framework to Boost Vulnerability Research with AI

Fake Law Firms Con Victims of Crypto Scams, Warns FBI

IT Leaders Split on Using GenAI For Cybersecurity

Majority of Critical Open Source Projects Contain Memory Unsafe Code

CISOs Reveal Firms Prioritize Savings Over Long-Term Security

Tweet of the Week (43:08)

https://twitter.com/StuAlanBecker/status/1806137799248359443

Comments: https://twitter.com/derJamesJackson/status/1806307954586538205  

Alternate TotW: 

https://twitter.com/susisnyder/status/1806222280382406836

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This week in InfoSec  (11:16)

With content liberated from the “today in infosec” twitter account and further afield

5th of June  1991, a mere 33 years ago, : Philip Zimmermann sent the first release of PGP to 2 friends, Allan Hoeltje and Kelly Goen, to upload to the Internet. 

From the man himself, 

First, I sent it to Allan Hoeltje, who posted it to Peacenet, an ISP that specialized in grassroots political organizations, mainly in the peace movement. Peacenet was accessible to political activists all over the world. Then, I uploaded it to Kelly Goen, who proceeded to upload it to a Usenet newsgroup that specialized in distributing source code. At my request, he marked the Usenet posting as "US only". Kelly also uploaded it to many BBS systems around the country. I don't recall if the postings to the Internet began on June 5th or 6th.

It may be surprising to some that back in 1991, I did not yet know enough about Usenet newsgroups to realize that a "US only" tag was merely an advisory tag that had little real effect on how Usenet propagated newsgroup postings. I thought it actually controlled how Usenet routed the posting. But back then, I had no clue how to post anything on a newsgroup, and didn't even have a clear idea what a newsgroup was.

After releasing PGP, I immediately diverted my attention back to consulting work, to try to get caught up on my mortgage payments. I thought I could just release PGP 1.0 for MSDOS, and leave it alone for awhile, and let people play with it. I thought I could get back to it later, at my leisure. Little did I realize what a feeding frenzy PGP would set off. Apparently, there was a lot of pent-up demand for a tool like this. Volunteers from around the world were clamoring to help me port it to other platforms, add enhancements, and generally promote it. I did have to go back to work on paying gigs, but PGP continued to demand my time, pulled along by public enthusiasm.

I assembled a team of volunteer engineers from around the world. They ported PGP to almost every platform (except for the Mac, which turned out to be harder). They translated PGP into foreign languages. And I started designing the PGP trust model, which I did not have time to finish in the first release. Fifteen months later, in September 1992, we released PGP 2.0, for MSDOS, several flavors of Unix, Commodore Amiga, Atari, and maybe a few other platforms, and in about ten foreign languages. PGP 2.0 had the now-famous PGP trust model, essentially in its present form.

It was shortly after PGP 2.0's release that US Customs took an interest in the case. Little did they realize that they would help propel PGP's popularity, helping to ignite a controversy that would eventually lead to the demise of the US export restrictions on strong cryptography.

7 June 2009. A mere 15 years ago.  Sophos launched its (utterly shit) IT vigilante marketing campaign

Dress up a British man (who appears to have had a nervous breakdown over a corporate data breach incident) in an orange gimp suit – that will sell security software for sure!

At least, that was the plan made by Sophos’s marketing department for its “IT Vigilante” campaign.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-gc6sDqofcI

https://grahamcluley.com/top-five-worst-videos-anti-virus/

Other awful videos:

Happy birthday Eugene Kaspersky: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ujnq188E5-w

Eugene’s “silent movie”: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ib8UjCQl5sE&t=6s

Rant of the Week (22:45)

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cxee7317kgmo

Russian hackers are behind the cyber attack on a number of major London hospitals, according to the former chief executive of the National Cyber Security Centre.

Ransomware attacks on the healthcare industry as a whole have increased significantly over the past year. Whaley attributes the uptick to “lives on the line.”

“While no sector is invulnerable to these attacks… healthcare providers have proven time and time again that they’re the most willing to pay a ransom following these incidents," Whaley said.

“Bad actors know this and smell blood in water,” he added. 

Whaley pointed out that the rise in state-sponsored cyberattacks combined “with the further digitization of the NHS paints a pretty grim picture for the defensive capabilities of the British healthcare sector… and possibly a warning sign of much larger attacks to come.”

