Security News
A Russian scumbag found guilty of hacking into LinkedIn, Dropbox, and Formspring - and stealing data on over 200 million users - has been sent down for more than seven years. Yevgeniy Nikulin was sentenced to 88 months in an American prison by a federal court in San Francisco this week though the judge in this case, William Alsup, was surprisingly kind about the 32-year-old Russian.
A U.S. district judge has dismissed New Mexico's privacy claims against Google over privacy concerns, but New Mexico's top prosecutor vowed Monday to continue the legal fight to protect child privacy rights. "The law is clear that Google must protect our children's privacy, and we strongly disagree with the court's ruling," New Mexico Attorney General Hector Balderas said in a statement to The Associated Press.
The attack involved ransomware - Ryuk ransomware, to be more specific. Ryk extension and another employee described a ransom note that points to Ryuk ransomware.
UHS insists patient care continues to be delivered and that "No patient or employee data appears to have been accessed, copied or otherwise compromised." A UHS spokesperson declined to provide further details or to comment on unsubstantiated claims made via social media suggesting the involvement of the Ryuk ransomware family.
With a ban of the app set to take place just before midnight on Sunday, a judge in the US District Court for Washington, D.C., earlier in the day found in favor of an injunction filed by TikTok owner ByteDance challenging an executive order from Donald Trump. Signed by Trump on Aug. 6, 2020, the order would have prohibited any US app store from distributing or maintaining the TikTok app, code, or updates.
Foreign-backed disinformation campaigns will spread fake news about the results of the upcoming US election in an effort to sow doubt and outrage among the American public. The two agencies believe that in the immediate aftermath of the presidential election on November 3, Americans will be bombarded with false stories about the vote tally, reports of voter fraud, and other issues that would stoke division as the country awaits official election results - a process that could take weeks.
In one instance, Facebook removed 35 pages, 18 groups, 214 users as well as 34 accounts on Instagram. As part of the announcement, Facebook also revealed details about the number of followers and advertising expenditures related to these accounts.
An unspecified US government agency was hacked by a miscreant who appears to have made off with archives of information. This is according to Uncle Sam's Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, which on Thursday went into technical detail on how an intruder: broke into staffers' Office 365 accounts; gained access the agency's internal network via its VPN; and installed malware and exfiltrated data.
TikTok is urging a federal court to block US President Donald Trump from banning the video app, arguing the move is motivated by election politics rather than legitimate national security concerns. The Chinese-owned app - which is wildly popular in the US - has come under fire as tensions escalate between Beijing and Washington, with Trump threatening a ban if it is not sold to an American company.
Facebook said Tuesday it derailed a network of fakes accounts out of China that had recently taken aim at the US presidential race. The takedown came as part of the social networks fight against "Coordinated inauthentic behavior" and marked the first time Facebook had seen such a campaign based in China targeting US politics, according to head of security policy Nathaniel Gleicher.