Security News
UK workers are spending an extra two hours at work every day while people in the US are working three extra hours, according to an analysis of VPN data. NordVPN Teams found that people in both countries are still working the extra hours that started in April when coronavirus lockdowns started.
The US Small Business Administration has been offering loans to businesses and other groups affected by the pandemic and lockdown, turning it into a target ripe for impersonation in phishing attacks. A report published Monday by security firm Malwarebytes tracks some of the different phishing campaigns that have sought to exploit the SBA. SEE: Coronavirus: Critical IT policies and tools every business needs.
The US bans on Chinese apps TikTok and WeChat are not particularly valuable for US security, experts told AFP Friday, but could step up broader commercial pressure on Beijing and help President Donald Trump appear tough as he seeks reelection. The WeChat ban especially, they say, actually harms a large number of Chinese Americans, US-based Chinese, and businesses working with China, all for whom the app is essential to communications.
The US Senate voted Thursday to bar TikTok from being downloaded onto US government employees' telephones, intensifying US scrutiny of the popular Chinese-owned video app. President Donald Trump, who has locked horns with China on a range of issues including trade and the coronavirus pandemic, has set a deadline of mid-September for TikTok to be acquired by a US firm or be banned in the United States.
US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo on Wednesday offered a $10 million reward aimed at preventing foreign interference in the November election, as the State Department accused Russia of waging an increasingly sophisticated disinformation campaign. The reward marks one of the most public signs that members of President Donald Trump's administration are taking election meddling seriously, despite anger by Trump himself over findings that Russia has assisted him.
U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo on Wednesday called for a big expansion of U.S. government curbs on Chinese technology, saying that it wants to see "Untrusted Chinese apps" pulled from the Google and Apple app stores. Pompeo called out popular video app TikTok and the messaging app WeChat, which people in the U.S. use to communicate with others in the U.S. and China, as "Significant threats to the personal data of American citizens, not to mention tools for CCP content censorship." CCP refers to the Chinese Communist Party.
A court hearing held via Zoom for a US teenager accused of masterminding a stunning hack of Twitter was interrupted Wednesday with rap music and porn, a newspaper reported. The purpose of the hearing was to discuss reducing bail terms set for the 17 year old Tampa resident arrested last Friday over the hack last month of the accounts of major US celebrities.
Just hours after Professor Matt Blaze today discussed the state of election system security in America, one of the largest US voting machine makers stepped forward to say it's trying to improve its vulnerability research program. In addition to its ongoing vulnerabilities rewards program, ES&S said it will employ the services of security house Synack to bridge the gap with bounty hunters, and make its products better able to withstand attacks from the likes of state-sponsored groups.
China has accused the US of abusing its national security laws to target Chinese companies after Washington threatened to ban video-sharing app TikTok from its shores last week. On Saturday, the Trump administration vowed to "Close down" the Chinese-owned video-sharing app unless it is bought by a "Very American" company within 45 days.
"[The] FBI has high confidence that Chinese government actors are using malware variants in conjunction with proxy servers to maintain a presence on victim networks and to further network exploitation," the US Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, the Federal Bureau of Investigation, and the Department of Defense said in a joint advisory. The US Cyber Command has also uploaded four samples of the Taidoor RAT on the public malware repository VirusTotal to let 50+ Antivirus companies check the virus's involvement in other unattributed campaigns.