This Week in Technology
Monday 11/5
Hackers Extracted and Published Facebook Private Messages Grabbed Through Bad Browser Plug-ins
The hackers originally published an offer in September for personal information related to 120 million Facebook accounts on a English-language forum. This included a sample of data that the BBC had an expert examine, confirming that over 81,000 profiles’ private messages were included. An additional 176,000 accounts had data that could have been scraped from public Facebook pages.
https://for.tn/2PcYX20
HP blasts a supercomputer into orbit and it’s (mostly) still in one piece
Built with help from NASA, and based on HP Enterprises’ Apollo 40 servers, the supercomputer’s 32 cores all kept working all year despite the radiation of space.
http://bit.ly/2zDQQ4j
Free Symantec Service Help Election Officials and Others Stymie Cyber Attacks
Ahead of the midterm election 45% of U.S. adults said they were “very concerned” the U.S. voting system might be vulnerable to hackers.
https://symc.ly/2Ql7iNI
Tuesday 11/6
Attackers target SIP flaws in Cisco firewalls to overload devices
Cisco has said there are no patches available for the bug disclosed last week, nor any workarounds, with mitigation the only option for organizations affected. The company has set out four options for customers who may be under attack.
http://bit.ly/2Pe32mL
NVIDIA Brings the Power of GPU to Data Processing Pipelines
NVIDIA wants to fill the gaps that exist in the machine learning pipeline through RAPIDS. This open source project supported by key industry players including Anaconda, Databricks, IBM, H2O. ai, Uber and others. The project comes with tailor-made data preparation tools that can take advantage of GPUs.
http://bit.ly/2APuOx2
30,000 Android Users Infected with Banking Malware from 29 Bogus Apps
Google removed 29 malicious apps from its Play Store after learning about the threat, according to a report from ESET. Although the apps were attributed to different developers, the researchers discovered enough common code to suggest that they were all created by the same malware author or threat group.
https://ibm.co/2JJniGK
Wednesday 11/7
Ivanti Introduces Asset Manager Cloud for Full IT Asset Lifecycle Management
Ivanti Asset Manager Cloud monitors and reports on what hardware needs to be purchased, updated, and maintained so IT management can plan ahead, avoid hasty purchasing decisions, and optimize asset use operationally and fiscally.
https://prn.to/2JLXee6
Worst malware and threat actors of 2018 so far
The worst botnets and banking trojans, according to Webroot, were Emotet, Trickbot, and Zeus Panda. Crysis/Dharma, GandCrab, and SamSam were the worst among ransomware. The top three in cryptomining/cryptojacking were GhostMiner, Wanna Mine, and Coinhive.
http://bit.ly/2QvG1bL
HSBC customer accounts compromised in data breach
Less than 1% of the bank’s U.S. customers were affected by the breach, the company confirmed to BBC on Tuesday.
https://on.mktw.net/2PHO73K
Login VSI Announces Release 3 of Login PI for Proactive Monitoring
Login PI was introduced in 2016 and uses synthetic users running 24/7, to test and safeguard the performance and availability of virtual desktop infrastructures and associated business applications. Login PI detects, and alerts to, changes in logon times and actual tasks-in-an-application processing.
http://bit.ly/2qyeaMt
Thursday 11/8
Microsoft Broke Windows 10 Again, Despite Warnings From Windows Insiders
The bug in question breaks file associations, preventing certain file types from opening with the default programs you choose. For example, not being able to associate Adobe Photoshop with image files, Notepad++ with text files or VLC with .mp4 files.
http://bit.ly/2PlzaFj
Cisco removed its seventh backdoor account this year, and that’s a good thing
In the majority of cases, the backdoor accounts were nothing more than debugging profiles that have been left inside Cisco software/firmware after factory testing or debugging operations.
https://zd.net/2DsduRn
Hackers infect nearly 700,000 sites with Bitcoin-stealing malware
In a targeted attack, hackers breached StatCounter to such an extent that over 688,000 websites were caught loading the malicious script, ZDNet reports.
http://bit.ly/2PLefdP
Friday 11/9
Users Stop Engaging with Brands After Data Breaches, Report Finds
According to the Ping Identity 2018 Consumer Survey, 78 percent of consumers reported they would stop engaging with a brand online after a data breach.
http://bit.ly/2RJuN3q
Amazon and Cisco have a new product for companies that aren’t ready to fully embrace the cloud
The broad trend they're [Cisco] playing into with the new offering is around containers, a modern way for developers to move code between machines. Amazon offers a service for deploying containers on servers in its data centers, and Cisco has developed software that works on servers that companies manage themselves.
https://cnb.cx/2z1P2m6
Symantec Uncovers New Cyber Espionage group Targeting Government, Military and Defense Sectors
Gallmaker shuns malware to compromise organizations, instead relying on publicly available hack tools and software already installed on targeted computers. Such techniques, known as living off the land, have become increasingly popular for attackers, as they can be difficult for traditional security tools to detect.
http://bit.ly/2OzI4JH