TikTok has decided to settle a lawsuit with several law firms in the US by agreeing to pay $92 mn. The lawsuit claimed that the app captures biometric and private user data and passes it on to third parties. The settlement. which needs to be approved by a court, also requires TikTok to initiate a new privacy compliance training program. Tiktok denied the allegations and said that they rather focus on building a safe community than going through lengthy litigation.
Category: Security (page 1 of 43)
Trend Micro said it detected 119,000 cyber threats per min which lead to the blocking of over 62.6 bn threats in 2020. In this, email-borne threats made up 91%, attacks and about 14mn unique phishing URLs were detected. Attacks on home networks rose 210% to reach nearly 2.9 bn. Newly detected ransomware families increased by 34%, with “double extortion” attacks. Govt, banking, manufacturing and healthcare were some of the most targeted sectors.
IBM said India faced the second-highest number of cyberattacks in the Asia Pacific in 2020 after Japan, constituting about 7% of all attacks in the region. The finance and insurance sectors were the most targeted followed by manufacturing and professional services. According to IBM’s 2021 X-Force Threat Intelligence Index, 40% of all attacks were ransomware attacks. The remote working and learning introduced due to pandemic have to lead to a surge in the number of cyberattacks.
At the US Senate panel, executives at SolarWinds, Microsoft and FireEye and CrowdStrike defended their actions in breaches that were blamed on Russian hackers and sought to shift responsibility elsewhere in testimony. The executives demanded transparency and information-sharing about breaches, asked for protection and a system that does not punish those who come forward. The hack targeted about 100 US firms and nine federal agencies.
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Snap hits a $100 bn valuation following rising usage and a rebounding market for digital ads. The app’s active users soared to 265 mn in Q4 2020, which is 22% up from the same period last year. The revenue growth for this year is expected to accelerate from 46% in 2020. There is ample room for its revenue to grow, thanks to products like Discover, Maps and Spotlight. The company is now worth more than four-fifths of companies in the S&P 500 Index.
With clients investing heavily in network defences after the sophisticated cyber-attack by suspected Russian hackers that uncovered vulnerabilities in software supply chains, Palo Alto Networks reported its first $1 bn quarter of revenue. Sales escalated by 25% to $1.02 bn, according to Bloomberg, which is the biggest YOY increase in seven quarters. Over 18,000 SolarWinds clients were exposed to Russian malware in the recent past.
A mysterious malware has affected nearly 30,000 Apple Macs. Researchers, alarmingly, has no idea of how the malware is going to infected the laptops. Named ‘Silver Sparrow’, the malware comes with a mechanism to self-destruct itself, making it high-stealth operations. It has been, so far, reported in 153 countries, mainly in the US, UK, Canada, France and Germany. Silver Sparrow also runs on Apple’s new M1 chips but lacks payload.
The growing interest in cryptocurrency has led cybercriminals to apply their knowledge to mine Bitcoin and Ethereum. There were only 10% more attacks than in Q4 2020 YoY. However, there was a drop of 31% in attacks in the period against Q3 2020, according to Kaspersky. Due to the surge in cryptocurrency costs, some botnets might have been reprofiled by cybercriminals so that the C&C servers used in DDoS attacks could be used to mine cryptocurrencies.
Cybersecurity experts have warned that hackers may attempt to send malicious code disguising it as an app to join the new Clubhouse app. There are privacy concerns for this invite-only audio conversation app as it is the work of a Shanghai-based firm Agora to provide real-time audio tech. The clubhouse has seen over 8 mn users on Apple devices.