Security News
FBI Director Chris Wray said Wednesday that Russia is engaged in "Information warfare" heading into the 2020 presidential election, though he said law enforcement has not seen ongoing efforts by Russia to target America's election infrastructure. "Unlike a cyberattack on an election infrastructure, that kind of effort - disinformation - in a world where we have a First Amendment and believe strongly in freedom of expression, the FBI is not going to be in the business of being the truth police and monitoring disinformation online," Wray said.
The FBI reportedly warned this week that attackers repeatedly attempted to disrupt a state's voter registration and information website with a distributed denial-of-service attack. On Tuesday, the FBI issued a Private Industry Notification that described the attempted DDoS attack, according to Bleeping Computer, which says it obtained a copy of the alert.
The FBI's Internet Crime Complaint Center has issued an alert warning that fraudsters are using spoofed job application portals and websites to steal personal information, including payment card details, from would-be applicants. "Cybercriminals now pose as legitimate employers by spoofing company websites and posting fake job openings on popular online job boards," according to the FBI alert.
More than two years ago, Apple told the FBI that it planned to offer users end-to-end encryption when storing their phone data on iCloud, according to one current and three former FBI officials and one current and one former Apple employee. Under that plan, primarily designed to thwart hackers, Apple would no longer have a key to unlock the encrypted data, meaning it would not be able to turn material over to authorities in a readable form even under court order.
In spite of Apple having turned over the shooter's iCloud backups in the case of the Pensacola, Florida mass shooting last month, the US government has been raking it over the coals for supposedly not helping law enforcement in investigations. Specifically, according to six sources - Reuters relied on the input of one current and three former FBI officials and one current and one former Apple employee - a few years ago, Apple, under pressure from the FBI, backed off of plans to let iPhones users have end-to-end encryption on their iCloud backups.
What's the difference between a real job and the horde of fake ones found on the internet? It's even more basic than the fact that one is fake - fake jobs are suspiciously easy to get interviews for.
The new guidelines, explained on a media call last Thursday and in a press release last Friday, say the FBI will notify a state's chief election official and other local election workers in the event of any cyberattack. "Understanding that mitigation of such incidents often hinges on timely notification, the FBI has established a new internal policy outlining how the FBI will notify state and local officials responsible for administering election infrastructure of cyber activity targeting their infrastructure," the FBI statement said.
Two years ago, Apple abandoned its plan to encrypt iPhone backups in the iCloud in such a way that makes it impossible for it to decrypt the contents, a Reuters report claimed on Tuesday. Based on information received by multiple unnamed FBI and Apple sources, the report says that the decision was made after Apple shared its plan for end-to-end encrypted iCloud backups with the FBI and the FBI objected to it.
Apple ditched plans to fully encrypt its iCloud backups two years ago after being pressured by the FBI, it is claimed. Under this plan, Apple would no longer have the key to unlock encrypted data, meaning it would no longer be able provide decrypted backups of its users to the authorities, even under court order.
The FBI has seized the domain for WeLeakInfo.com, a site that sold breached data records, after a multinational effort by law enforcement. The FBI and the District of Columbia explained that the site had harvested over 12 billion records from over 10,000 data breaches, including names, email addresses, usernames, phone numbers, and passwords.