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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...

The volume of cybersecurity vulnerabilities is rising, with close to  30% more vulnerabilities found in 2022 vs. 2018 . Costs are also rising, with a data breach in 2023 costing  $4.45M on average vs. $3.62M in 2017 . In Q2 2023,  a total of 1386 victims were claimed  by ransomware attacks compared with just 831 in Q1 2023. The  MOVEit attack has claimed over 600 victims  so far and that number is still rising. To people working in cybersecurity today, the value of automated threat intelligence is probably pretty obvious. The rising numbers specified above, combined with the  lack of cybersecurity professionals availabl e, mean automation is a clear solution. When threat intelligence operations can be automated, threats can be identified and responded to, and with less effort on the part of engineers. However, a mistake that organizations sometimes make is assuming that once they've automated threat intelligence workflows, humans are out of the pic...

Google has agreed to pay $93 million to settle a lawsuit filed by the U.S. state of California over allegations that the company's location-privacy practices misled consumers and violated consumer protection laws. "Our investigation revealed that Google was telling its users one thing – that it would no longer track their location once they opted out – but doing the opposite and continuing to track its users' movements for its own commercial gain," California Attorney General Rob Bonta  said .  The lawsuit is in response to disclosures that the company continued to track users' locations despite stating to the contrary that such information would not be stored if the "Location History" setting was disabled. The complaint filed by California alleged that Google collected location data through other sources and that it deceived users about their ability to opt out of personalized advertisements targeted to their location. With Google making over $220...

The  Internet of Things (IoT)  is transforming efficiency in various sectors like healthcare and logistics but has also introduced new security risks, particularly IoT-driven DDoS attacks. This article explores how these attacks work, why they're uniquely problematic, and how to mitigate them. What Is IoT? IoT (Internet of Things) refers to online, interconnected devices that collect and exchange data. This broad category of devices includes sensors, cameras, network routers, and advanced machinery, and their integration into everyday life and work processes results in an ecosystem that can automate operations, improve decision-making, and enhance user experience. IoT: A Breeding Ground for Botnets IoT's rapid adoption amplifies its vulnerability, as poorly secured devices become easy prey for attackers and may become part of a botnet. Controlled by attackers, botnets can scale and rapidly execute various attacks, including DDoS, data theft, ad fraud, cryptocurrency minin...

An ongoing campaign is targeting Facebook Business accounts with bogus messages to harvest victims' credentials using a variant of the Python-based  NodeStealer  and potentially take over their accounts for follow-on malicious activities.  "The attacks are reaching victims mainly in Southern Europe and North America across different segments, led by the manufacturing services and technology sectors," Netskope Threat Labs researcher Jan Michael Alcantara  said  in an analysis published Thursday. First documented by Meta in May 2023, NodeStealer  originated  as a JavaScript malware capable of pilfering cookies and passwords from web browsers to compromise Facebook, Gmail, and Outlook accounts. Palo Alto Networks Unit 42, last month,  revealed  a separate attack wave that took place in December 2022 using a Python version of the malware, with select iterations also designed to conduct cryptocurrency theft. The latest findings from Netskope...

The threat actors behind RedLine and Vidar information stealers have been observed pivoting to ransomware through phishing campaigns that spread initial payloads signed with Extended Validation ( EV ) code signing certificates. "This suggests that the threat actors are streamlining operations by making their techniques multipurpose," Trend Micro researchers  said  in a new analysis published this week. In the incident investigated by the cybersecurity company, an unnamed victim is said to have first received a piece of info stealer malware with EV code signing certificates, followed by ransomware using the same delivery technique. In the past,  QakBot infections  have leveraged  samples signed with valid code signing certificates  to bypass security protections. The attacks start with phishing emails that employ well-worn lures to trick victims into running malicious attachments that masquerade as PDF or JPG images but are actually executables that jum...

Iranian nation-state actors have been conducting password spray attacks against thousands of organizations globally between February and July 2023, new findings from Microsoft reveal. The tech giant, which is tracking the activity under the name  Peach Sandstorm  (formerly Holmium), said the adversary pursued organizations in the satellite, defense, and pharmaceutical sectors to likely facilitate intelligence collection in support of Iranian state interests. Should the authentication to an account be successful, the threat actor has been observed using a combination of publicly available and custom tools for discovery, persistence, and lateral movement, followed by data exfiltration in limited cases. Peach Sandstorm , also known by the names APT33, Elfin, and Refined Kitten, has been linked to spear-phishing attacks against aerospace and energy sectors in the past, some of which have entailed the use of the  SHAPESHIFT  wiper malware. It's said to be active since...

A set of memory corruption flaws have been discovered in the  ncurses  (short for  new curses ) programming library that could be exploited by threat actors to run malicious code on vulnerable Linux and macOS systems. "Using environment variable poisoning, attackers could chain these vulnerabilities to elevate privileges and run code in the targeted program's context or perform other malicious actions," Microsoft Threat Intelligence researchers Jonathan Bar Or, Emanuele Cozzi, and Michael Pearse  said  in a technical report published today. The vulnerabilities, collectively tracked as  CVE-2023-29491  (CVSS score of 7.8), have been  addressed  as of April 2023. Microsoft said it also worked with Apple on remediating the macOS-specific issues related to these flaws. Environment variables are user-defined values that can be used by multiple programs on a system and can affect the manner in which they behave on the system. Manipulating t...

A download manager site served Linux users malware that stealthily stole passwords and other sensitive information for more than three years as part of a supply chain attack. The modus operandi entailed establishing a reverse shell to an actor-controlled server and installing a Bash stealer on the compromised system. The campaign, which took place between 2020 and 2022, is no longer active. "This stealer collects data such as system information, browsing history, saved passwords, cryptocurrency wallet files, as well as credentials for cloud services (AWS, Google Cloud, Oracle Cloud Infrastructure, Azure)," Kaspersky researchers Georgy Kucherin and Leonid Bezvershenko  said . The website in question is freedownloadmanager[.]org, which, according to the Russian cybersecurity firm, offers a legitimate Linux software called "Free Download Manager," but starting in January 2020, began redirecting some users who attempted to download it to another domain deb.fdmpkg[.]...