Another evolving scam. The low probability of a shotgun approach is
refined by a little research.
Ashley
Madison cyber-breach: 5 years later, users are being targeted with
‘sextortion’ scams
… Researchers at email security company Vade
Secure found the new scam earlier this year, when they saw a small
number of targeted emails with apparent information from Ashley
Madison breach victims. The scam emails seemed to be well
researched, with not just the users’ email addresses but
information like when the victim signed up, their username, and their
interests they entered on the site, said Adrien Gendre, chief product
officer for Vade Secure.
The
threats are a worrying evolution of the sextortion scam because they
appear to incorporate real information.
In
the most typical version of sextortion,
fraudsters make dubious, fictional claims about you via email. They
say they’ve recorded you in a compromising position through your
computer or that they have pictures of an alleged affair you are
having. In those cases, the criminals blast out thousands of
similar-sounding emails in hopes of persuading just one person to
fall for the trick and make a requested extortion payment. The
recordings and affairs are almost always nonexistent.
But
in the new Ashley Madison cases, Gendre said the scammers are using
carefully selected information that appear to be from real Ashley
Madison subscribers, and piecing that information into more precisely
targeted emails to those individuals. The ransomers then demand
around $1,000 in bitcoin to keep the information silent. The grain of
truth to their pitch sets the scam apart.
For
my students.
5 Free
Guides to Understand Digital Security and Protect Your Privacy
Something they could have done from the beginning
if they had thought of it.
Ring
has begun pushing out an update to its phone app with the aim of
consolidating all of its security settings, a likely response to
general privacy concerns, as well as more specific ones about
“hackers
”
who’ve hijacked
in-home
camera feeds in recent months.
The
changes, teased at CES 2020, include implementation of a “Control
Center” within the Ring app that grants customers easy access to a
variety of security options, including two-factor authentication—an
easy-to-use feature that, as Gizmodo has reported, all but entirely
prevents cameras from being hijacked remotely.
Not sure I agree.
… As
automated technologies quickly and methodically climb
out of the uncanny valley,
customer service calls, website chatbots, and interactions on social
media may become progressively less evidently artificial.
This
is already happening. In 2018, Google demoed a technology called
Duplex, which calls restaurants and hair salons to make appointments
on your behalf. At the time, Google faced
a backlash for
using an automated voice that sounds
eerily human,
even employing vocal ticks like “um,” without disclosing its
robotic nature. Perversely, today’s Duplex has the opposite
problem. The automated system does disclose itself, but at
least 40% of its calls have
humans on the phone, and it’s very easy for call recipients to
confuse those real people with AI.
As
I argue in a
new Brookings Institution paper,
there is clear and immediate value to a broad requirement of AI
disclosure in this case and many others.
Russia
wants full control of its tech areas?
Apple
has a Vladimir Putin problem
In
November 2019, Russian parliament passed what’s become known as the
“law against Apple.” The legislation will require all smartphone
devices to preload a host of applications that may provide the
Russian government with a glut of information about its citizens,
including their location, finances, and private communications.
Apple
typically forbids the preloading of third-party apps onto its
system’s hardware. But come July 2020, when the law goes into
effect, Apple will be forced to quit the country and a market
estimated at $3 billion unless it complies. This piece
of legislation,
along with a controversial law aimed at the construction of a
“sovereign
internet,”
is the latest step in Vladimir Putin’s ongoing encroachment into
digital space—and has brought Apple into direct conflict with the
autocratic Russian president.
To amuse my students.
From
a FOIA request, over a hundred old NSA
security awareness posters.
Here are the BBC's favorites.
Here are Motherboard'sfavorites.
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