Tag Archive for: Worried

Hackers are locking dicks in chastity cages, and it’s got security experts worried – Hack

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Imagine your phone buzzing. It’s a whatsapp from a number you don’t know.

Ok, weird, probably a scammer, but you take a look.

It’s a stranger, demanding one thousand dollars in bitcoin to release your dick from a hardened steel cage.

It sounds like something out of Black Mirror, but it is very real.

And it is prompting some in the adult industry to call for better safety standards from manufacturers, arguing they are putting people’s bodies at risk.

Want to lock your penis in a cage? There’s an app for that.

Chastity cages are not super mainstream sex toys, but they are pretty common in the BDSM community.

They largely do what they promise – lock your penis in a cage, to prevent you masturbating, having sex, or even getting a full erection.

Like a lot of other sex toys, they are going online.

The ‘Cellmate’ does not rely on an old-fashioned padlock and key, but rather uses an electronic key – meaning the wearer can hand control to anyone, anywhere, through an app.

It recently attracted attention after it was revealed hackers were able to gain access to people’s devices through the app, and lock them.

They were contacting users, and demanding a ransom of around A$1000 in bitcoin.

Terrifyingly, the device doesn’t have any kind of emergency release mechanism. Which led to reports of some people trying to use bolt cutters to get it off.

But thankfully, it seems a lot of the people hacked were not wearing the device at the time it was hacked and locked.

The manufacturer, Qiui, published a video demonstrating how to unlock the device with a screwdriver.

The company told Hack that they’ve updated the security features in version 3.0 of the app.

‘I like to be the boss in the bedroom, not the hacker’

Internet-connected sex toys are not new. In fact, they are really popular – and a global pandemic has helped them boom.

They range from simple toys like vibrators that can be remotely controlled online, to more intense toys like the Cellmate.

With many…

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Should you be worried about someone hacking your Peloton?

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(WTNH) — The popularity of at-home exercise has exploded during this pandemic. Sales of Peloton spin bikes have skyrocketed, but could it open you up to someone eavesdropping or even spying on you? Let’s take a look to see if you should be sweating your privacy.

When President Joe Biden took the oath of office on Jan. 20, 2021, he, his wife, and his dogs were welcomed into the White House. But one of his possessions was not. The president rides a Peloton bike for exercise and because the bike is equipped with a big Android tablet complete with a camera and a microphone that connect to the internet, it was deemed a White House security risk.

But the risks don’t stop at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue.

Dr. Ibrahim Baggili, a cybersecurity expert at the University of New Haven, says it is possible for hackers to access the camera and microphone on exercise equipment like a Peloton.

“We teach a whole class on how to do this at our university,” says Dr. Baggili.

But there are even bigger dangers, like hacking heart monitors to make you think you are having a heart problem or worse.

“If you are running on a treadmill and somebody is capable of stopping that treadmill while you are running really fast. Now you can physically harm an individual,” he says.

It is possible for these bikes to be hacked from the outside. But it turns out bike hacking is a two-way street. A growing number of home users are hacking their own bikes.

Videos on YouTube show home users how to hack their Peloton bikes. Some teach you how you can watch something else on that screen, including Netflix.

And that’s not all. Some people are hacking their bikes to make it look like they worked out harder than they really did and shoot to the top of the class.

But for a lot of Peloton lovers like school teacher Marlene Parker from Wolcott, fear of hackers won’t get in the way of a great workout.

“I’m not afraid.  I don’t think anyone is listening,” Marlene Parker said. “And the most that they would be listening to is like ‘what’s for dinner?’ or homework assignments with my kids.”

We reached out to Peloton, and they said their products have strong…

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Should we be worried about self-learning malware?

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Could we be just a few years away from self-learning malware being a credible threat to businesses? According to CCS Insight, the answer is yes. In its predictions for 2021 and beyond, the analyst firm forecast that self-learning malware will cause a major security breach on or before 2024.

Self-learning, adaptive malware isn’t something new, but to date has been largely confined to lab environments and hackathons. Some of the earliest examples of self-propagating malware were able to ‘learn’ about their environment. 

For example, the Morris Worm of 1988 learnt of other computers to compromise from the systems that it infected, notes Martin Lee, a member of the Institution of Engineering and Technology’s (IET) Cybersecurity and Safety Committee and a Cisco employee.

“It was also aware if it was re-infecting a system that had already been infected, and would refuse to run, most of the time, if it learnt another copy of itself was already present.”

“In more recent years we’ve seen malware such as Olympic Destroyer discover the usernames and passwords on a system and append these to its own source code in order to increase the efficiency of subsequent attempts to compromise systems,” he continues. “By adding its own source code as it jumps between systems, it can be thought of as memorising credentials to help in its own success.”

The difference between automation and evolution

Anna Chung, a principal researcher at Unit 42 – Palo Alto Network’s global threat intelligence team – notes that it’s important to highlight the differences between automated hacking tools and AI or self-learning malware, however. “There are many automated hacking tools in the world. Their function is to execute specific and repetitive tasks based on pre-set rules, but they cannot evolve by themselves.”

“Most threats are controlled and guided by actors based on what information is gleaned and relayed to them. There is little evidence that malware is ‘self-learning’,” adds her colleague Alex Hinchliffe, threat intelligence analyst. 

He says the closest thing Unit 42’s seen to this concept was Stuxnet; not from an AI point of view, but from an autonomous software…

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Should Nigerians be Worried About the Army’s Crocodile Smile Cyberwarfare?

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The Nigerian Army on Tuesday commenced a nationwide Cyber-warfare exercise tagged Crocodile Smile VI. According to the statement released, Crocodile Smile is an exercise designed to identify, track and counter negative propaganda on social media.

The cyber warfare exercise comes at a time when the continued protest against Police brutality is making waves across the country. Owing to the fact that the #EndSARS protests started online before growing into a strong offline movement, many feared that the exercise is a counter to stop online protests.

#EndSARS protest, Lagos
#EndSARS protest, Lagos

The army has however revealed that the current exercise has nothing to do with the protest. According to the army spokesman, the Exercise Crocodile Smile is a yearly exercise that holds from October to December and has nothing to do with the protest.

“To now insinuate that it is an exercise meant to stifle the ongoing EndSARS protest is, to say the least highly misinformed. Exercise Crocodile Smile (VI) has nothing to do with the ongoing protest and the NA has never been involved in the ongoing protest in any form whatsoever.”

The cyber warfare command is composed of 150 ICT specially trained officers and men drawn from all the Corps and Services in the Nigerian Army.

According to the army, the Command has acquired state of the art technical equipment, servers have been procured and experts from IBM have configured them to track, monitor and carry out ‘Distributed Denial of Service’ to terrorist and subversive elements.

It will also monitor the Army’s networks and advise Field Commanders on how to use the newly procured computer-based weapons systems recently installed to the Theatre of Operations.

According to the Nigerian Army, this is the first-ever Cyberwarfare exercise to be conducted in the history of the African Armed Forces.

Suggested read: Security Crisis Following #LekkiMassacre May Affect Telcos as MTN Subscribers Suffer Outage in Lagos

Cyber Warfare

It’s no longer news that the digital world has brought about a new type of danger – cyberwar. The new war is fought with the power of technology, attacking nation’s computers or information networks to…

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