Privacy | Breaking Cybersecurity News | The Hacker News

The malicious ad tech purveyor known as VexTrio Viper has been observed developing several malicious apps that have been published on Apple and Google's official app storefronts under the guise of seemingly useful applications. These apps masquerade as VPNs, device "monitoring" apps, RAM cleaners, dating services, and spam blockers, DNS threat intelligence firm Infoblox said in an exhaustive analysis shared with The Hacker News. "They released apps under several developer names, including HolaCode, LocoMind, Hugmi, Klover Group, and AlphaScale Media," the company said . "Available in the Google Play and Apple store, these have been downloaded millions of times in aggregate." These fake apps, once installed, deceive users into signing up for subscriptions that are difficult to cancel, flood them with ads, and part with personal information like email addresses. It's worth noting that LocoMind was previously flagged by Cyjax as part of a phishi...

Cybersecurity researchers have shed light on a mobile forensics tool called Massistant that's used by law enforcement authorities in China to gather information from seized mobile devices. The hacking tool, believed to be a successor of MFSocket , is developed by a Chinese company named SDIC Intelligence Xiamen Information Co., Ltd. , which was formerly known as Meiya Pico. It specializes in the research, development, and sale of electronic data forensics and network information security technology products. According to a report published by Lookout, Massistant works in conjunction with a corresponding desktop software, allowing for access to the device's GPS location data, SMS messages, images, audio, contacts, and phone services. "Meiya Pico maintains partnerships with domestic and international law enforcement partners, both as a surveillance hardware and software provider, as well as through training programs for law enforcement personnel," security resear...

Generative AI is not arriving with a bang, it's slowly creeping into the software that companies already use on a daily basis. Whether it is video conferencing or CRM, vendors are scrambling to integrate AI copilots and assistants into their SaaS applications. Slack can now provide AI summaries of chat threads, Zoom can provide meeting summaries, and office suites such as Microsoft 365 contain AI assistance in writing and analysis. This trend of AI usage implies that the majority of businesses are awakening to a new reality: AI capabilities have spread across their SaaS stack overnight, with no centralized control. A recent survey found 95% of U.S. companies are now using generative AI, up massively in just one year. Yet this unprecedented usage comes tempered by growing anxiety. Business leaders have begun to worry about where all this unseen AI activity might lead. Data security and privacy have quickly emerged as top concerns, with many fearing that sensitive information could le...

Taiwan's National Security Bureau (NSB) has warned that China-developed applications like RedNote (aka Xiaohongshu), Weibo, Douyin, 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...

Google has been ordered by a court in the U.S. state of California to pay $314 million over charges that it misused Android device users' cellular data when they were idle to passively send information to the company. The verdict marks an end to a legal class-action complaint that was originally filed in August 2019. In their lawsuit, the plaintiffs argued that Google's Android operating system leverages users' cellular data to transmit a "variety of information to Google" without their permission, even when their devices are kept in an idle state. "Although Google could make it so that these transfers happen only when the phones are connected to Wi-Fi, Google instead designed these transfers so they can also take place over a cellular network," they said. "Google's unauthorized use of their cellular data violates California law and requires Google to compensate Plaintiffs for the value of the cellular data that Google uses for its own be...

Despite years of investment in Zero Trust, SSE, and endpoint protection, many enterprises are still leaving one critical layer exposed: the browser. It's where 85% of modern work now happens. It's also where copy/paste actions, unsanctioned GenAI usage, rogue extensions, and personal devices create a risk surface that most security stacks weren't designed to handle. For security leaders who know this blind spot exists but lack a roadmap to fix it, a new framework may help. The Secure Enterprise Browser Maturity Guide: Safeguarding the Last Mile of Enterprise Risk , authored by cybersecurity researcher Francis Odum, offers a pragmatic model to help CISOs and security teams assess, prioritize, and operationalize browser-layer security. It introduces a clear progression from basic visibility to real-time enforcement and ecosystem integration, built around real-world threats, organizational realities, and evolving user behavior. Why the Browser Has Become the Security Blind Spot Over ...

