Biometric | Breaking Cybersecurity News | The Hacker News

Taiwan's National Security Bureau (NSB) has warned that China-developed applications like RedNote (aka Xiaohongshu), Weibo, TikTok, WeChat, and Baidu Cloud pose security risks due to excessive data collection and data transfer to China. The alert comes following an inspection of these apps carried out in coordination with the Ministry of Justice Investigation Bureau (MJIB) and the Criminal Investigation Bureau (CIB) under the National Police Agency. "The results indicate the existence of security issues, including excessive data collection and privacy infringement," the NSB said . "The public is advised to exercise caution when choosing mobile apps." The agency said it evaluated the apps against 15 indicators spanning five broad categories: Personal data collection, excessive permission usage, data transmission and sharing, system information extraction, and biometric data access. According to the analysis, RedNote violated all 15 indicators, followed by W...

Imagine a world where you never have to remember another password. Seems like a dream come true for both end users and IT teams, right? But as the old saying goes, "If it sounds too good to be true, it probably is."  If your organization is like many, you may be contemplating a move to passwordless authentication. But the reality is that a passwordless security approach comes with its own set of pitfalls and perils. In this post, we'll discuss the real-world complexity of going passwordless and explore why strengthening your existing password protocols may be the simpler solution.  The appeal of passwordless authentication Password-related vulnerabilities pose a major threat to organizational security. According to research by  LastPass , a full 80% of data breaches stem from weak, reused, or compromised passwords. This sobering statistic highlights the appeal of passwordless systems, which offer a way to completely circumvent the risks associated with traditional pas...

The cybersecurity threat landscape has witnessed a dramatic and alarming rise in the average ransomware payment, an increase exceeding 500%. Sophos, a global leader in cybersecurity, revealed in its annual "State of Ransomware 2024" report that the average ransom payment has increased 500% in the last year with organizations that paid a ransom reporting an average payment of $2 million, up from $400,000 in 2023. Separately, RISK & INSURANCE, a leading media source for the insurance industry reported recently that in 2023 the median ransom demand soared to $20 million in 2023 from $1.4 million in 2022, and payment skyrocketed to $6.5 million in 2023 from $335,000 in 2022, much more than 500%. This shocking surge is a testament to the increasing sophistication of cyberattacks and the significant vulnerabilities inherent in outdated security methods. The most significant factor contributing to this trend is a broad reliance on twenty-year-old, legacy Multi-Factor Authentic...

Traditional perimeter-based security has become costly and ineffective. As a result, communications security between people, systems, and networks is more important than blocking access with firewalls.  On top of that, most cybersecurity risks are caused by just a few superusers – typically one out of 200 users.  There's a company aiming to fix the gap between traditional PAM and IdM solutions and secure your one out of 200 users –  SSH Communications Security.   Your Privileged Access Management (PAM) and Identity Management (IdM) should work hand in hand to secure your users' access and identities – regular users and privileged users alike. But traditional solutions struggle to achieve that.  Microsoft Entra manages all identities and basic-level access. With increasing criticality of targets and data, the session duration decreases, and additional protection is necessary. That's where SSH Communications Security helps Let's look at what organizations need...

Cybersecurity researchers have discovered an updated version of an Android banking malware called Chameleon that has expanded its targeting to include users in the U.K. and Italy. "Representing a restructured and enhanced iteration of its predecessor, this evolved Chameleon variant excels in executing Device Takeover (DTO) using the accessibility service, all while expanding its targeted region," Dutch mobile security firm ThreatFabric  said  in a report shared with The Hacker News. Chameleon was  previously documented  by Cyble in April 2023, noting that it had been used to single out users in Australia and Poland since at least January. Like other banking malware, it's known to abuse its permissions to Android's accessibility service to harvest sensitive data and conduct overlay attacks. The rogue apps containing the earlier version were hosted on phishing pages and found to impersonate genuine institutions in the countries, such as the Australian Taxation Offi...

Popular short-form video-sharing service TikTok quietly revised its privacy policy in the U.S., allowing it to automatically collect biometric information such as faceprints and voiceprints from the content its users post on the platform. The policy change, first spotted by TechCrunch , went into effect on June 2. TikTok users who reside in the European Economic Area (EEA), the U.K., Switzerland, and other geographies (excluding India) where the service operates are exempted from the changes. "We may collect biometric identifiers and biometric information as defined under U.S. laws, such as faceprints and voiceprints, from your User Content. Where required by law, we will seek any required permissions from you prior to any such collection," the ByteDance-owned company  said  in a newly introduced section called "Image and Audio Information." On top of this, the company's privacy policy also notes that it may collect information about "the nature of the...