Graham's Giant Gonads of the Week (30:51)

Apple refused to pay bug bounty to Russian cybersecurity firm Kaspersky Lab

https://therecord.media/kaspersky-apple-bug-bounty-declined

https://securelist.com/trng-2023/

Apple has snubbed Russian cybersecurity firm Kaspersky Lab, refusing to shell out a bug bounty for four zero-day vulnerabilities discovered in iPhone software.  

Targets were infected using zero-click exploits via the iMessage platform, and the malware ran with root privileges, gaining complete control over the device and user data. 

The twist?

The vulnerabilities were used to spy on Kaspersky employees.

Kaspersky politely enquired whether it could be rewarded for finding the vulnerabilities used in the espionage campaign - known as Operation Triangulation.

Kaspersky claims it was a "highly sophisticated" attack, so intricate it needed 13 bullet points to explain.

Russia, not one to be outdone in the drama department, accused the U.S. and Apple of colluding to spy on Russian diplomats. Apple, of course, vehemently denied these allegations.

It's like Eastenders.

Amidst all this chaos, the U.S. and Russia are engaged in a geopolitical staring contest, with Apple caught in the crossfire. Apple, being an American company, has taken a stand against Russia's actions in Ukraine, suspending sales and removing apps. It's a bit like a tech giant trying to play peacemaker in a playground brawl.

Kaspersky, meanwhile, has its own history with the U.S. government, having been banned from government use due to security concerns. It's a classic case of "guilty by association."

So, will Kaspersky continue to report bugs to Apple despite the lack of reward? Only time will tell.

Speaking to Russian-language media agency RTVI, Kaspersky’s research head Dmitry Galov said that typically cybersecurity companies like Kaspersky nominated a charity to receive the funds from the Apple Bug Bounty program instead of collecting the revenue itself. 

He added that although Kaspersky was confident the attacker was state-sponsored, he and his research team did not have the technical data needed to identify which state may have been behind the attack.

A spokesperson for Kaspersky did not respond to whether it had nominated a charity when initially contacting Apple, nor whether the company’s refusal to issue a bounty would affect its decision to disclose vulnerabilities discovered in the future.

Industry News (40:23)

London Hospitals Cancel Operations Following Ransomware Incident

EmailGPT Exposed to Prompt Injection Attacks

#Infosec2024: CISOs Need to Move Beyond Passwords to Keep Up With Security Threats

#Infosec2024: Ransomware Ecosystem Transformed, New Groups “Changing the Rules”

Security Flaws Found in Popular WooCommerce Plugin

#Infosec2024: Collaboration is Key to an Effective Security Culture

#Infosec2024: AI Red Teaming Provider Mindgard Named UK's Most Innovative Cyber SME

FBI Warns of Rise in Work-From-Home Scams

Account Takeovers Outpace Ransomware as Top Security Concern

Tweet of the Week (44:27)

https://x.com/dakacki/status/1798882732203803070

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This week in InfoSec  (07:29)

With content liberated from the “today in infosec” twitter account and further afield

28th May: 2014: LulzSec hacker Hector Monsegur, known as Sabu, was sentenced and released the same day on time served for his role in a slew of high-profile cyberattacks. He had served 7 months in prison after his arrest.

https://x.com/todayininfosec/status/1795228730735886650

25th May 2018: The General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) in the European Union (EU) to strengthen and unify data protection became effective - just over 2 years after it was adopted by the EU.

https://twitter.com/todayininfosec/status/1794461551534936503

Rant of the Week (18:34)

Bing outage shows just how little competition Google search really has

Bing, Microsoft's search engine platform, went down in the very early morning 23rd May. That meant that searches from Microsoft's Edge browsers that had yet to change their default providers didn't work. It also meant that services relying on Bing's search API—Microsoft's own Copilot, ChatGPT search, Yahoo, Ecosia, and DuckDuckGo—similarly failed.

If dismay about AI's hallucinations, power draw, or pizza recipes concern you—along with perhaps broader Google issues involving privacy, tracking, news, SEO, or monopoly power—most of your other major options were brought down by a single API outage this morning. Moving past that kind of single point of vulnerability will take some work, both by the industry and by you, the person wondering if there's a real alternative.

