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Instagram is growing quickly—and with the second most popular social media network in the world (behind just Facebook), the photo-sharing network absolutely dominates when it comes to user interactions. And with great success comes great responsibility—responsibility to keep users' accounts safe, responsibility to fight fake accounts and news, and responsibility of being transparent. You might know that the Facebook-owned photo-sharing network has recently been a victim of a widespread hacking campaign that has affected thousands of Instagram users, leaving them locked out of their accounts. In the wake of the security mishappening, Instagram has announced a trio of security updates intended to discourage trolls, stop misinformation, and make the platform a little safer for its one billion users. In an official blog post , titled "New Tools to Keep Instagram Safe," published by Instagram Co-Founder & CTO Mike Krieger on August 28, the company announced thr...

In Brief: Sony is finally bolstering the security of the PlayStation Network by adding Two-Factor Authentication to the servers — almost five years after a massive hack that exposed data of over 77 Million users. Sony confirmed to Polygon today that it is planning to introduce two-factor verification to its PlayStation Network widely soon after a Twitter user saw a reference to it in the latest 4.80 firmware update for the PlayStation 3. Although there is no official announcement from the company revealing when two-step authentication will be implemented in PSN, the representative told sources that "more details will be shared at a later date." Microsoft has been providing two-step verification to its Xbox Live users since 2013. The feature is also used on Battle.net and Steam. Two-Factor authentication, also known as two-step verification, is a process that requires you to submit two different forms of verification when logging into a service: One is your...

When considering authentication providers, many organizations consider the ease of configuration, ubiquity of usage, and technical stability. Organizations cannot always be judged on those metrics alone. There is an increasing need to evaluate company ownership, policies and the stability, or instability, that it brings. How Leadership Change Affects Stability In recent months, a salient example is that of Twitter. The Twitter platform has been around since 2006 and is used by millions worldwide. With many users and a seemingly robust authentication system, organizations used Twitter as a primary or secondary authentication service. Inconsistent leadership and policies mean the stability of a platform is subject to change, which is especially true with Twitter as of late. The ownership change to Elon Musk precipitated widespread changes to staffing and policies. Due to those changes,  a large portion of staff was let go , but this included many individuals responsible for the t...

The majority of Internet users are vulnerable to cyber threats because of their own weaknesses in setting up a strong password. But, are end-users completely responsible for choosing weak passwords? Give a thought. Recently we wrote an article revealing the list of Worst Passwords of 2015 that proved most of us are still using bad passwords, like ' 123456 ' or ' password ,' to secure our online accounts that when breached could result in critical information loss. If the end-user is to blame for weak password security, then the solution is to educate each and every Internet user to follow the best password security practice. But is that really possible? Practically, No. Even after being aware of best password security measures, do we really set strong passwords for every website? I mean EVERY. Ask yourself. Who's Responsible for allowing Users to Set a Weak Password? It's the websites and their developers, who didn't enforce a...

Another day, another significant data breach. This time the victim is Reddit... seems someone is really pissed off with Reddit's account ban policy or bias moderators. Reddit social media network today announced that it suffered a security breach in June that exposed some of its users' data, including their current email addresses and an old 2007 database backup containing usernames and hashed passwords. According to Reddit, the unknown hacker(s) managed to gain read-only access to some of its systems that contained its users' backup data, source code, internal logs, and other files. In a post published to the platform Wednesday, Reddit Chief Technology Officer Christopher Slowe admitted that the hack was a serious one, but assured its users that the hackers did not gain access to Reddit systems. "[The attackers] were not able to alter Reddit information, and we have taken steps since the event to further lock down and rotate all production secrets and API k...

Phishing, the theft of users' credentials or sensitive data using social engineering, has been a significant threat since the early days of the internet – and continues to plague organizations today,  accounting for more than 30% of all known breaches . And with the mass migration to remote working during the pandemic, hackers have ramped up their efforts to steal login credentials as they take advantage of the chaos and lack of in-person user verification.  This has led to the revival of the old-school technique of vishing, which, like phishing online, involves using social engineering over the phone to steal sensitive information. Vishing attacks have  been on the rise  as a result, with 69% of companies experiencing them in 2021, up from 54% in 2020. These attacks often take the form of job or tech support scams and can be incredibly convincing. In August 2020, the  FBI along with the CISA  issued a warning regarding remote users being targeted by atta...

