Tag Archive for: Community

[Editorial] There Is No Privacy Without Stronger Security — That’s Why We’re Joining Forces With the Security Community To Keep You Safe

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▲ Seungwon Shin,1 VP and Head of Security Team at Mobile eXperience Business, Samsung Electronics

Dangerous Times

It’s hard to imagine a better time for cyber-criminals. The conditions are ideal right now for anyone with ill intentions and technical know-how.

 

A rise in remote workers means more reliance on unsecure public Wi-Fi. New frontiers like the blockchain leave confused customers ripe for scams. Cyber-attacks are on the rise. And not just where you expect them. Recent wars have started with digital attacks on critical infrastructure, months before physical incursion.

 

All this when we are putting more of our lives into our smartphones. They are our wallets, our house keys and our IDs. A single intrusion can be devastating, so now more than ever we need our devices to be secure. Let’s examine what truly makes a device safe — so that you can go out into the world and live freely, without worrying about your data getting into the wrong hands.

 

 

What Security Is… and What It Isn’t

By now you’re likely thinking you’re fine, because you’re sensible. But there are many common misconceptions about security. You don’t let apps share your name, email, or habits. You even disable app tracking permissions. Great, but that doesn’t mean your data’s safe. Please don’t confuse privacy for security. Closing your curtains will do no good if someone kicks your door down. You think you have chosen a safe mobile ecosystem, one akin to a walled garden. But hackers adapt to their targets. Unsecure Wi-Fi, social engineering scams — these are threats regardless of what ecosystem you use.

 

You don’t open suspicious attachments. Great, but there are ‘zero-click’ attacks, which compromise a device without user interaction. That happened with Pegasus, spyware that exploited a flaw in a popular messaging system. All it took was for users to receive a message, and the hackers got in. Feeling safer than you are leads to complacency — that’s what cyber-criminals are counting on.

 

It’s unsettling to think that there are so many threats and no safe harbor. But that’s what inspires our work on Samsung…

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Community Fibre is more than living up to its name

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Many companies will claim ESG “is in our DNA”, but how many can point to their company’s name as evidence it behaves in a responsible and nurturing fashion?

Community Fibre can, and its community mindedness runs all the way down from its branding to the communities across London that it serves, by installing fibre-based broadband connections.

Unlike most providers, Community Fibre builds, owns and operates its own dedicated fibre-optic network. This means it does not have to rely on anyone else’s cables, be it Openreach or any of the other major broadband players.

And where most broadband providers use a combination of fibre-optic cable connected to old copper phone-wires, running its open network means Community Fibre’s network is fibre-only.

Fibre by name, fibre by nature – and the same goes for the ‘community’ portion of the company’s proposition – all of which is great news for its customers across 29 London boroughs. 

ESG element of Community Fibre is very strong

The ESG element of Community Fibre’s business is strong, and, as Head of Supply Chain for the business, Mike Brooman is as heavily involved in helping the company deliver in this area as he is helping ensure its customers receive a great service.

“We’ve got a very strong ESG focus at Community Fibre,” he says. “It’s one of our company goals and one of the main reasons I wanted to work here. 

“As Head of Supply Chain, it’s my responsibility to make sure our supply chain matches and supports those ESG goals and purposes.” 

To this end, he is part of the company’s Green Team, which is led by CEO Graeme Oxby. The Green Team helps the business focus both on short- and long-term projects designed to reduce its impact on the environment. 

“My involvement in the Green Team is in supporting those who deliver these benefits, by ensuring they’ve got access to the products and services they need to deliver to the communities that we serve.”

The company also has a Digital Ambassador Programme (DAP) as part of its strong line-up of ESG programmes. Under DAP, Community Fibre trains members of the community to become qualified ‘digital ambassadors’, who then go on to help residents in…

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Hackers Exploit Community Meetings to Spread Malware Via Fake Zoom Invites

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Hackers have been spoofing invite reminders for virtual meetings at community associations and school boards in a bid to infect attendees with malware.

Email protection provider Avanan noticed(Opens in a new window) the attacks in March. Hackers send out emails that pretend to come from a community group or school board, but the included PDF has been designed to infect a recipient’s PC with malware. 

The scheme leverages how the COVID-19 pandemic caused many people and community groups to adopt video calls as a way to meet online. Now it’s become common for users to encounter invites and reminders for virtual meetings in their email inboxes. 

Unfortunately, hackers know they can exploit the same meetings to spread malware and instigate other nefarious schemes, such as “Zoom bombing.” In this case, Avanan noted the attackers will pretend to send fake meeting invites for the Zoom video-conferencing software. 

Example of one of the attacks.


(Avanan)

“It is easy for this attack to show legitimacy,” the security firm wrote in a blog post. “The association spoofed is legitimate; all public meetings are public records, so the dates can match. With just a PDF, it can easily look like a calendar invite attached to an email.”

When clicked, the PDF-based invite can then forward a user to a website that’ll ask them to download a malicious program to their machine. “The code embeds itself into system memory and can share contents of the local computer with the malicious party,” Avanan added. 

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Avanan also warns the hackers could easily expand their attacks to target more victims. “There are countless community associations across the country and world. There are also tons of video conferencing platforms to leverage,” the security firm said. 

To avoid getting phished, you should always check the sender address before interacting with an email. If something looks off, the email is most likely spoofed. Another red flag is if the email asks you to download software from an unofficial website. When in doubt, ask the administrator of a community association or school board if they in fact sent out the email in question.

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Students at Fayetteville Technical Community College find themselves on the front lines of 21st century warfare

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FAYETTEVILLE, N.C. (WTVD) — Fayetteville Technical Community College is training people to protect others from cyber attacks.

The FBI issued a new warning about the possibility of Russian cyber attacks on U.S. infrastructure, placing some students in Fayetteville on the front lines in a way they didn’t initially expect.

Christopher Barksdale is a retired veteran and former Army aircraft mechanic. Now, his new boot camp is inside a classroom at Fayetteville Technical Community College.

“It does kind of feel like you’re on the front line but in a digital sense,” Barksdale said. “You hear about digital attacks here and digital attacks there and it’s almost like you’re getting involved in a major conflict going on again.”

Barksdale enrolled in a six-week program designed to teach students foundation in cyber security.

Instructor Darryl Carter specializes in taking students with zero experience and building them into finely-tuned experts.

“The same technology that they use to operate your car is the same technology that they are going to use to try and break into your computer at home,” Carter explained. “So we have to (get) them scripting and we have to teach them software development and teach how programs are written and how to do that safely and effectively.”

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