Microsoft has said that it's ending support for passwords in its Authenticator app starting August 1, 2025. Microsoft's move is part of a much larger shift away from traditional password-based logins. The company said the changes are also meant to streamline autofill within its two-factor authentication (2FA) app, making the experience simpler and more secure. Over the past few years, Microsoft has been pushing for a passwordless future using technologies like passkeys , Windows Hello, and FIDO2-based authentication. These methods offer better protection against phishing and password reuse, which are still major attack vectors. While it may feel like a hassle at first, this change is actually aimed at reducing your risk in the long run. "Starting July 2025, the autofill feature in Authenticator will stop working, and from August 2025, passwords will no longer be accessible in Authenticator," Microsoft said in a support document for Authenticator. It's worth noti...

Facebook, the social network platform owned by Meta, is asking for users to upload pictures from their phones to suggest collages, recaps, and other ideas using artificial intelligence (AI), including those that have not been directly uploaded to the service. According to TechCrunch, which first reported the feature, users are being served a new pop-up message asking for permission to "allow cloud processing" when they are attempting to create a new Story on Facebook. "To create ideas for you, we'll select media from your camera roll and upload it to our cloud on an ongoing basis, based on info like time, location or themes," the company notes in the pop-up. "Only you can see suggestions. Your media won't be used for ads targeting. We'll check it for safety and integrity purposes." Should users consent to their photos being processed on the cloud, Meta also states that they are agreeing to its AI terms , which allow it to analyze their med...

Popular messaging platform WhatsApp has added a new artificial intelligence (AI)-powered feature that leverages its in-house solution Meta AI to summarize unread messages in chats. The feature, called Message Summaries, is currently rolling out in the English language to users in the United States, with plans to bring it to other regions and languages later this year. It "uses Meta AI to privately and quickly summarize unread messages in a chat, so you can get an idea of what is happening, before reading the details in your unread messages," WhatsApp said in a post. Message Summaries is optional and is disabled by default. The Meta-owned service said users can also enable " Advanced Chat Privacy " to choose which chats can be shared for providing AI-related features. Most importantly, it's made possible by Private Processing , which WhatsApp launched back in April as a way to enable AI capabilities in a privacy-preserving manner. Private Processing is de...

The United States Embassy in India has announced that applicants for F, M, and J nonimmigrant visas should make their social media accounts public. The new guideline seeks to help officials verify the identity and eligibility of applicants under U.S. law. The U.S. Embassy said every visa application review is a "national security decision." "Effective immediately, all individuals applying for an F, M, or J nonimmigrant visa are requested to adjust the privacy settings on all of their personal social media accounts to 'public' to facilitate vetting necessary to establish their identity and admissibility to the United States," the embassy said in a post on X. Under the new rules, Indian students and others planning to pursue academia or enroll in vocational or exchange programs are mandated to ensure that their social media profiles are set to public before submitting their visa applications. A refusal to set the accounts to "public" could be g...

Misconfigured Docker instances are the target of a campaign that employs the Tor anonymity network to stealthily mine cryptocurrency in susceptible environments. "Attackers are exploiting misconfigured Docker APIs to gain access to containerized environments, then using Tor to mask their activities while deploying crypto miners," Trend Micro researchers Sunil Bharti and Shubham Singh said in an analysis published last week. In using Tor, the idea is to anonymize their origins during the installation of the miner on compromised systems. The attacks, per the cybersecurity company, commence with a request from the IP address 198.199.72[.]27 to obtain a list of all containers on the machine. If no containers are present, the attacker proceeds to create a new one based on the "alpine" Docker image and mounts the "/hostroot" directory – i.e., the root directory ("/") of the physical or virtual host machine – as a volume inside it. This behavior p...