Hardware security keys—such as those from Google and Yubico—are considered the most secure means to protect accounts from phishing and takeover attacks. But a new research published on Thursday demonstrates how an adversary in possession of such a two-factor authentication (2FA) device can clone it by exploiting an electromagnetic side-channel in the chip embedded in it. The vulnerability (tracked as CVE-2021-3011 ) allows the bad actor to extract the encryption key or the  ECDSA  private key linked to a victim's account from a FIDO Universal 2nd Factor (U2F) device like Google Titan Key or YubiKey, thus completely undermining the 2FA protections. "The adversary can sign in to the victim's application account without the U2F device, and without the victim noticing," NinjaLab researchers Victor Lomne and Thomas Roche  said  in a 60-page analysis. "In other words, the adversary created a clone of the U2F device for the victim's application account. This c...

Blockchain is best known for its use in cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin, but it also holds significant applications for online authentication. As businesses in varying sectors increasingly embrace blockchain-based security tools, could the technology one day replace passwords? How blockchain works  Blockchain is a secure way to maintain, encrypt, and exchange digital records of transactions. Its security benefits stem from its decentralized nature: this distributed ledger can be accessed by participants across various nodes , and is unalterable. All users retain control as a group, meaning no single person can change the ledger. How could this provide security benefits? One advantage is the ability to create a 'self-sovereign ID' that alters the way that a user identifies themselves online. Essentially, it creates a private ID for a user that they control, rather than relying on a centralized institution : they can logon to a particular website or service using their identity on...

Despite significant investments in advanced technologies and employee training programs, credential and user-based attacks remain alarmingly prevalent, accounting for 50-80% of enterprise breaches [1] , [2] . While identity-based attacks continue to dominate as the leading cause of security incidents, the common approach to identity security threats is still threat reduction, implementing layers of controls to reduce risk while accepting that some attacks will succeed. This methodology relies on detection, response, and recovery capabilities to minimize damage after a breach has already occurred, but it does not prevent the possibility of successful attacks.  The good news? Finally, there's a solution that marks a true paradigm shift: with modern authentication technologies, the complete elimination of identity-based threats is now within reach. This groundbreaking advancement moves us beyond the traditional focus on risk reduction, offering organizations a way to fully neutraliz...

'Good to Know' campaign : Google Collaborates with Citizens Advice Bureau for Online Safety Google's first ever advertising campaign for online safety launches today, in association with the Citizens Advice Bureau. It covers topics such as choosing a password, scam emails and using two factor authentication.The company said future campaigns may deal more extensively with how Google uses people's personal data. The two organisations by using various means and methods, like using adverts in newspapers, on public transports and online, will try to encourage users to adopt secure passwords, log out of web browsers and computers after using them and also to adopt more complex ways to sign in their email accounts which is known as "two-factor authentication".The campaign also focuses on child protection and use of 'cookies' in web browsers. This is the first campaign by Google, which is promoting something different than products such as web browser Chrome. The campaign is p...

Multiple npm packages have been compromised as part of a software supply chain attack after a maintainer's account was compromised in a phishing attack. The attack targeted Josh Junon (aka Qix ), who received an email message that mimicked npm ("support@npmjs[.]help"), urging them to update their update their two-factor authentication (2FA) credentials before September 10, 2025, by clicking on embedded link. The phishing page is said to have prompted the co-maintainer to enter their username, password, and two-factor authentication (2FA) token, only for it to be stolen likely by means of an adversary-in-the-middle ( AitM ) attack and used to publish the rogue version to the npm registry. The following 20 packages, which collectively attract over 2 billion weekly downloads, have been confirmed as affected as part of the incident - ansi-regex@6.2.1 ansi-styles@6.2.2 backslash@0.2.1 chalk@5.6.1 chalk-template@1.1.1 color-convert@3.1.1 color-name@2.0.1...

Cybersecurity researchers are alerting to a software supply chain attack targeting the popular @solana/web3.js npm library that involved pushing two malicious versions capable of harvesting users' private keys with an aim to drain their cryptocurrency wallets. The attack has been detected in versions 1.95.6 and 1.95.7. Both these versions are no longer available for download from the npm registry. The package is widely used, attracting over 400,000 weekly downloads. "These compromised versions contain injected malicious code that is designed to steal private keys from unsuspecting developers and users, potentially enabling attackers to drain cryptocurrency wallets," Socket said in a report. @solana/web3.js is an npm package that can be used to interact with the Solana JavaScript software development kit (SDK) for building Node.js and web apps. According to Datadog security researcher Christophe Tafani-Dereeper , "the backdoor inserted in v1.95.7 adds an ...