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Google has revealed that it took down 1,320 YouTube channels and 1,177 Blogger blogs as part of a coordinated influence operation connected to the People's Republic of China (PRC). "The coordinated inauthentic network uploaded content in Chinese and English about China and U.S. foreign affairs," Google Threat Analysis Group (TAG) researcher Billy Leonard said in the company's quarterly bulletin released last week. The tech giant said it also terminated Ads, AdSense, and Blogger accounts linked to two coordinated influence operations with ties to Indonesia that shared content supportive of the ruling party in the country. Another big cluster dismantled by Google involved a network of 378 YouTube channels that it said originated from a Russian consulting firm and disseminated content that projected Russia in a favorable light and denigrated Ukraine and the West. The company further terminated one AdSense account and blocked 10 domains from showing up in Google News an

Google is urging third-party Android app developers to incorporate generative artificial intelligence (GenAI) features in a responsible manner. The new guidance from the search and advertising giant is an effort to combat problematic content, including sexual content and hate speech, created through such tools. To that end, apps that generate content using AI must ensure they don't create Restricted Content , have a mechanism for users to report or flag offensive information , and market them in a manner that accurately represents the app's capabilities. App developers are also being recommended to rigorously test their AI models to ensure they respect user safety and privacy. "Be sure to test your apps across various user scenarios and safeguard them against prompts that could manipulate your generative AI feature to create harmful or offensive content," Prabhat Sharma, director of trust and safety for Google Play, Android, and Chrome, said . The development com

As a vCISO, you are responsible for your client's cybersecurity strategy and risk governance. This incorporates multiple disciplines, from research to execution to reporting. Recently, we published a comprehensive playbook for vCISOs, "Your First 100 Days as a vCISO – 5 Steps to Success" , which covers all the phases entailed in launching a successful vCISO engagement, along with recommended actions to take, and step-by-step examples.  Following the success of the playbook and the requests that have come in from the MSP/MSSP community, we decided to drill down into specific parts of vCISO reporting and provide more color and examples. In this article, we focus on how to create compelling narratives within a report, which has a significant impact on the overall MSP/MSSP value proposition.  This article brings the highlights of a recent guided workshop we held, covering what makes a successful report and how it can be used to enhance engagement with your cyber security clients.

European Police Chiefs said that the complementary partnership between law enforcement agencies and the technology industry is at risk due to end-to-end encryption (E2EE). They called on the industry and governments to take urgent action to ensure public safety across social media platforms. "Privacy measures currently being rolled out, such as end-to-end encryption, will stop tech companies from seeing any offending that occurs on their platforms," Europol  said . "It will also stop law enforcement's ability to obtain and use this evidence in investigations to prevent and prosecute the most serious crimes such as child sexual abuse, human trafficking, drug smuggling, homicides, economic crime, and terrorism offenses." The idea that E2EE protections could stymie law enforcement is often referred to as the  "going dark" problem , triggering concerns it could create  new obstacles  to gather evidence of nefarious activity. The development comes ag

In June 2017, a  study  of more than 3,000 Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) students  published  by the National Bureau for Economic Research (NBER) found that 98% of them were willing to give away their friends' email addresses in exchange for free pizza. "Whereas people say they care about privacy, they are willing to relinquish private data quite easily when incentivized to do so," the research said, pointing out a what's called the privacy paradox. Now, nearly seven years later, Telegram has introduced a new feature that gives some users a free  premium membership  in exchange for allowing the popular messaging app to use their phone numbers as a relay for sending one-time passwords (OTPs) to other users who are attempting to sign in to the platform. The feature, called Peer-to-Peer Login (P2PL), is currently being tested in selected countries for Android users of Telegram. It was first spotted by  tginfo  in February 2024 (via  @AssembleDebug ). A

Meta has offered details on how it intends to implement interoperability in WhatsApp and Messenger with third-party messaging services as the Digital Markets Act (DMA) went into effect in the European Union. "This allows users of third-party providers who choose to enable interoperability (interop) to send and receive messages with opted-in users of either Messenger or WhatsApp – both designated by the European Commission (EC) as being required to independently provide interoperability to third-party messaging services," Meta's Dick Brouwer  said . DMA, which officially  became enforceable  on March 7, 2024, requires companies in gatekeeper positions – Apple, Alphabet, Meta, Amazon, Microsoft, and ByteDance – to meet certain obligations as part of the European Commission's efforts to clamp down on anti-competitive practices from tech players, level the playing field, as well as compel them to open some of their services to competitors. As part of its efforts to comply with the lan

