Meta | Breaking Cybersecurity News | The Hacker News

Meta Platforms, Microsoft, and the U.S. Department of Justice (DoJ) have announced independent actions to tackle cybercrime and disrupt services that enable scams, fraud, and phishing attacks. To that end, Microsoft's Digital Crimes Unit (DCU) said it seized 240 fraudulent websites associated with an Egypt-based cybercrime facilitator named Abanoub Nady (aka MRxC0DER and mrxc0derii), who advertised for sale a phishing kit called ONNX. Nady's criminal operation is said to date as far back as 2017. "Numerous cybercriminal and online threat actors purchased these kits and used them in widespread phishing campaigns to bypass additional security measures and break into Microsoft customer accounts," Microsoft DCU's Steven Masada said . "While all sectors are at risk, the financial services industry has been heavily targeted given the sensitive data and transactions they handle. In these instances, a successful phish can have devastating real-world consequences...

Europe's top court has ruled that Meta Platforms must restrict the use of personal data harvested from Facebook for serving targeted ads even when users consent to their information being used for advertising purposes, a move that could have serious consequences for ad-driven companies operating in the region. "An online social network such as Facebook cannot use all of the personal data obtained for the purposes of targeted advertising, without restriction as to time and without distinction as to type of data," the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU) said in a ruling on Friday. In other words, social networks, such as Facebook, cannot keep using users' personal data for ad targeting indefinitely, the court said, adding limits must be set in place in order to comply with the bloc's General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) data minimization requirements. It's worth noting that Article 5(1)(c) of GDPR necessitates that companies limit the process...

Vulnerability Management (VM) has long been a cornerstone of organizational cybersecurity. Nearly as old as the discipline of cybersecurity itself, it aims to help organizations identify and address potential security issues before they become serious problems. Yet, in recent years, the limitations of this approach have become increasingly evident.  At its core, Vulnerability Management processes remain essential for identifying and addressing weaknesses. But as time marches on and attack avenues evolve, this approach is beginning to show its age. In a recent report, How to Grow Vulnerability Management into Exposure Management (Gartner, How to Grow Vulnerability Management Into Exposure Management, 8 November 2024, Mitchell Schneider Et Al.), we believe Gartner® addresses this point precisely and demonstrates how organizations can – and must – shift from a vulnerability-centric strategy to a broader Exposure Management (EM) framework. We feel it's more than a worthwhile read an...

The Irish Data Protection Commission (DPC) has fined Meta €91 million ($101.56 million) as part of a probe into a security lapse in March 2019, when the company disclosed that it had mistakenly stored users' passwords in plaintext in its systems. The investigation, launched by the DPC the next month, found that the social media giant violated four different articles under the European Union's General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR). To that end, the DPC faulted Meta for failing to promptly notify the DPC of the data breach, document personal data breaches concerning the storage of user passwords in plaintext, and utilize proper technical measures to ensure the confidentiality of users' passwords. Meta originally revealed that the privacy transgression led to the exposure of a subset of users' Facebook passwords in plaintext, although it noted that there was no evidence it was improperly accessed or abused internally. According to Krebs on Security , some of ...

Meta has announced that it will begin training its artificial intelligence (AI) systems using public content shared by adult users across Facebook and Instagram in the U.K. in the coming months. "This means that our generative AI models will reflect British culture, history, and idiom, and that U.K. companies and institutions will be able to utilize the latest technology," the social media behemoth said . As part of the process, users aged 18 and above are expected to receive in-app notifications starting this week on both Facebook and Instagram, explaining its modus operandi and how they can readily access an objection form to deny their data being used to train the company's generative AI models. The company said it will honor users' choices and that it won't contact users who have already objected to their data being used for their purpose. It also noted that it will not include private messages with friends and family, as well as information from accounts...

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...

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. ...

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...

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 compl...

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 t...

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...