TikTok | Breaking Cybersecurity News | The Hacker News

Welcome to this week's Threatsday Bulletin —your Thursday check-in on the latest twists and turns in cybersecurity and hacking. The digital threat landscape never stands still. One week it's a critical zero-day, the next it's a wave of phishing lures or a state-backed disinformation push. Each headline is a reminder that the rules keep changing and that defenders—whether you're protecting a global enterprise or your own personal data—need to keep moving just as fast. In this edition we unpack fresh exploits, high-profile arrests, and the newest tactics cybercriminals are testing right now. Grab a coffee, take five minutes, and get the key insights that help you stay a step ahead of the next breach. Firmware fights back SonicWall Releases SMA 100 Firmware Update to Remove Rootkit SonicWall has released a firmware update that it said will help customers remove rootkit malware deployed in attacks targeting SMA 100 series devices. "S...

Cybersecurity researchers have lifted the veil on a widespread malicious campaign that's targeting TikTok Shop users globally with an aim to steal credentials and distribute trojanized apps. "Threat actors are exploiting the official in-app e-commerce platform through a dual attack strategy that combines phishing and malware to target users," CTM360 said . "The core tactic involves a deceptive replica of TikTok Shop that tricks users into thinking theyʼre interacting with a legitimate affiliate or the real platform." The scam campaign has been codenamed FraudOnTok  by the Bahrain-based cybersecurity company, calling out the threat actor's multi-pronged distribution strategy that involves Meta ads and artificial intelligence (AI)-generated TikTok videos that mimic influencers or official brand ambassadors. Central to the effort is the use of lookalike domains that resemble legitimate TikTok URLs. Over 15,000 such impersonated websites have been identified...

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...

The malware known as Latrodectus has become the latest to embrace the widely-used social engineering technique called ClickFix as a distribution vector. "The ClickFix technique is particularly risky because it allows the malware to execute in memory rather than being written to disk," Expel said in a report shared with The Hacker News. "This removes many opportunities for browsers or security tools to detect or block the malware." Latrodectus, believed to be a successor to IcedID, is the name given to a malware that acts as a downloader for other payloads, such as ransomware. It was first documented by Proofpoint and Team Cymru in April 2024.

Ireland's Data Protection Commission (DPC) on Friday fined popular video-sharing platform TikTok €530 million ($601 million) for infringing data protection regulations in the region by transferring European users' data to China. "TikTok infringed the GDPR regarding its transfers of EEA [European Economic Area] User Data to China and its transparency requirements," the DPC said in a statement. "The decision includes administrative fines totaling €530 million and an order requiring TikTok to bring its processing into compliance within 6 months." The order, in addition, requires the company to suspend data transfers to China within the time period. The penalty is the result of an investigation that was launched in September 2021 that probed the company's transfer of personal data to China and its compliance with stringent data protection laws regarding data transfers to third countries. Commenting on the decision, DPC Deputy Commissioner Graham Doyl...

Popular video-sharing social network TikTok has officially gone dark in the United States, as a federal ban on the app comes into effect on January 19, 2025. "We regret that a U.S. law banning TikTok will take effect on January 19 and force us to make our services temporarily unavailable," the company said in a pop-up message. "We're working to restore our service in the U.S. as soon as possible, and we appreciate your support. Please stay tuned." An immediate outcome of the ban means that existing users will no longer be able to access TikTok content, and new users won't be able to download the app from the official app stores for Android and iOS. Other apps from its parent company ByteDance, including CapCut, Lemon8, and Gauth, have become unavailable as well. The development comes days after the U.S. Supreme Court ruled unanimously to uphold a law requiring that its ByteDance sell TikTok or see it be effectively blocked in the country due to nation...

