Tag Archive for: Surprisingly

Surprisingly, A Massive And Ongoing Apple Privacy Breach Is Thanks To Apple’s Security Focus

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Privacy and security are not the same thing, although they’re related. Privacy is about your data staying yours, and not being shared or transmitted without your knowledge. Security is about your computer or device not getting compromised, infected, or hacked.

Sometimes the two are at odds.

“Macs, by default, send a tremendous amount of data to Apple,” security researcher and self-described hacker Jeffrey Paul told me recently on the TechFirst podcast, focusing on a Mac technology called Gatekeeper. “Gatekeeper … uses a system called OCSP which checks on each app launch, whether or not the app that you’re launching is malware or is known to be malware to Apple. And it does that using the network … but these checks were being transmitted unencrypted.”

To break it down: Apple created a system called Gatekeeper, which is designed to ensure that only safe software runs on your Mac. It does that by phoning home to Apple fairly regularly with data on the developer of the apps that you are using. The goal: checking whether they are approved, known good developers who have not released spam or malware.

That’s security.

Unfortunately, the makers of Gatekeeper used internet-standard protocols when implementing this security feature, and at the time, that meant sending data unencrypted. Since most developers on the Mac have only a single app, Paul says, that’s as good as sending up a flare with with data on what apps you’re using. Not only was the data sent unencrypted, Gatekeeper intentionally bypasses VPNs, or virtual private networks, which means you can’t hide your activity even if you work fairly hard to.

That’s privacy — or lack thereof.

It’s hard to say how many users it affects, but it’s likely over 100 million. Apple CEO Tim Cook announced that there were more than 100 million active Macs worldwide in late 2018. Apple shipped almost 18 million Macs in 2019, and probably more than that in 2020, as laptop sales have jumped due to a rise in working from home offices. All Mac owners running Mac OS X Catalina (released in 2019) or later are using Gatekeeper, whether they…

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Initial signs point to surprisingly hack-free election, but risks remain

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Three and a half years of election security upgrades, training and government information sharing appeared to pay off on Election Day as voting unfolded with the usual technical glitches but no evidence of successful cyberattacks.



a person standing next to a suitcase: A worker returns voting machines to storage at the Fulton County election preparation center n Atlanta.

© AP Photo/John Bazemore
A worker returns voting machines to storage at the Fulton County election preparation center n Atlanta.

The electronic poll books used to check in voters failed in several counties, one results reporting website suffered a brief outage and the internet failed in the election office of one of Florida’s most important counties. But as of Wednesday morning, there is no evidence that hackers were responsible for those incidents or any other disruptive activities, despite months of preelection warnings that Russian cyber operators were probing potential targets throughout the U.S. political system.

Federal officials and independent observers attributed the thus-far hack-free election to a successful partnership with state and local officials, who reported suspicious activity and enacted backup procedures when technology failed.

“This coordination is the most unheralded intergovernmental success story,” said Matthew Weil, the director of the Bipartisan Policy Center’s Elections Project. “Voters have had their confidence shaken in the elections process this year, but it is more secure and professional than at any point in our history.”

The security of the election machinery across U.S. counties and states remains far less than ideal in much of country, and breakdowns in newly purchased devices contributed to chaos and long lines during some of this year’s presidential primaries. But government leaders praised Americans for not overreacting to glitches or assuming the worst about them, saying voters seemed to recognize what officials have said for years: that foreign adversaries will do whatever it takes to undermine confidence in U.S. elections, and that jumping to conclusions does that work for them.

Covert military action may also have helped knock adversaries off balance. In recent weeks, according to The Washington Post, U.S. Cyber Command and the National Security Agency retaliated against Iran for the…

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Av-Test Experts Find Surprisingly Strong Performance Among Windows 10 Internet Security Suites – Digital Information World

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Av-Test Experts Find Surprisingly Strong Performance Among Windows 10 Internet Security Suites  Digital Information World
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This Clever MacBook Touchscreen Hack Works Surprisingly Well Considering It Costs $1

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To date, Apple’s mostly useless Touch Bar is the closest the company has ever come to selling a touchscreen Mac. But if you’ve got a spare … all by yourself using this wonderfully clever hack. Even better, Project Sistine (as Anish Athalye and …
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