The U.S. House of Representatives has formally banned congressional staff members from using WhatsApp on government-issued devices, citing security concerns. The development was first reported by Axios. The decision, according to the House Chief Administrative Officer (CAO), was motivated by worries about the app's security. "The Office of Cybersecurity has deemed WhatsApp a high-risk to users due to the lack of transparency in how it protects user data, absence of stored data encryption, and potential security risks involved with its use," the CAO said in a memo, according to Axios. To that end, House staff are prohibited from downloading the app on any device issued by the government, including its mobile, desktop, or web browser versions. WhatsApp has pushed back against these concerns, stating messages sent on the platform are end-to-end encrypted by default, and that it offers a "higher level" of security than most of the apps on CAO's approved ...

Meta Platforms on Monday announced that it's bringing advertising to WhatsApp, but emphasized that the ads are "built with privacy in mind." The ads are expected to be displayed on the Updates tab through its Stories-like Status feature, which allows ephemeral sharing of photos, videos, voice notes, and text for 24 hours. These efforts are "rolling out gradually," per the company. The social media giant, which acquired WhatsApp for a record $19.3 billion in February 2014, first announced its plans for ads in Status way back in November 2018. Meta also claimed that the ads implementation was developed in the "most privacy-oriented way possible" and that it only uses limited information to serve ads. "Your personal messages, calls, and statuses remain end-to-end encrypted, meaning no one can see or hear them," the company said.

Apple has disclosed that a now-patched security flaw present in its Messages app was actively exploited in the wild to target civil society members in sophisticated cyber attacks. The vulnerability, tracked as CVE-2025-43200, was addressed on February 10, 2025, as part of iOS 18.3.1, iPadOS 18.3.1 , iPadOS 17.7.5 , macOS Sequoia 15.3.1 , macOS Sonoma 14.7.4 , macOS Ventura 13.7.4 , watchOS 11.3.1 , and visionOS 2.3.1 . "A logic issue existed when processing a maliciously crafted photo or video shared via an iCloud Link," the company said in an advisory, adding the vulnerability was addressed with improved checks. The iPhone maker also acknowledged that it's aware the vulnerability "may have been exploited in an extremely sophisticated attack against specifically targeted individuals." It's worth noting that the iOS 18.3.1, iPadOS 18.3.1, and iPadOS 17.7.5 updates also resolved another actively exploited zero-day tracked as CVE-2025-24200. It's curr...

Google has stepped in to address a security flaw that could have made it possible to brute-force an account's recovery phone number, potentially exposing them to privacy and security risks. The issue, according to Singaporean security researcher "brutecat," leverages an issue in the company's account recovery feature. That said, exploiting the vulnerability hinges on several moving parts, specifically targeting a now-deprecated JavaScript-disabled version of the Google username recovery form ("accounts.google[.]com/signin/usernamerecovery") that lacked anti-abuse protections designed to prevent spammy requests. The page in question is designed to help users check if a recovery email or phone number is associated with a specific display name (e.g., "John Smith"). But circumventing the CAPTCHA-based rate limit ultimately made it possible to try out all permutations of a Google account's phone number in a short space of time and arrive at t...

It's not enough to be secure. In today's legal climate, you need to prove it. Whether you're protecting a small company or managing compliance across a global enterprise, one thing is clear: cybersecurity can no longer be left to guesswork, vague frameworks, or best-effort intentions. Regulators and courts are now holding organizations accountable for how "reasonable" their security programs are—and that's not just a buzzword anymore. But what does " reasonable" even mean in cybersecurity? That's exactly what this free webinar  we hosted with the experts from Center for Internet Security (CIS) will help you answer. New privacy laws, ransomware lawsuits, and regulatory investigations are raising the bar for cybersecurity expectations. If your defense program can't show structure, strategy, and measurable maturity, you're not just at risk—you're already falling behind. This isn't about hype. It's about legal risk, operational readiness, and your reputation. In this...