Tag Archive for: employees

Google restricting internet access to some employees for security

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A man walks through Google offices on January 25, 2023 in New York City.

Leonardo Munoz | Corbis News | Getty Images

Google on Wednesday is starting a new pilot program where some employees will be restricted to internet-free desktop PCs, CNBC has learned.

The company originally selected more than 2,500 employees to participate, but after receiving feedback, the company revised the pilot to allow employees to opt out, as well as opening it up to volunteers. The company will disable internet access on the select desktops, with the exception of internal web-based tools and Google-owned websites like Google Drive and Gmail. Some workers who need the internet to do their job will get exceptions, the company stated in materials.

In addition, some employees will have no root access, meaning they won’t be able to run administrative commands or do things like install software.

Google is running the program to reduce the risk of cyberattacks, according to internal materials. “Googlers are frequent targets of attacks,” one internal description viewed by CNBC stated. If a Google employee’s device is compromised, the attackers may have access to user data and infrastructure code, which could result in a major incident and undermine user trust, the description added.

Turning off most internet access ensures attackers cannot easily run arbitrary code remotely or grab data, the description explained.

The program comes as companies face increasingly sophisticated cyberattacks. Last week, Microsoft said Chinese intelligence hacked into company email accounts belonging to two dozen government agencies, including the State Department, in the U.S. and Western Europe in a “significant” breach. Google has been pursuing U.S. government contracts since launching a public sector division last year.

It also comes as Google, which is preparing a companywide rollout of various artificial intelligence tools, tries to boost its security. The company has also in recent months been striving harder to contain leaks. 

“Ensuring the safety of our products and users is one of our top priorities,” a Google spokesperson said in an emailed statement. “We routinely explore ways to strengthen our internal systems against…

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City Employees Call for Answers, Ongoing Ransomware Attack on Dallas – NBC 5 Dallas-Fort Worth

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City Employees Call for Answers, Ongoing Ransomware Attack on Dallas  NBC 5 Dallas-Fort Worth

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CommScope’s response to ransomware attack eludes employees

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Major U.S. network infrastructure firm CommScope has been reported by its employees to have not provided any updates on its recovery efforts more than a week after it confirmed having been impacted by …

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Attackers stole LastPass data by hacking an employee’s home computer

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LastPass says that a threat actor was able to steal corporate and customer data by hacking an employee’s personal computer and installing keylogger malware, which let them gain access to the company’s cloud storage. The update provides more information about how the series of hacks happened last year that resulted in the popular password manager’s source code and customer vault data being stolen by an unauthorized third party.

Last August, LastPass notified its users of a “security incident” in which an unauthorized third party used a compromised developer account to access the password manager’s source code and “some proprietary LastPass technical information.” The company later disclosed a second security breach in November, announcing that hackers had accessed a third-party cloud storage service used by the password manager and were able to “gain access to certain elements” of “customers’ information.”

On December 22nd, LastPass revealed that the hackers had used information from the first breach in August to access its systems during the second incident in November and that the attacker was able to copy a backup of partially encrypted customer vault data containing website URLs, usernames, and passwords. LastPass then advised its users to change all of their stored passwords as “an extra safety measure,” despite maintaining that the passwords were still secured by the account’s master password.

Now, LastPass has revealed the threat actor responsible for both security breaches was “actively engaged in a new series of reconnaissance, enumeration, and exfiltration activities” between August 12th and October 26th. During this time, the attacker stole valid credentials from a senior DevOps engineer to gain access to shared cloud storage containing the encryption keys for customer vault backups stored in Amazon S3 buckets. Using these stolen credentials made it difficult to distinguish between legitimate and suspicious activity.

It’s suspected the hacker accessed the private computer via Plex media software installed on the machine

Just four DevOps engineers had access to the decryption keys needed to access the cloud storage service. One of the…

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