A U.S. judge has ordered NSO Group to hand over its source code for  Pegasus  and other remote access trojans to Meta as part of the social media giant's ongoing litigation against the Israeli spyware vendor. The decision marks a major legal victory for Meta, which  filed the lawsuit  in October 2019 for using its infrastructure to  distribute the spyware  to approximately 1,400 mobile devices between April and May. This also  included  two dozen Indian activists and journalists. These attacks leveraged a then zero-day flaw in the instant messaging app ( CVE-2019-3568 , CVSS score: 9.8), a critical  buffer overflow bug  in the voice call functionality, to deliver Pegasus by merely placing a call, even in scenarios where the calls were left unanswered. In addition, the attack chain included steps to erase the incoming call information from the logs in an attempt to sidestep detection. Court documents released late last month show that NSO Group has been asked to "produce

Meta Platforms said it took a series of steps to curtail malicious activity from eight different firms based in Italy, Spain, and the United Arab Emirates (U.A.E.) operating in the surveillance-for-hire industry. The findings are part of its  Adversarial Threat Report  for the fourth quarter of 2023. The spyware targeted iOS, Android, and Windows devices. "Their various malware included capabilities to collect and access device information, location, photos and media, contacts, calendar, email, SMS, social media, and messaging apps, and enable microphone,camera, and screenshot functionality," the company said. The eight companies are Cy4Gate/ELT Group, RCS Labs, IPS Intelligence, Variston IT, TrueL IT, Protect Electronic Systems, Negg Group, and Mollitiam Industries. These firms, per Meta, also engaged in scraping, social engineering, and phishing activity that targeted a wide range of platforms such as Facebook, Instagram, X (formerly Twitter), YouTube, Skype, GitHub, R

Meta has officially begun to  roll out  support for end-to-end encryption (E2EE) in Messenger for personal calls and one-to-one personal messages by default in what it called the "most significant milestone yet." "This isn't a routine security update: we rebuilt the app from the ground up, in close consultation with privacy and safety experts," Loredana Crisan, vice president of Messenger at Meta,  said  in a post shared on X (formerly Twitter). CEO Mark Zuckerberg, who announced a "privacy-focused vision for social networking" back in 2019,  said  the update comes "after years of work" redesigning the platform. It's worth noting that E2EE for group messaging in Messenger is still in the testing phase. Encrypted chats were first introduced as an opt-in feature called "secret conversations" in Messenger in 2016. Meta's Instagram also has  support for E2EE  for messages and calls but it's "only available in some

Meta on Monday announced plans to offer an ad-free option to access Facebook and Instagram for users in the European Union (EU), European Economic Area (EEA), and Switzerland to comply with "evolving" data protection regulations in the region. The ad-free subscription, which costs €9.99/month on the web or €12.99/month on iOS and Android, is expected to be officially available starting next month. The company's proposal for a subscription version of its service was  first reported  by The Wall Street Journal earlier this month. "In November, we will be offering people who use Facebook or Instagram and reside in these regions the choice to continue using these personalized services for free with ads, or subscribe to stop seeing ads," the company  said . "While people are subscribed, their information will not be used for ads." While the fee covers all linked accounts for a user, beginning March 1, 2024, the company plans to levy an additional fee

Meta has disclosed that it disrupted two of the largest known covert influence operations in the world from China and Russia, blocking thousands of accounts and pages across its platform. "It targeted more than 50 apps, including Facebook, Instagram, X (formerly Twitter), YouTube, TikTok, Reddit, Pinterest, Medium, Blogspot, LiveJournal, VKontakte, Vimeo, and dozens of smaller platforms and forums," Guy Rosen, chief information security officer at Meta, said last week, describing the Chinese disinformation group. The network, which included 7,704 Facebook accounts, 954 Pages, 15 Groups and 15 Instagram accounts, is said to have been run by "geographically dispersed operators" across China, posting content about China and its province Xinjiang, criticism of the U.S, Western foreign policies, and critics of the Chinese government. Central to the activity is the sharing of spammy links, the origins of which trace back to a cluster named Spamouflage (aka DRAGONBRIDGE ) that has been

