Security News

The Federal Trade Commission has fined Twitter $150 million for using phone numbers and email addresses collected to enable two-factor authentication for targeted advertising. "As the complaint notes, Twitter obtained data from users on the pretext of harnessing it for security purposes but then ended up also using the data to target users with ads. This practice affected more than 140 million Twitter users, while boosting Twitter's primary source of revenue," said FTC Chair Lina M. Khan.

Today, GitHub has launched a new public beta to notably improve the two-factor authentication experience for all npm user accounts. Myles Borins, Open Source Product Manager at GitHub, said that the code hosting platform now allows npm accounts to register "Multiple second factors, such as security keys, biometric devices, and authentication applications."

In a surprising move, the popular open source project, SheetJS aka "Xlsx," has dropped support for the npm registry. The project's maintainer suggests that the decision to pull out of the npm registry is based on the newly introduced two-factor requirements for top projects, GitHub's abrupt decision-making, and ongoing 'legal matters' between SheetJS and npm.

GitHub announced today that all users who contribute code on its platform will be required to enable two-factor authentication on their accounts by the end of 2023. Active contributors who will have to enable 2FA include but are not limited to GitHub users who commit code, use Actions, open or merge pull requests, or publish packages.

Escobar mobile malware targets 190 banking and financial apps, steals 2FA codes. Mobile malware is becoming increasingly powerful against banking and financial applications, especially on Android operating systems.

The US Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency has just put out a bulletin numbered AA22-074A, with the dramatic title Russian State-Sponsored Cyber Actors Gain Network Access by Exploiting Default Multifactor Authentication Protocols and "PrintNightmare" Vulnerability. Re-enrolled the account into the 2FA system, as though the original user were reactivating it.

We monitor a range of email addresses related to Naked Security, so we receieve a regular supply of real-world spams and scams. Right now our scam feed is awash with a variety of frauds targeting Instagram, Instagram, and Instagram.

After accelerating its efforts to auto-enroll as many accounts as possible in two-factor authentication, Google announced that an additional 150 million users now have 2FA enabled. Google first announced that it strives to push all its users to start using 2FA in May 2021, as part of a broader move to secure as many accounts as possible from attacks that use compromised credentials or guess passwords to hijack accounts.

A new and powerful malware named 'Mars Stealer' has appeared in the wild, and appears to be a redesign of the Oski malware that shut down development abruptly in the summer of 2020. Mars Stealer is an information-stealing malware that steals data from all popular web browsers, two-factor authentication plugins, and multiple cryptocurrency extensions and wallets.

The app, which is fully functional as a 2FA authenticator, comes loaded with the Vultur stealer malware that targets and swoops down on financial data. Once downloaded, the app installs Vultur banking trojan, which steals financial and banking data on the compromised device - but can do much more.