Security News
The US Financial Industry Regulatory Authority has issued a regulatory notice warning US brokerage firms and brokers of an ongoing phishing campaign using fake compliance audit alerts to harvest information. The domain used in these ongoing phishing attacks was registered just two days ago, on March 3rd, using the NameCheap domain name registrar.
Government imposter scams now come with a new twist that has the potential to make them even more effective, as the Inspector General for the Social Security Administration warns. According to reports received by the Office of the Inspector General, the scammers' tactics arsenal has been updated to include the use of fake IDs designed to look like those used by Federal employees.
An artificial intelligence commission led by former Google CEO Eric Schmidt is urging the U.S. to boost its AI skills to counter China, including by pursuing "AI-enabled" weapons - something that Google itself has shied away from on ethical grounds. "We have to develop technology that preserves our Western values, but we have to be prepared for a world in which not everyone is doing that," said Andrew Moore, a commissioner and the head of Google Cloud AI. The group has the ear of top lawmakers from both parties, but has attracted criticism for including many members who work for tech companies with big government contracts, and who thus have a lot at stake in federal rules on emerging technology.
The CEO of Gab, a social network favored by the US political right, said the platform had been attacked by "Demon hackers" after an activist group released user data described as an important resource for research on the far right. The activist group called DDoSecrets Collective released the data over the weekend to Wired magazine, claiming it offered "a record of the culture" related to the violent siege of the US Capitol on January 6.
State and local governments will be required to spend a portion of nearly $1.9 billion in annual federal public safety grants on the fight against domestic extremism and improved cybersecurity, the Department of Homeland Security said Thursday. Secretary of Homeland Security Alejandro Mayorkas said it was the first time since the agency, which was created in response to the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, had directed that domestic violent extremism be specified as a national priority in programs to help state and local law enforcement agencies respond to emergencies.
The murder of Washington Post columnist Jamal Khashoggi, which is said to be have been aided by digital surveillance, was ordered by the head of the Saudi Arabian government, US intelligence has publicly asserted. Last week, Uncle Sam's Office of the Director of National Intelligence released a statement fingering Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman for orchestrating the killing, which a lawsuit claims was aided by tracking technology provided by spyware biz NSO Group.
I checked in with Morgan Wright, chief security advisor for SentinelOne, a cybersecurity provider; Chris Roberts, hacker in residence at Semperis, a cybersecurity provider; and Alexander García-Tobar, CEO and co-founder of Valimail, a secure email provider, to obtain their insights on what the new administration's cybersecurity priorities should be. As a leader in identity-based anti-phishing solutions, Valimail is particularly focused on email security best practices, as well as email security within the U.S. election infrastructure.
TikTok's Chinese parent company ByteDance has agreed to pay $92 million in a settlement to U.S. users who are part of a class-action lawsuit alleging that the video-sharing app failed to get their consent to collect data in violation of a strict Illinois privacy law. The federal lawsuit alleged that TikTok broke the Illinois biometric privacy law, which allows suits against companies that harvest consumer data without consent, including via facial and fingerprint scanning.
The US Federal Reserve suffered a massive IT systems outage today that prevented wire transfers, ACH transactions, and other services from operating. When performing a US wire transfer or ACH withdrawal/deposit, the transaction first goes through the Federal Reserve Bank systems who facilitate the transaction.
The US Federal Reserve suffered a massive IT systems outage today that prevented wire transfers, ACH transactions, and other services from operating. When performing a US wire transfer or ACH withdrawal/deposit, the transaction first goes through the Federal Reserve Bank systems who facilitate the transaction.