When Apple announced it in August, it would check for child sexual abuse materials on the devices of its customers, privacy advocates, and cryptographers immediately and rejected. Faced with this sustained reaction, the company said Friday it would retire, at least for now. While Apple has not completely reversed its trajectory, many of its critics felt at least relieved that more time is needed to hear their concerns before putting the system into operation.
In Louisiana, hundreds of thousands of people are left without electricity for several days after Hurricane Ida collapsed. We took a look at what it takes to turn the lights back on in New Orleans and the surrounding parishes, and why it might take weeks for everyone to get back to work.
Happy Labor Day weekend to those who celebrate! Well, except for ransomware gangs and other hackers, who use weekends and long vacations to inflict maximum pain on targets that are likely to be understaffed or distracted. The biggest ransomware hackers of the year have occurred before Mother’s Day, Memorial Day and July 4th. Like the clock, shortly after publishing this story US Cyber Command warned of a “mass exploitation“of a flaw in Atlassian’s remote management software. I hope you’ve made your patches. On a more individual level, here’s a guide from our WIRED UK friends to keep you from being hacked.
And there are more! Every week we gather all the security news that WIRED didn’t cover in depth. Click on the headlines to read the full stories and stay safe.
We’ve written so many times about major Bluetooth flaws, not to mention why they continue to happen and why you might want to turn off Bluetooth when you’re not using it. Which means that the existence of a new set of bugs, collectively known as BrakTooth, should come as no surprise. But neither should it be ignored; vulnerabilities can lead to various outcomes, including the possibility of running malware on a device. On a less destructive but still annoying level, an attacker could cause us the errors to crash a nearby Bluetooth device. Given the huge number of companies affected, it is impossible to know how many potential targets there will be or never will be. Add BrakTooth to the increasingly alarming stack.
This week, the FTC banned a company called SpyFone from selling surveillance software, a novelty for the agency. The additional step of ordering SpyFone to notify anyone who had the spyware installed on their device was taken. The app and the like can offer bullies to abusers a way to control photos, texts, emails, victim location, and more. The FTC ordered the company to delete any information it might still have on its servers. Spyware is still a booming industry in general, so the FTC should not miss opportunities for further application.
Speaking of application! The Irish Data Protection Commission fined WhatsApp the equivalent of about $ 270 million for failing to properly inform European Union residents what it does with their data. The resolution concerns WhatsApp’s long-standing practice of sharing user data with parent company Facebook, which many people were surprised when the secure messaging company finished updating its privacy policy in early ‘this year. The ruling gives WhatsApp three months to comply with the EU’s General Data Protection Regulation; WhatsApp has said it will appeal the decision.
The OMG cable, first introduced in 2019, is a delight for hackers. While it looks like a normal Lightning cable, it creates its own access point, allowing hackers to connect to any device it connects to. From here, they can deploy malicious software, steal data, or record keystrokes. The latest version, demonstrated this week, comes in new formats such as Lightning to USB-C and USB-C to USB-C, has a wider range and features geofencing features. Anyway, you should only use cables from trusted sources, but let them remember.
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