Security News
Facebook has pledged to make end-to-end encryption the default across all of its messaging services - though has told users not to expect it on Facebook Messenger or Instagram Direct until 2022 "At the earliest". Gail Kent, Facebook's policy director for Messenger, shared a blog post on 30 April outlining the social media company's plans to improve the security of its messaging apps following the surge in private messaging during the COVID-19 pandemic.
UK consumer watchdog Which? has found that ad giants Google and Facebook are failing to remove online scam ads even after victims report them. A third of those reporting scam ads to Google found the same offending ads still present, while the figure was a quarter for antisocial media site Facebook.
Facebook on Wednesday said it took steps to dismantle malicious activities perpetrated by two state-sponsored hacking groups operating out of Palestine that abused its platform to distribute malware. To disrupt the adversary operations, Facebook said it took down their accounts, blocked domains associated with their activity, and alerted users it suspects were singled out by these groups to help them secure their accounts.
Social media giant Facebook today announced that it took action against two groups of hackers originating from Palestine that abused its infrastructure for malware distribution and account compromise across the Internet. As part of the shutdown operation, Facebook took down accounts, blocked domains, sent alerts to people who were targeted, and released malware hashes to the public.
Facebook said Wednesday it had disabled accounts used by the Palestinian Authority's internal intelligence organisation to spy on journalists, human rights activists and political opponents. In a report, the US social media giant also said it had identified and disabled "Politically motivated" espionage operations by a group believed to be based in Gaza and affiliated with Hamas, the Islamist rulers of the Palestinian enclave.
Facebook's long-term strategy is to desensitize users about leaked data dumps that were collected through scraping the public portion of the social network. The data also contained private phone numbers collected because of a vulnerability that Facebook fixed in August 2019, the company told BleepingComputer.
Facebook wants you to believe that the scraping of 533 million people's personal data from its platform, and the dumping of that data online by nefarious people, is something to be "Normalised." A blundering Facebook public relations operative managed to send a journalist a copy an internal document detailing the antisocial network's strategy for containing the leaking of 533 million accounts - and what the memo contained was infuriating though unsurprising.
A large-scale scam campaign targeting Facebook Messenger users all over the world has been detected by Group-IB. Digital Risk Protection analysts have found evidence proving that users in over 80 countries in Europe, Asia, the MEA region, North and South America might have been affected. In April, the number of Facebook posts inviting users to install "The latest Messenger update" reached 5,700.
UK Home Secretary Priti Patel will badmouth Facebook's use of end-to-end encryption on Monday evening as she links the security technology with paedophilia, terrorism, organised crime, and so on. The ever-popular politician will say at the National Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children event: "Sadly, at a time when we need to be taking more action, Facebook are pursuing end-to-end encryption plans that place the good work and progress achieved so far in jeopardy."
Pakistan shut down several social networks within its borders on Friday but lifted the ban after around four hours. The Register understands the ban covered Facebook, Twitter and YouTube, plus messaging services WhatsApp, and Telegram.