Billy Big Balls of the Week (26:56)

IT worker sued over ‘vengeful’ cyber harassment of policeman who issued a jaywalking ticket

In an ongoing civil lawsuit, an IT worker is accused of launching a "destructive cyber campaign of hate and revenge" against a police officer and his family after being issued a ticket for jaywalking.

Industry News (34:44)

Check Point Urges VPN Configuration Review Amid Attack Spike

Courtroom Recording Software Vulnerable to Backdoor Attacks

New North Korean Hacking Group Identified by Microsoft

Internet Archive Disrupted by Sustained and “Mean” DDoS Attack

Advance Fee Fraud Targets Colleges With Free Piano Offers

US-Led Operation Takes Down World’s Largest Botnet

First American Reveals Data Breach Impacting 44,000 Individuals

Europol-Led Operation Endgame Hits Botnet, Ransomware Networks

BBC Pension Scheme Breached, Exposing Employee Data

Tweet of the Week (47.14)

https://twitter.com/DebugPrivilege/status/1795823939631067165  

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This week in InfoSec  (11:36) 

With content liberated from the “today in infosec” twitter account and further afield

17th May 2015: CNN published their article on a statement Cybersecurity Consultant, Chris Roberts had publicly made on Twitter a month earlier.  There were lots of accusations made regarding Chris Roberts' actions hacking into computer systems while a passenger on multiple airline flights. Did he actually cause a plane to fly sideways? Maybe? But it's not like he made it fly upside down.

FBI: Hacker claimed to have taken over flight’s engine controls

https://twitter.com/todayininfosec/status/1791214444980080724

26th May 1995: Gates Declares Internet "Most Important Single Development"

Realising his company had missed the boat in estimating the impact and popularity of the Internet, Microsoft Corp. CEO Bill Gates issued a memo titled, "The Internet Tidal Wave," which signaled the company's renewed focus on that arena. In the memo, Gates declared that the Internet was the "most important single development" since the IBM personal computer -- a development that he was assigning "the highest level of importance”.

https://1995blog.com/2020/05/25/25-years-on-bill-gates-internet-tidal-wave-memo-a-seminal-document-of-the-unfolding-digital-age/

Rant of the Week (18:00)

Giving Windows total recall of everything a user does is a privacy minefield

Microsoft's Windows Recall feature is attracting controversy before even venturing out of preview.

Like so many of Microsoft's AI-infused products, Windows Recall will remain in preview while Microsoft refines it based on user feedback – or simply gives up and pretends it never happened.

The principle is simple. Windows takes a snapshot of a user's active screen every few seconds and dumps it to disk. The user can then scroll through the archive of snapshots to find what were doing some time back, or query an AI system to recall past screenshots by text.

Billy Big Balls of the Week (28:58)

Hacker Breaches Scam Call Center, Warns Victims They've Been Scammed

A hacker claims to have breached a scam call center, stolen the source code for the company’s tools, and emailed the company’s scam victims.

The hack is the latest in a long series of vigilante actions in which hackers take matters into their own hands and breach or otherwise disrupt scam centers. A massively popular YouTube community, with creators mocking their targets, also exists around the practice.

Industry News (34:17)

Authorities Arrest $100m Incognito Drugs Market Suspect

AI Seoul Summit: 16 AI Companies Sign Frontier AI Safety Commitments

UK Government in £8.5m Bid to Tackle AI Cyber-Threats

Mastercard Doubles Speed of Fraud Detection with Generative AI

PSNI Faces £750,000 Data Breach Fine After Spreadsheet Leak

GitHub Fixes Maximum Severity Flaw in Enterprise Server

National Records of Scotland Data Breached in NHS Cyber-Attack

NVD Leaves Exploited Vulnerabilities Unchecked

Microsoft: Gift Card Fraud Rising, Costing Businesses up to $100,000 a Day

Tweet of the Week (41:59)

https://twitter.com/gcluley/status/1792881296907043217

Two for one:

https://twitter.com/mer__edith/status/1793888092321202634

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This week in InfoSec  

With content liberated from the “today in infosec” twitter account and further afield

27th April 2012: The Information Commissioner's Office (ICO) in the UK issued its first-ever data breach fine to an NHS (National Health Service) organisation, fining Aneurin Bevan Health Board in Wales £70,000. 

https://www.digitalhealth.net/2012/04/first-nhs-fine-issued-by-ico/

Rant of the Week

Dropbox dropped the ball on security, haemorrhaging customer and third-party info

Dropbox has revealed a major attack on its systems that saw customers' personal information accessed by unknown and unauthorized entities.