Meta has once again reaffirmed its plans to roll out support for end-to-end encryption ( E2EE ) by default for one-to-one friends and family chats on Messenger by the end of the year. As part of that effort, the social media giant said it's upgrading "millions more people's chats" effective August 22, 2023, exactly seven months after it  started gradually expanding the feature  to more users in January 2023. The changes are part of CEO Mark Zuckerberg's "privacy-focused vision for social networking" that was announced in 2019, although it has since encountered significant technical challenges, causing it to  delay its plans  by a year. "Like many messaging services, Messenger and Instagram DMs were originally designed to function via servers," Timothy Buck, product manager for Messenger,  said . "Meta's servers act as the gateway between the message sender and receiver, what we call the clients." However, the addition of an

Instagram Threads, the upcoming Twitter competitor from Meta, will not be launched in the European Union due to privacy concerns, according to Ireland's Data Protection Commission (DPC). The development was  reported  by the Irish Independent, which said the watchdog has been in contact with the social media giant about the new product and confirmed the release won't extend to the E.U. "at this point." Threads  is Meta's answer to Twitter that's set for launch on July 6, 2023. It's billed as a "text-based conversation app" that allows Instagram users to "discuss everything from the topics you care about today to what'll be trending tomorrow." It also enables users to follow the same accounts they already follow on Instagram. A listing for the app has already appeared in the  Apple App Store  and  Google Play Store , although it's yet to be available for download. The " App Privacy " section on the App Store indic

Meta's WhatsApp has rolled out updates to its proxy feature, allowing more flexibility in the kind of content that can be shared in conversations. This includes the ability to send and receive images, voice notes, files, stickers and GIFs, WhatsApp told The Hacker News. The new features were  first reported  by BBC Persian. Some of the other improvements include streamlined steps to simplify the setup process as well as the introduction of shareable links to "share functioning/valid proxy addresses to their contacts for easy and automatic installation." Support for  proxy servers  was officially launched by the messaging service  earlier this January , thereby helping users circumvent government-imposed censorship and internet shutdowns and obtain indirect access to WhatsApp. The company has also made available a  reference implementation  for setting up a proxy server with ports 80, 443, or 5222 available and a domain name that points to the server's IP address.

Facebook's parent company Meta has been fined a record $1.3 billion by European Union data protection regulators for transferring the personal data of users in the region to the U.S. In a binding decision taken by the European Data Protection Board (EDPB), the social media giant has been ordered to bring its data transfers into compliance with the GDPR and delete unlawfully stored and processed data within six months. Additionally, Meta has been given five months to suspend any future transfer of Facebook users' data to the U.S. Instagram and WhatsApp, which are also owned by the company, are not subject to the order. "The EDPB found that Meta IE's infringement is very serious since it concerns transfers that are systematic, repetitive, and continuous," Andrea Jelinek, EDPB Chair,  said  in a statement. "Facebook has millions of users in Europe, so the volume of personal data transferred is massive. The unprecedented fine is a strong signal to organizati

Meta said it took steps to take down more than 1,000 malicious URLs from being shared across its services that were found to leverage OpenAI's ChatGPT as a lure to propagate about 10 malware families since March 2023. The development comes  against  the backdrop of  fake ChatGPT   web browser extensions  being increasingly used to steal users' Facebook account credentials with an aim to run unauthorized ads from hijacked business accounts. "Threat actors create malicious browser extensions available in official web stores that claim to offer ChatGPT-based tools," Meta  said . "They would then promote these malicious extensions on social media and through sponsored search results to trick people into downloading malware." The social media giant said it has blocked several iterations of a multi-pronged malware campaign dubbed  Ducktail  over the years, adding it issued a cease and desist letter to individuals behind the operation who are located in Vietna

The Irish Data Protection Commission (DPC) has  fined  Meta Platforms €390 million (roughly $414 million) over its handling of user data for serving personalized ads in what could be a major blow to its ad-fueled business model. To that end, the privacy regulator has ordered Meta Ireland to pay two fines – a €210 million ($222.5 million) fine over violations of the E.U. General Data Protection Regulation ( GDPR ) related to Facebook, and a €180 million ($191 million) for similar violations in Instagram. The latest enforcement comes in the wake of concerns that the social media company used its Terms of Service to gain users' forced consent to allow targeted advertising based on their online activity. The complaints were filed on May 25, 2018, the date when GDPR came into effect in the region. It also arrives a month after the European Data Protection Board (EDPB), an independent body that oversees the consistent application of GDPR in the E.U.,  announced  that it had reached