Tag Archive for: deletes

Spyware maker LetMeSpy shuts down after hacker deletes server data

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Image Credits: JakeOlimb / Getty Images

Poland-based spyware LetMeSpy is no longer operational and said it will shut down after a June data breach wiped out its servers, including its huge trove of data stolen from thousands of victims’ phones.

In a notice on its website in both English and Polish, LetMeSpy confirmed the “permanent shutdown” of the spyware service and that it would cease operations by the end of August. The notice said LetMeSpy is blocking users from logging in or signing up with new accounts.

A separate notice on LetMeSpy’s former login page, which no longer functions, confirmed earlier reports that the hacker who breached the spyware operation also deleted the data on its servers.

“The breach consisted of unauthorized access to the LetMeSpy website’s database, downloading and at the same time deleting data from the website by the author of the attack,” the notice reads.

LetMeSpy’s app no longer functions, a network traffic analysis by TechCrunch shows, and the spyware maker’s website no longer provides the spyware app for download.

LetMeSpy was an Android phone monitoring app that was purposefully designed to stay hidden on a victim’s phone home screen, making the app difficult to detect and remove. When planted on a person’s phone — often by someone with knowledge of their phone passcode — apps like LetMeSpy continually steal that person’s messages, call logs and real-time location data.

A copy of the database was obtained by nonprofit transparency collective DDoSecrets, which indexes leaked datasets in the public interest, and shared with TechCrunch for analysis. The data showed that LetMeSpy, until recently, had been used to steal data from more than 13,000 compromised Android devices worldwide, though LetMeSpy’s website claimed prior to the breach that it controlled more than 236,000 devices.

The database also contained information that shows the spyware was developed by a Krakow-based tech company called Radeal, whose chief executive Rafal Lidwin did not respond to a request for comment.

LetMeSpy is the latest spyware operation to shut down in the past year in the wake of a security incident that exposed…

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Couple deletes Holiday Inn data for fun after ransomware attack fails

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A Vietnamese couple deleted Holiday Inn data from s computers after their ransomware attack failed, saying they did it for fun. 

The hackers, who contacted the BBC on Saturday, September 17, said they had deleted the data “for fun”.

According to the evidence provided by the pair they said they were able to access the computers of the Holiday Inn owners, International Hotels Group (IHG) with relative ease.

The group, which owns around 6,000 hotels, received numerous complaints in the week saying that people were having problems booking. The company initially responded by saying that the system was undergoing maintenance, before admitting that they were the subject of a hacking attempt.

Calling themselves TeaPea, the hackers used an encrypted Telegram message to contact the BBC. They provided images as evidence of the hack, images that the company has confirmed are genuine.

The images show that the hackers gained access to servers, emails and Microsoft Teams chats, but were unable to use that access to install ransomware as the company isolated servers before they could so.

Instead the couple who deleted the Holiday Inn data said: “Our attack was originally planned to be a ransomware but the company’s IT team kept isolating servers before we had a chance to deploy it, so we thought to have some funny [sic]. We did a wiper attack instead.

“We don’t feel guilty, really. We prefer to have a legal job here in Vietnam but the wage is an average $300 (€300) per month. I’m sure our hack won’t hurt the company a lot.”

IHG says customer-facing systems are returning to normal although disruptions continue to be experienced as the company works to rebuild the data. Although the hackers say they took no data that has yet to be confirmed by IHG.

The hackers said they gained access to IHG’s internal IT network by tricking an employee into downloading a malicious piece of software, which gave them access. After that, they were able to use weak passwords to access the systems.

A spokeswoman for IHG told the BBC that password vault details were secure. She went on to say they had to evade “multiple layers of security”, adding that “IHG employs a…

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Amazon deletes anti-union listing, watches workers’ “secret” social groups

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An Amazon Flex driver delivers an armload of packages in Cambridge, Mass., on Dec. 18, 2018.

