Tag Archive for: virtual

Global Virtual Private Network (VPN) Market to Reach US$77.1 Billion by the Year 2026

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Abstract: What`s New for 2022? -Global competitiveness and key competitor percentage market shares. -Market presence across multiple geographies – Strong/Active/Niche/Trivial.

New York, June 20, 2022 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) — Reportlinker.com announces the release of the report “Global Virtual Private Network (VPN) Industry” – https://www.reportlinker.com/p05817648/?utm_source=GNW
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Global Virtual Private Network (VPN) Market to Reach US$77.1 Billion by the Year 2026

Virtual Private Network or VPN is an encrypted private network that is extended over a public network. Global market for VPN networks is driven primarily by the growing adoption private networks in various industries. With the Internet emerging as the platform for conducting business activities in various industry sectors, the risk of cyberbreaches and data thefts is on the rise. The need to safeguard business data and transactions is thus driving enterprises towards highly secure technologies, thus presenting significant growth opportunities for the VPN market. Increasing incidences of data theft, both financial and personal information, coupled with compromised web security are propelling the need for VPN to enable a safe, encrypted connection. The growing number of cases of cyberattacks is another major factor that urges many enterprises to move to VPN technology. In today`s unsafe cyber environment, more and more industry verticals are adopting VPN services to ensure complete protection of their data while in transmission. With the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic impacting business operations, enterprises are increasingly turning towards Internet-based services for business continuity purposes. This is consequently driving adoption and expansion of VPNs. The enterprise mobility trend and the need for providing ubiquitous access to company networks especially for remote workforce is also enhancing adoption of VPNs.

Amid the COVID-19 crisis, the global market for Virtual Private Network (VPN) estimated at US$32.2 Billion in the year 2020, is projected to…

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Rutgers Professor Creates App to Secure Virtual Assistants from Hacking

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WearID compares the vibration and audible patterns of speech to authenticate users

Before virtual assistants such as Amazon’s Alexa and Google Assistant became ubiquitous household technology, thieves needed to gain physical access into a home to inflict harm. Now all they need is their voice.

Artificial intelligence-powered voice assistants have a not-so-secret vulnerability: They can be hacked with audible cues, ambient noise or even ultrasound, leaving sensitive personal information such as credit card numbers and passwords open to theft. Yingying Chen, a Rutgers professor of electrical and computer engineering, created an application called WearID to address these exploits.

“We’re a long way away from The Shining, when it took brute force to hurt someone,” Chen said. “In the digital age you can dissect people’s lives and access their most important information simply by speaking from behind a closed door.”  

Since 2020, Chen and her colleagues Yan Wang at Temple University and Nitesh Saxena at Texas A&M University have been developing a user-authentication framework that captures human voice patterns in the vibration domain and uses them as an identity token to verify spoken commands given to a virtual assistant.

The solution, WearID, works like this: When someone issues a command to a voice assistant, the WearID app, which is installed on the user’s smartphone or wearable device, uses the device’s accelerometer to capture the vibration characteristics of the person speaking and compare them with the audio captured by the voice assistant’s microphone.

If a legitimate user has given the command, the spectral pattern between the vibration and audio domains will be similar. If the pattern doesn’t match, the voice assistant will ignore the prompt.

Chen is working with Rutgers to patent the technology and with Silicon Valley industry leaders to help bring WearID to market. She hopes to have the app available for download sometime next year.

“Because this is a software solution that requires no backend hardware, it should be straightforward to deploy,” she said.

“As internet-connected devices rise in popularity and voice prompts…

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Meta Ventures into Virtual Currency with “Zuck Bucks”; Sky Mavis Raises $150m Following DeFi Hack

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In today’s ExchangeWire news digest: Meta ventures into virtual currency with the development of “Zuck Bucks” and NFTs; Sky Mavis raises USD$150m (£114.7m) just weeks after losing USD$615m (£469m) to crypto hackers; and JD.com founder, Richard Liu, steps down as its chief executive.

 

Meta explores creating virtual “Zuck Bucks”

Facebook-parent Meta has outlined plans to introduce virtual currency and lending services to its apps. Led by founder and chief executive,  Mark Zuckerberg, the company, which also owns Instagram and Whatsapp, is venturing into alternative revenue streams and features to bolster its digital presence. The move comes just months after the collapse of Facebook’s project to launch a cryptocurrency, which had been developed over a period of almost 3 years.

Meta Financial Technologies, the financial arm of Facebook, has been looking into the potential creation of a virtual currency for use in the metaverse. Referred to as “Zuck Bucks” by employees, the currency is unlikely to be blockchain based and will instead take the form of in-app tokens similar to those used in gaming apps, reports the Financial Times.

Meta is also believed to be exploring the creation of “social tokens” or “reputation tokens” to reward users on the platform, in addition to developing “creator coins”, which could be associated with influencers and notable content creators on Instagram.

Aside from its ventures into virtual currency, Meta is also reportedly in the very early stages of exploring traditional financial services, such as helping to provide small business loans at attractive rates. The company’s plans to integrate non-fungible tokens (NFTs) into its apps are said to be more developed, with Mark Zuckerberg confirming that Instagram would soon support NFTs, and an internal memo from Meta outlining a pilot to share and post NFTs on Facebook to launch in May this year.

Meta’s drive towards virtual currency follows months of legal troubles and uncertainty for the big tech giant. In February, Meta lost over USD£220bn (£168.2bn) of its market valuation following the news that users were leaving its apps for competitor platforms, such as short-form video app…

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Attackers Are Using Log4Shell Vulnerability to Deliver Backdoors to Virtual Servers

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Internet security firm Sophos has released findings on how attackers are using the Log4Shell vulnerability to deliver backdoors and profiling scripts to unpatched VMware Horizon servers, paving the way for persistent access and future ransomware attacks.

A new technical paper, “Horde of Miner Bots and Backdoors Leveraged Log4J to Attack VMware Horizon Servers,” details the tools and techniques used to compromise the servers and deliver three different backdoors and four cryptominers.

The backdoors are possibly delivered by Initial Access Brokers.

Log4Shell is a remote code execution vulnerability in the Java logging component, Apache Log4J, which is embedded in hundreds of software products. It was reported and patched in December 2021. 

“Widely used applications such as VMware Horizon that are exposed to the internet and need to be manually updated, are particularly vulnerable to exploitation at scale,” said Sean Gallagher, senior security researcher at Sophos. “Sophos detections reveal waves of attacks targeting Horizon servers, starting in January, and delivering a range of backdoors and cryptominers to unpatched servers, as well as scripts to collect some device information.

Sophos believes that some of the backdoors may be delivered by Initial Access Brokers looking to secure persistent remote access to a high value target that they can sell on to other attackers, such as ransomware operators.”

The multiple attack payloads Sophos detected using Log4Shell to target vulnerable Horizon servers include:

  • Two legitimate remote monitoring and management tools, Atera agent and Splashtop Streamer, likely intended for malicious use as backdoors
  • The malicious Sliver backdoor 
  • The cryptominers z0Miner, JavaX miner, Jin and Mimu
  • Several PowerShell-based reverse shells that collect device and backup information

Sophos’ analysis revealed that Sliver is sometimes delivered together with Atera and PowerShell profiling scripts and is used to deliver the Jin and Mimu variants of the XMrig Monero miner botnet. 

According to Sophos, the attackers are using several different approaches to infect targets. While some of…

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