Security News

Pro-Trump Social Media Platform GETTR Hacked Shortly After Launch
2021-07-07 12:20

Pro-Trump social media platform GETTR was targeted by hackers shortly after launch - accounts were apparently compromised and tens of thousands of users had their data scraped and leaked online. A Twitter-like platform, GETTR was launched on July 4 by Jason Miller, who served as a spokesperson for former U.S. President Donald Trump.

Police warn of WhatsApp scams in time for Social Media Day
2021-06-30 18:55

We have seen a surge in WhatsApp accounts being hacked, if you are sent a text from WhatsApp with a code on it, don't share the code with ANYONE no matter who's asking, or the reason why. We've discussed this scam before on the Naked Security podcast, because it's a good reminder of how cybercriminals use one hijacked social media account to target others.

Malicious COVID-19 online content bypassing moderation efforts of social media platforms
2021-06-18 04:00

Malicious COVID-19 online content - including racist content, disinformation and misinformation - thrives and spreads online by bypassing the moderation efforts of individual social media platforms. By mapping online hate clusters across six major social media platforms, researchers at the George Washington University show how malicious content exploits pathways between platforms, highlighting the need for social media companies to rethink and adjust their content moderation policies.

Social media feed simulator Fakey teaches users to recognize credible content
2021-05-05 03:00

To improve news literacy and reduce the spread of misinformation, NYUAD Center for Cybersecurity researcher and lead author Nicholas Micallef is part of a team that designed Fakey, a game that emulates a social media news feed and prompts players to use available signals to recognize and scrutinize suspicious content and focus on credible information. The researchers found that the more players interacted with articles in the game, the better their skills at spotting credible content became.

India orders takedowns of social media posts it claims harm fight against raging COVID-19 outbreak
2021-04-26 05:34

As India battles a surging second wave of COVID-19 cases and severe shortages of medical supplies, the nation's government has told Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter to remove social media posts it says may panic its populace with misinformation. The takedown requests were lodged on Friday, a day before India recorded more than 300,000 new COVID-19 cases for the first time ever in 24 hours.

S3 Ep22: Cryptographic escapes and social media scams [Podcast]
2021-03-04 20:49

How to stop security-conscious apps from allowing unencrypted data to escape, and how scammers put social network users under pressure in order to steal their passwords. WHERE TO FIND THE PODCAST ONLINE. You can listen to us on Soundcloud, Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, Spotify, Stitcher, Overcast and anywhere that good podcasts are found.

A new approach to scanning social media helps combat misinformation
2020-12-17 04:00

Rice University researchers have discovered a more efficient way for social media companies to keep misinformation from spreading online using probabilistic filters trained with artificial intelligence. The new approach to scanning social media is outlined in a study presented by Rice computer scientist Anshumali Shrivastava and statistics graduate student Zhenwei Dai.

Terms of Use: User Privacy and the Algorithms Behind Social Media
2020-12-09 17:39

Increasingly, it isn't just people using that data to influence us, it's robots-unthinking algorithms on e-commerce sites, search engines and social media are continually categorizing our behavior to where it seems they can read our minds. The algorithms on those platforms are working behind the scenes, all the time.

Hiding Malware in Social Media Buttons
2020-12-07 12:32

This new malware was discovered by researchers at Dutch cyber-security company Sansec that focuses on defending e-commerce websites from digital skimming attacks. The payment skimmer malware pulls its sleight of hand trick with the help of a double payload structure where the source code of the skimmer script that steals customers' credit cards will be concealed in a social sharing icon loaded as an HTML 'svg' element with a 'path' element as a container.

Novel Online Shopping Malware Hides in Social-Media Buttons
2020-12-04 19:23

A payment card-skimming malware that hides inside social-media buttons is making the rounds, compromising online stores as the holiday shopping season gets underway. Once ensconced on the page, the malware behaves just like the widespread Magecart group of skimmers, with the code being parsed and run by a shopper's PC in order to harvest payment cards and any other information entered into a site's online fields, he added.