Enlarge / An Amazon Flex driver delivers an armload of packages in Cambridge, Mass., on Dec. 18, 2018. (credit: Pat Greenhouse | The Boston Globe | Getty Images)

Amazon is working extremely hard to counter both internal unionization efforts and external bad press even as working conditions for its Flex drivers seem to get ever more desperate amid the persistent pandemic, a set of new reports reveals.

The Internet’s biggest everything store has been busy during the COVID-19 pandemic. As in-person retail bottomed out, online retail skyrocketed and Amazon hired an additional 175,000 warehouse, grocery, and delivery workers to keep up with the sharply increased demand this year provided.

One of the ways Amazon gets packages to your doorstep is through Amazon Flex. The program is basically like Uber, but for Amazon: drivers use Amazon’s app and their own cars to collect packages from Amazon facilities and deliver them to local homes. Typically, drivers sign up for a scheduled two-to-four-hour delivery block or shift, but Flex also makes “Instant Offers,” which are immediate, on-demand deliveries drivers can pick up like an Uber or Lyft fare.

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Biz & IT – Ars Technica

Activision Deletes And Replaces ‘Call Of Duty’ Trailer Worldwide Over 1 Second That Hurt China’s Feelings

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While China-bashing is all the rage right now (much of it deserved given the country’s abhorrent human rights practices), it’s sort of amazing what a difference a year makes. While the current focus of ire towards the Chinese government seems focused on the COVID-19 pandemic and a few mobile dance apps, never mind the fully embedded nature of Chinese-manufactured technology in use every day in the West, late 2019 was all about China’s translucent skin. Much of that had to do with China’s inching towards a slow takeover of Hong Kong and how several corporate interests in the West reacted to it. Does anyone else remember when our discussion about China was dominated by stories dealing with Blizzard banning Hearthstone players for supporting Hong Kong and American professional sports leagues looking like cowards in the face of a huge economic market?

Yeah, me neither. But with all that is going on the world and all of the criticism, deserved or otherwise, being lobbed at the Chinese government, it’s worth pointing out that the problems of last year are still going on. And, while Google most recently took something of a stand against the aggression on Hong Kong specifically, other companies are still bowing to China’s thin-skin in heavy-handed ways. The latest example of this is an admittedly relatively trivial attempt by Activision to kneel at the altar of Chinese historical censorship.

The debut trailer for Call of Duty: Black Ops Cold War has been blocked in China, and subsequently edited everywhere else, after featuring around one second’s worth of footage from the Communist government’s crackdown on pro-democracy protesters in 1989. When the game was first announced last week, a trailer running for 2:02 was released to the world and hosted on the official Call of Duty and Xbox YouTube pages, along with major trailer sites like IGN and Gamespot.

On August 21, however, the videos on Call of Duty and Xbox’s YouTube pages were replaced with a much shorter, 1:00 version. This isn’t an additional trailer, it’s a replacement, which we know because…the original 2:02 video we embedded in our own story is no longer working, having been marked as “private”.

So here’s the, ahem, tik-tok on this. Activision, which also owns Blizzard, releases a new trailer for a new Call of Duty game. That trailer includes a single second of an image from Chinese protests against the government from three decades ago. The Chinese government, true to form, flips the fuck out and bans the trailer entirely. One imagines there were also threats of banning the game entirely, but that is yet to be confirmed. Activision then, seeing the Chinese government go full carpet bomb over the trailer in its country, decides to try to out-carpet-bomb the carpet bomb by doing a delete/replace of the offending trailer worldwide.

While we’re talking about a mere video game trailer here, the implications aren’t as insignificant as they might seem. Games are a subset of culture and commerce. While much of the discourse over how companies do business in China is overstated to say the least, what Activision did here is something different. Indeed, it could probably be best summarized as: Activision allowed the Chinese government to censor the company’s art throughout the world.

And, sinophobia aside, that is a very dangerous precedent to set. That it was an action taken on a trailer for a game called Call of Duty: Cold War, in fact, is probably proof that the universe is not without a sense of irony.

Techdirt.