When Mike Cypert got the call that utilities in remote Texas communities were being hacked, he raced across his office to unplug the computer that ran his city’s water system.
Hale Center is a dusty, cotton-growing burg of 2,000 about five hours drive northwest of Dallas. After the alert from a software vendor in January, Cypert, the city manager, said he found thousands of attempts to breach Hale Center’s firewall, some coming from an internet address that traced back to St. Petersburg, Russia.
https://spinsafe.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/1200x662.jpg6621200SecureTechhttps://spinsafe.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/01/SS-Logo.svgSecureTech2024-04-19 10:01:152024-04-19 10:01:15Tiny Texas City Repels Russia-Tied Hackers Eyeing Water System
A BRITISH satirical magazine has been sent death threats after printing a story saying Vladimir Putin has a tiny todger.
The Daily Squib published a “tongue in cheek” article suggesting the Russian leader invaded Ukraine because he has a “micro penis”.
10
The magazine claimed in a jokey article that Putin, pictured in 2017, has a tiny todgerCredit: AFP
10
Putin relaxes after fishing during the hunting and fishing trip in 2017Credit: Reuters
10
Putin taking part in training with Russia’s national judo team in 2019Credit: AFP
The editor, Aur Esenbel, claims writers at the 17-year-old site have since been told they would be stabbed, shot and run over for mocking the despot.
In a jokey editorial, “experts” said the debilitating impediment made Putin “constantly angry”.
It read: “You ever wonder why Putin is so angry and aggressive all the time?
“According to medical experts, it is because he has micropenis syndrome.
“It is common knowledge within the ranks that Putin’s penis measures 1.2cm in length even when erect.
“Psychologically, this impediment is presumed to affect his general nature as it is practically impossible to make love to a woman or carry out other functions normally.”
The story sparked fury from irate Russian readers, who vowed to murder the journalists involved.
In a string of terrifying website comments, reporters were told they would be shot, stabbed and run over for daring to mock the tyrant.
An investigation by The Daily Squib suggested the threats originated in Russia.
The magazine has since added additional security measures to its website and its writers no longer have direct email addresses to stop them being “harassed by overseas mobsters”.
Blow for the West as pro-Putin candidate elected as president in key Ukraine ally & Nato nation Slovakia
The Daily Squib was also targeted in three separate Denial-of-Service (DoS) attacks, which aim to cripple a website by overwhelming it with huge volumes of internet traffic.
Two of the attacks failed, but one was successful and took it offline for seven days.
Editor Aur Esenbel said: “Like all satirical news outlets, The Daily Squib is no stranger to criticism and the odd ‘strongly worded…
https://spinsafe.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/newspress-collage-he61j2q3g-1712929220774.jpg10801920SecureTechhttps://spinsafe.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/01/SS-Logo.svgSecureTech2024-04-13 10:00:112024-04-13 10:00:11Brit magazine sent death threats after joking that Vladimir Putin has tiny todger
Employees of the US Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency (ICE) abused law enforcement databases to snoop on their romantic partners, neighbors, and business associates, WIRED exclusively revealed this week. New data obtained through record requests show that hundreds of ICE staffers and contractors have faced investigations since 2016 for attempting to access medical, biometric, and location data without permission. The revelations raise further questions about the protections ICE places on people’s sensitive information.
Security researchers at ESET found old enterprise routers are filled with company secrets. After purchasing and analyzing old routers, the firm found many contained login details for company VPNs, hashed root administrator passwords, and details of who the previous owners were. The information would make it easy to impersonate the business that owned the router originally. Sticking with account security: The race to replace all your passwords with passkeys is entering a messy new phase. Adoption of the new technology faces challenges getting off the ground.
The supply chain breach of 3CX, a VoIP provider that was compromised by North Korean hackers, is coming into focus, and the attack appears to be more complex than initially believed. Google-owned security firm Mandiant said 3CX was initially compromised by a supply chain attack before its software was used to further spread malware.
View more
Also this week, it emerged that the notorious LockBit ransomware gang is developing malware that aims to encrypt Macs. To date, most ransomware has focused on machines running Windows or Linux, not devices made by Apple. If LockBit is successful, it could open up a new ransomware frontier—however, at the moment, the ransomware doesn’t appear to work.
https://spinsafe.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/04/Security-Roundup-Hacked-Cars-GettyImages-972301580.jpg13832074SecureTechhttps://spinsafe.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/01/SS-Logo.svgSecureTech2023-04-22 10:30:052023-04-22 10:30:05Criminals Are Using Tiny Devices to Hack and Steal Cars
While it’s possible that malware on your smartphone could record your calls, it’s an increasingly difficult technical proposition. Instead, researchers from Texas A&M University and colleagues have demonstrated that it’s possible to eavesdrop on phone calls by measuring the tiny vibrations of the ear speaker using a phone’s built-in accelerometers and then decoding that data remotely to determine what was said. They call the method EarSpy. From Security Week:
They conducted tests on the OnePlus 7T and the OnePlus 9 smartphones — both running Android — and found that significantly more data can be captured by the accelerometer from the ear speaker due to the stereo speakers present in these newer models compared to the older model OnePlus phones, which did not have stereo speakers.
The experiments conducted by the academic researchers analyzed the reverberation effect of ear speakers on the accelerometer by extracting time-frequency domain features and spectrograms. The analysis focused on gender recognition, speaker recognition, and speech recognition[…]
When it comes to actual speech, the accuracy was up to 56% for capturing digits spoken in a phone call.
https://spinsafe.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/12/shutterstock_302803502-scaled.jpg9001200SecureTechhttps://spinsafe.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/01/SS-Logo.svgSecureTech2022-12-30 17:30:062022-12-30 17:30:06Security researchers show how to eavesdrop on mobile phone calls by measuring the ear speaker’s tiny vibrations