In a historic decision, Romania's constitutional court has annulled the result of the first round of voting in the presidential election amid allegations of Russian interference. As a result, the second round vote, which was scheduled for December 8, 2024, will no longer take place. Călin Georgescu, who won the first round, denounced the verdict as an "officialized coup" and an attack on democracy. "The electoral process for the election of the President of Romania will be resumed in its entirety, with the Government to establish a new date for the election of the President of Romania, as well as a new calendar program for the implementation of the necessary actions," the Constitutional Court of Romania said . The judiciary body said the decision is pursuant to Article 146(f) of the Constitution, emphasizing the need to ensure the fairness and legality of the electoral process. The decision is final and binding. The development comes days after declassif...

The Canadian government on Wednesday ordered ByteDance-owned TikTok to dissolve its operations in the country, citing national security risks, but stopped short of instituting a ban on the popular video-sharing platform. "The decision was based on the information and evidence collected over the course of the review and on the advice of Canada's security and intelligence community and other government partners," François-Philippe Champagne, Minister of Innovation, Science and Industry, said in a statement. The government said it does not intend to block Canadians' access to the app itself or curtail their ability to create new content, stating the use of a social media application is a "personal choice." The use of the app has already been banned on Canadian government devices since February 2023. That having said, it urged Canadians to adopt good cyber security practices and assess the possible risks that could arise from using social media platforms,...

Popular video-sharing platform TikTok has acknowledged a security issue that has been exploited by threat actors to take control of high-profile accounts on the platform. The development was first reported by Semafor and Forbes , which detailed a zero-click account takeover campaign that allows malware propagated via direct messages to compromise brand and celebrity accounts without having to click or interact with it. The exploit has been found to take advantage of a zero-day vulnerability in the messaging component that allows malicious code to be executed as soon as the message is opened. It's currently unclear how many users have been affected, although a TikTok spokesperson said that the company has taken preventive measures to stop the attack and stop it from happening again in the future. The company further said that it's working directly with impacted account holders to restore access and that the attack only managed to compromise a "very small" number...

The Irish Data Protection Commission (DPC) slapped TikTok with a €345 million (about $368 million) fine for violating the European Union's General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) in relation to its handling of children's data. The investigation, initiated in September 2021,  examined  how the popular short-form video platform processed personal data relating to child users (those between the ages of 13 and 17) between July 31 and December 31, 2020. Some of the major findings include - The content posted by child users was set to public by default, thereby allowing any individual (with or without TikTok) to view the material and exposing them to additional risks A failure to provide transparency information to child users The implementation of dark patterns to steer users towards opting for privacy-intrusive options during the registration process, and when posting videos A weakness in the Family Sharing setting that allowed any non-child user (someone who could not b...

Popular short-form video hosting service TikTok has been fined €5 million (about $5.4 million) by the French data protection watchdog for breaking cookie consent rules, making it the latest platform to face similar penalties after  Amazon, Google, Meta , and  Microsoft  since 2020. "Users of 'tiktok[.]com' could not refuse cookies as easily as accepting them and they were not informed in a sufficiently precise way of the objectives of the different cookies," the Commission nationale de l'informatique et des libertés (CNIL)  said  in a statement. The regulator said it conducted several audits between May 2020 and June 2022, finding that the ByteDance-owned company did not offer a straightforward option to refuse all cookies as opposed to just one click for accepting them. The option to "refuse all" cookies was introduced by TikTok in February 2022. "Making the opt-out mechanism more complex is in fact discouraging users from refusing cookies and...

The notorious information-stealer known as  Vidar  is continuing to leverage popular social media services such as TikTok, Telegram, Steam, and Mastodon as an intermediate command-and-control (C2) server. "When a user creates an account on an online platform, a unique account page that can be accessed by anyone is generated," AhnLab Security Emergency Response Center (ASEC) disclosed in a technical analysis  published  late last month. "Threat actors write identifying characters and the C2 address in parts of this page." In other words, the technique relies on actor-controlled throwaway accounts created on social media to retrieve the C2 address. An advantage to this approach is that should the C2 server be taken down or blocked, the adversary can trivially get around the restrictions by setting up a new server and editing the account pages to allow the previously distributed malware to communicate with the server. Vidar, first identified in 2018, is a  co...