The attack, detailed in a regulatory filing, impacted Dropbox Sign – a service it bills as an "eSignature solution [that] lets you send, sign, and store important documents in one seamless workflow, without ever leaving Dropbox." So basically a DocuSign clone.

The filing states that management became aware of the incident last week – on April 24 – and "immediately activated our cyber security incident response process to investigate, contain, and remediate the incident."

That effort led to the discovery that "the threat actor had accessed data related to all users of Dropbox Sign, such as emails and usernames, in addition to general account settings."

Billy Big Balls of the Week

Chinese government website security is often worryingly bad, say Chinese researchers

Five Chinese researchers examined the configurations of nearly 14,000 government websites across the country and found worrying lapses that could lead to malicious attacks, according to a not-yet-peer-reviewed study released last week.

The researchers concluded the investigation has uncovered "pressing security and dependency issues" that may not have a quick fix.

"Despite thorough analyses, practical solutions to bolster the security of these systems remain elusive," wrote the researchers. "Their susceptibility to cyber attacks, which could facilitate the spread of malicious content or malware, underscores the urgent need for real-time monitoring and malicious activity detection."

The study also highlights the need for "stringent vetting and regular updates" of third-party libraries and advocates "a diversified distribution of network nodes, which could substantially augment system resilience and performance."

The study will likely not go down well in Beijing, as China's government has urged improvements to government digital services and apps often issues edicts about improving cybersecurity. 

Industry News

Google Blocks 2.3 Million Apps From Play Store Listing

Disinformation: EU Opens Probe Against Facebook and Instagram Ahead of Election

NCSC’s New Mobile Risk Model Aimed at “High-Threat” Firms

Lawsuits and Company Devaluations Await For Breached Firms

UnitedHealth CEO Confirms Breach Tied to Stolen Credentials, No MFA

REvil Ransomware Affiliate Sentenced to Over 13 Years in Prison

Security Breach Exposes Dropbox Sign Users

Indonesia is a Spyware Haven, Amnesty International Finds

North Korean Hackers Spoofing Journalist Emails to Spy on Policy Experts

Tweet of the Week 

https://twitter.com/summer__heidi/status/1783829402574639187

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This week in InfoSec  (07:04)

With content liberated from the “today in infosec” twitter account and further afield

23rd April 2005: The first video uploaded to YouTube, “Me at the zoo,” is posted on April 23, 2005 at 8:27 PM by co-founder Jawed Karim. For now being a piece of history, the video is actually pretty dumb.

Note to future entrepreneurs: what you do may be for posterity. Choose wisely.

22nd April 1988: 1988: The VIRUS-L email mailing list was created and moderated by Ken van Wyk while he was working at Lehigh University. It was the first electronic forum dedicated to discussing computer viruses.

https://twitter.com/todayininfosec/status/1782424224348446910

Rant of the Week (13:21)

Ring dinged for $5.6M after, among other claims, rogue insider spied on 'pretty girls'

The FTC today announced it would be sending refunds totaling $5.6 million to Ring customers, paid from the Amazon subsidiary's coffers.

The windfall stems from allegations made by the US watchdog that folks could have been, and were, spied upon by cybercriminals and rogue Ring workers via their Ring home security cameras.

The regulator last year accused Ring of sloppy privacy protections that allowed the aforementioned spying to occur or potentially occur.

Specifically, the FTC formally charged Ring with "compromising its customers' privacy by allowing any employee or contractor to access consumers' private videos and by failing to implement basic privacy and security protections, enabling hackers to take control of consumers' accounts, cameras, and videos."

Billy Big Balls of the Week (21:41)
Cops cuff man for allegedly framing colleague with AI-generated hate speech clip

Baltimore police have arrested Dazhon Leslie Darien, the former athletic director of Pikesville High School (PHS), for allegedly impersonating the school's principal using AI software to make it seem as if he made racist and antisemitic remarks.

Darien, of Baltimore, Maryland, was subsequently charged with witness retaliation, stalking, theft, and disrupting school operations. He was detained late at night trying to board a flight at BWI Thurgood Marshall Airport. Security personnel stopped him because the declared firearm he had with him was improperly packed and an ensuing background check revealed an open warrant for his arrest.

