Tag Archive for: unique

Israeli firm allegedly behind unique hacking tool for Apple iPhones, Latest World News

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NEW YORK: A cyber surveillance company based in Israel developed a tool to break into Apple iPhones with a never-before-seen technique that has been in use since at least February, Internet security watchdog group Citizen Lab alleged on Monday.

The discovery is important because of the critical nature of the vulnerability, which requires no user interaction and affects all versions of Apple’s iOS, OSX, and watchOS, except for those updated on Monday.

The tool allegedly developed by the NSO Group defeats security systems designed by Apple in recent years. Apple said it fixed the vulnerability in Monday’s software update.

“After identifying the vulnerability used by this exploit for iMessage, Apple rapidly developed and deployed a fix in iOS 14.8 to protect our users,” said Mr Ivan Krstic, head of Apple Security Engineering and Architecture.

“Attacks like the ones described are highly sophisticated, cost millions of dollars to develop, often have a short shelf life, and are used to target specific individuals. While that means they are not a threat to the overwhelming majority of our users, we continue to work tirelessly to defend all our customers…” he added.

NSO did not confirm or deny that it was behind the technique, saying only that it would “continue to provide intelligence and law enforcement agencies around the world with life-saving technologies to fight terror and crime”. – REUTERS

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What’s unique about leak of 533 million Facebook accounts, how are Indian users affected and should you also be worried

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Earlier this year, it emerged that personal information of over 533 million Facebook users from 106 countries had been leaked online. In January, Alon Gal, CTO of cyber intelligence firm Hudson Rock, first reported that a Telegram bot was being used to sell phone numbers for free.



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The bot was using a vulnerability in a Facebook feature which allowed phone numbers linked to every account to be accessed for free.

This is not the first time that a data leak from Facebook has been reported — there have been numerous such instances in the past, with the most controversial among them in recent memory being the Cambridge Analytica scandal in 2018 when it was reported that a political consulting and strategic communications firm had collected personal information of around 87 million people through a personality quiz app that many had accessed through Facebook.

So, why is this data breach making news? What is unique about it and what are the potential implications? We explain.

What is the nature of the data that was compromised and how was it leaked?

The leaked data comprises personal information such as names, Facebook ID, addresses, phone numbers, email addresses, names of workplaces, date of birth, date of account creation, relationship status and bio. The data set did not include any financial information or passwords.

The data was obtained through scraping whereby all the information was extracted by exploiting a vulnerability in Facebook’s contact importer feature.

Mike Clark, Product Management Director at Facebook, has stated in a blog post that the data was not stolen by hacking into its system but by scraping its platform.

As the blog post states, scraping is a common tactic that often relies on automated software to lift public information from the internet. While…

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This new ransomware is targeting Windows and Linux PCs with a ‘unique’ attack – ZDNet

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  1. This new ransomware is targeting Windows and Linux PCs with a ‘unique’ attack  ZDNet
  2. New ‘Tycoon’ Ransomware Strain Targets Windows, Linux  Dark Reading
  3. New Tycoon ransomware leverages JIMAGE files, steals PII, encrypts Linux and Windows systems  SC Magazine
  4. New Tycoon ransomware targets both Windows and Linux systems  BleepingComputer
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