Tag Archive for: Legend

How 3 Million ‘Hacked’ Toothbrushes Became a Cyber Urban Legend

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Documents exclusively obtained by WIRED reveal that AI surveillance software tracked thousands of people using the London Underground to detect crime or unsafe situations. The machine learning software scoured live CCTV footage to spot aggressive behavior, weapons being brandished, and people dodging fares. The documents also detail errors made during the trial—for instance, mistakenly identifying children walking with their parents as fare evaders.

Meanwhile, on Wednesday, cryptocurrency tracing firm Chainalysis published a report finding ransomware payments in 2023 reached over $1.1 billion, the highest annual total ever recorded. The record-breaking sum of extorted funds was due to two things: the high number of ransomware attacks and the amount of money that hackers were demanding from victims, many of whom were targeted specifically for their ability to pay and their inability to sustain a prolonged disruption of services.

A tech company, notorious for keeping websites with far-right and other extreme content online, was bought last year by a secretive company whose business is to help set up businesses, often in ways that keep details of those companies secret, WIRED reported on Thursday. Registered Agents Inc.’s acquisition of Epik may allow the shadowy company to provide its customers with another layer of anonymity.

For the past month, senior security reporter Matt Burgess has been transitioning away from using passwords to log in to his hundreds of online accounts. Instead, he’s using passkeys, a more secure form of authentication that uses generated codes stored on your device to log in to websites and apps using a biometric identifier like a fingerprint, face scan, or PIN. When it works, it’s seamless and secure. When it doesn’t, it’s a mess.

WhatsApp is developing a feature to allow its users to message across apps, all while maintaining its secure end-to-end encryption. In theory, the move would allow users to chat with people on WhatsApp using apps like Signal or Telegram. It’s unclear which companies, if any, will link their services with WhatsApp.

And there’s more. Each week, we highlight the news we didn’t cover in-depth ourselves. Click on the…

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Hacking legend Kevin Mitnick dies aged 59 | Information Age

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Kevin Mitnick at a 2010 conference. Image: Campus Party México/Wikimedia, By Campus Party México – https://www.flickr.com/photos/campuspartymexico/4889638678/, CC BY 2.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=98590254

Kevin David Mitnick, the social engineer, hacker and cybersecurity trailblazer died last week aged 59.

Mitnick, who was described as a ‘computer terrorist’ by the US Justice Department during their hunt for him in the early 1990s, served two jail sentences for breaching computer systems in 1988 and 1999 before becoming a high profile cybersecurity expert.

In his biography, Mitnick described his curiosity as a driving force, saying: “All of this was really to satisfy my own curiosity, see what I could do, and find out secret information about operating systems, cell phones, and anything else that stirred my curiosity.”

His lifetime obsession with exploring systems and technology started with him figuring out the paper transfer systems on the 1970s Los Angeles transit network and his understanding of social engineering was established with his coaxing where to buy the required ticket punch from a friendly bus driver.

During his high school years he went on to break into the DEC computer systems and, like many other hackers before him, exploit the analogue telephone network through whistles and tones.

His convictions came after his breaking into bigger targets, with his first conviction coming after copying DEC’s software and his period on the run after breaching parole and breaking into AT&T’s voicemail system.

During his second stint in prison, he became the focus of the ‘Free Kevin’ movement which was one the early campaigns of the then nascent world wide web.

The Free Kevin campaign was fuelled by some of the more outlandish claims about his abilities including the assertion he could start a nuclear war through whistling into the NORAD (North American Aerospace Defense) modems.

Following his release after five years in prison, he embarked on a career as a white hat hacker and security consultant, he also joined the public speaker circuit and visited Australia a number of times, including a 2016 trip where he claimed that, in…

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China’s Legend Star closes fourth RMB fund at $119m

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Legend Star, an early-stage focused investment firm set up by Lenovo Holdings, has closed its fourth RMB-denominated fund at 800 million yuan ($119 million) in September, per its announcement on Monday.   

The fund received 25 per cent of the corpus from its parent company Lenovo Holdings while the rest was secured from tech funds of funds (FOFs), state-owned groups and private-owned enterprises.

Nearly 90 per cent of its existing limited partners, who invested in the predecessor, has re-upped in the latest vehicle, Legend Star said on WeChat. 

Legend Star will target investments in early-stage startups in advanced technology, healthcare and TMT sectors. Within tech, it looks at sub-sectors such as robotics, digital transformation of traditional industries, biotech, medical equipment, semiconductors, culture and entertainment, among others.

The latest fund has already made 16 investments as of September 30, 2020. Legend Star had along with other investors recently backed the 100 million yuan ($14 million) Series A round for Beijing-based biotech firm QL Biopharm. 

Legend Star manages as many as seven RMB funds amounting to 3.5 billion yuan ($522 million). It has so far invested in over 300 startups. Some of its previous investments include chip developer Picocom, digital finance manager Credit Life, internet security service provider Lanxiang Zhilian, biotech firm HELP Therapeutics, and Changmugu.  

Legend Star had raised a similar-sized third RMB fund, as its successor, back in 2018 from a slew of investors including the Chinese Academy of Sciences Holdings, VMS Investment, CreditEase and Hony Horizon Fund. 

Other recent RMB funds that hit their closing include Source Code Capital that raised its fourth RMB fund at 3.8 billion yuan ($567 million) and Legend Capital’s Fund VIII at a hard cap of $500 million.

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Computer Security Legend Mudge Leaves DARPA for Google Job – All Things Digital

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Computer Security Legend Mudge Leaves DARPA for Google Job
All Things Digital
based hacking group The L0pht, a sort of unofficial think tank for hackers whose members at the time included people who went on to distinguished careers in computer security, like Chris Wysopal, Joe Grand, and Christien Rioux. He was also a member of …

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