He is quoted as saying “Arse cock pussy”. 😀

"On January 17, 2024, the Baltimore County Police Department became aware of a voice recording being circulated on social media," said Robert McCullough, Chief of Baltimore County Police, at a streamed press conference today. "It was alleged the voice captured on the audio file belong to Mr Eric Eiswert, the Principal at the Pikesville High School. We now have conclusive evidence that the recording was not authentic.

Industry News (30:51)

Quishing Attacks Jump Tenfold, Attachment Payloads Halve

Alarming Decline in Cybersecurity Job Postings in the US

NCSC Announces PwC’s Richard Horne as New CEO

NSA Launches Guidance for Secure AI Deployment

End-to-End Encryption Sparks Concerns Among EU Law Enforcement

Fifth of CISOs Admit Staff Leaked Data Via GenAI

US Congress Passes Bill to Ban TikTok

Online Banking Security Still Not Up to Par, Says Which?

Ring to Pay Out $5.6m in Refunds After Customer Privacy Breach

Tweet of the Week   (38:56)

https://twitter.com/KimZetter/status/1783556843798671591

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This week in InfoSec  (08:49)

With content liberated from the “today in infosec” twitter account and further afield

7th April 1969: Steve Crocker, a graduate student at UCLA and part of the team developing ARPANET, writes the first “Request for Comments“. The ARPANET, a research project of the Department of Defense’s Advanced Research Projects Agency (ARPA), was the foundation of today’s modern Internet. RFC 1 defined the design of the host software for communication between ARPANET nodes. This host software would be run on Interface Message Processors or IMPs, which were the precursor to Internet routers. The “host software” defined in RFC 1 would later be known as the Network Control Protocol or NCP, which itself was the forerunner to the modern TCP/IP protocol the Internet runs on today.

https://thisdayintechhistory.com/04/07/rfc-1-defines-the-building-block-of-internet-communication/

7th April 2014: The Heartbleed Bug was publicly disclosed. The buffer over-read vulnerability had been discovered by Neel Mehta and later privately reported to the OpenSSL project, which patched it the next day. The vulnerability was inadvertently introduced into OpenSSL 2 years prior.

https://twitter.com/todayininfosec/status/1777136463882183076  

Rant of the Week (17:09)

OpenTable is adding your first name to previously anonymous reviews

Restaurant reservation platform OpenTable says that all reviews on the platform will no longer be fully anonymous starting May 22nd and will now show members' profile pictures and first names.

OpenTable notified members of this new policy change today in emails to members who had previously left a review on the platform, stating the change was made to provide more transparency.

"At OpenTable, we strive to build a community in which diners can help other diners discover new restaurants, and reviews are a big part of that," reads the OpenTable email seen by BleepingComputer.

"We've heard from you, our diners, that trust and transparency are important when looking at reviews."

"To build on the credibility of our review program, starting May 22, 2024, OpenTable will begin displaying diner first names and profile photos on all diner reviews. This update will also apply to past reviews.

Billy Big Balls of the Week (26:36)
Lloyds Bank axes risk staff after executives complain they are a ‘blocker’

Lloyds Banking Group plans to cut jobs in risk management after an internal review found the function was a “blocker to our strategic transformation”.  

The restructuring was outlined in a memo last month from Lloyds’ chief risk officer Stephen Shelley, who said two-thirds of executives believed risk management was blocking progress while “less than half our workforce believe intelligent risk-taking is encouraged”.  The lender was “resetting our approach to risk and controls”, Shelley said in the memo, seen by the Financial Times, adding that “the initial focus is on non-financial risks”. 

Industry News (33:55)

T: Famous YouTube Channels Hacked to Distribute Infostealers

A: US Federal Data Privacy Law Introduced by Legislators

J: Foreign Interference Drives Record Surge in IP Theft

T: Half of UK Businesses Hit by Cyber-Incident in Past Year, UK Government Finds

A: US Claims to Have Recovered $1.4bn in COVID Fraud

J: Women Experience Exclusion Twice as Often as Men in Cybersecurity

T: Threat Actors Game GitHub Search to Spread Malware

A: Data Breach Exposes 300k Taxi Passengers’ Information

J: Apple Boosts Spyware Alerts For Mercenary Attacks

Tweet of the Week  (52:08)

https://x.com/ErrataRob/status/1778536622163984590

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