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Meta has been fined 21.62 billion won ($15.67 million) by South Korea's data privacy watchdog for illegally collecting sensitive personal information from Facebook users, including data about their political views and sexual orientation, and sharing it with advertisers without their consent. The country's Personal Information Protection Commission (PIPC) said Meta gathered information such as religious affiliations, political views, and same-sex marital status of about 980,000 domestic Facebook users and shared it with 4,000 advertisers. "Specifically, it was found that behavioral information, such as the pages that users 'liked' on Facebook and the ads they clicked on, was analyzed to create and operate advertising topics related to sensitive information," the PIPC said in a press statement. These topics categorized users as following a certain religion, identifying them as a gay or transgender person, or being a defector from North Korea, it added.  T...

Google's cloud division has announced that it will enforce mandatory multi-factor authentication (MFA) for all users by the end of 2025 as part of its efforts to improve account security. "We will be implementing mandatory MFA for Google Cloud in a phased approach that will roll out to all users worldwide during 2025," Mayank Upadhyay, vice president of engineering and distinguished engineer at Google Cloud, said in a statement. "To ensure a smooth transition, Google Cloud will provide advance notification to enterprises and users along the way to help plan MFA deployments." The rollout process is scheduled to take place over three stages, starting from this month and until the end of 2025 - Phase 1 (Starting November 2024), when administrators will be provided information to prepare for the security upgrade  Phase 2 (Early 2025), when Google will begin requiring MFA for all new and existing Google Cloud users who sign in with a password Phase 3 (En...

The U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) has sought assistance from the public in connection with an investigation involving the breach of edge devices and computer networks belonging to companies and government entities. "An Advanced Persistent Threat group allegedly created and deployed malware (CVE-2020-12271) as part of a widespread series of indiscriminate computer intrusions designed to exfiltrate sensitive data from firewalls worldwide," the agency said . "The FBI is seeking information regarding the identities of the individuals responsible for these cyber intrusions." The development comes in the aftermath of a series of reports published by cybersecurity vendor Sophos chronicling a set of campaigns between 2018 and 2023 that exploited its edge infrastructure appliances to deploy custom malware or repurpose them as proxies to fly under the radar. The malicious activity, codenamed Pacific Rim and designed to conduct surveillance, sabotage, and c...

Over 1,500 Android devices have been infected by a new strain of Android banking malware called ToxicPanda that allows threat actors to conduct fraudulent banking transactions. "ToxicPanda's main goal is to initiate money transfers from compromised devices via account takeover (ATO) using a well-known technique called on-device fraud ( ODF )," Cleafy researchers Michele Roviello, Alessandro Strino, and Federico Valentini said in a Monday analysis. "It aims to bypass bank countermeasures used to enforce users' identity verification and authentication, combined with behavioral detection techniques applied by banks to identify suspicious money transfers." ToxicPanda is believed to be the work of a Chinese-speaking threat actor, with the malware sharing foundational similarities with another Android malware dubbed TgToxic , which can steal credentials and funds from crypto wallets. TgToxic was documented by Trend Micro in early 2023. A majority of the com...

Zero Trust security changes how organizations handle security by doing away with implicit trust while continuously analyzing and validating access requests. Contrary to perimeter-based security, users within an environment are not automatically trusted upon gaining access. Zero Trust security encourages continuous monitoring of every device and user, which ensures sustained protection after successful user authentication. Why companies adopt Zero Trust security Companies adopt Zero Trust security to protect against complex and increasingly sophisticated cyber threats. This addresses the limitations of traditional, perimeter-based security models, which include no east-west traffic security, the implicit trust of insiders, and lack of adequate visibility.  Traditional vs. Zero Trust security Zero Trust security upgrades an organization's security posture by offering: Improved security posture : Organizations can improve their security posture by continuously gathering data on...

Taiwanese network-attached storage (NAS) appliance maker Synology has addressed a critical security flaw impacting DiskStation and BeePhotos that could lead to remote code execution. Tracked as CVE-2024-10443 and dubbed RISK:STATION by Midnight Blue, the zero-day flaw was demonstrated at the Pwn2Own Ireland 2024 hacking contest by security researcher Rick de Jager. RISK:STATION is an "unauthenticated zero-click vulnerability allowing attackers to obtain root-level code execution on the popular Synology DiskStation and BeeStation NAS devices, affecting millions of devices," the Dutch company said . The zero-click nature of the vulnerability means it does not require any user interaction to trigger the exploitation, thereby allowing attackers to gain access to the devices to steal sensitive data and plant additional malware. The flaw impacts the following versions - BeePhotos for BeeStation OS 1.0 (Upgrade to 1.0.2-10026 or above) BeePhotos for BeeStation OS 1.1 (Upgr...

An ongoing campaign is targeting npm developers with hundreds of typosquat versions of their legitimate counterparts in an attempt to trick them into running cross-platform malware. The attack is notable for utilizing Ethereum smart contracts for command-and-control (C2) server address distribution, according to independent findings from Checkmarx , Phylum , and Socket published over the past few days. The activity was first flagged on October 31, 2024, although it's said to have been underway at least a week prior. No less than 287 typosquat packages have been published to the npm package registry. "As this campaign began to unfold in earnest, it became clear that this attacker was in the early stages of a typosquat campaign targeting developers intending to use the popular Puppeteer, Bignum.js, and various cryptocurrency libraries," Phylum said. The packages contain obfuscated JavaScript that's executed during (or post) the installation process, ultimately le...

Canadian law enforcement authorities have arrested an individual who is suspected to have conducted a series of hacks stemming from the breach of cloud data warehousing platform Snowflake earlier this year. The individual in question, Alexander "Connor" Moucka (aka Judische and Waifu), was apprehended on October 30, 2024, on the basis of a provisional arrest warrant, following a request by the U.S. The development was first reported by Bloomberg and corroborated by 404 Media . The exact nature of the charges against Moucka is currently not known. In June 2024, Snowflake disclosed that a "limited number" of its customers were targeted as part of a targeted campaign. Later, Google-owned Mandiant attributed it to a financially motivated threat group called UNC5537. "UNC5537 comprises members based in North America, and collaborates with an additional member in Turkey," the company assessed with moderate confidence at the time, adding approximately 16...

Google has warned that a security flaw impacting its Android operating system has come under active exploitation in the wild. The vulnerability, tracked as CVE-2024-43093, has been described as a privilege escalation flaw in the Android Framework component that could result in unauthorized access to "Android/data," "Android/obb," and "Android/sandbox" directories, and their respective sub-directories, according to a code commit message . There are currently no details about how the vulnerability is being weaponized in real-world attacks, but Google acknowledged in its monthly bulletin that there are indications it "may be under limited, targeted exploitation." The tech giant has also flagged CVE-2024-43047, a now-patched security bug in Qualcomm chipsets, as having been actively exploited. A use-after-free vulnerability in the Digital Signal Processor (DSP) Service, a successful exploitation of the security flaw could lead to memory corrupti...