Cyber Bites

Announced last week, Portland City Council has banned both personal and public use of facial recognition software. This ban will come into effect at the start of 2021 and the council will fine anyone caught using such technologies $1,000 a day of use. Portland is the fourth city to pass such laws alongside San Fransisco, Oakland and Boston. However, Portland's law is the first to include corporations as well. The council voted unanimously for the...

French law enforcement have deployed malware to Encrochat devices in the effort to infiltrate criminal networks. Encrochat is largely used on Andriod phones using an encrypted network for communication, hence its popularity within organised crime including drug trafficking. The malware deployed has the ability to harvest all the data sorted on the phone from messages and geolocations to passwords. This hacking operation has been said to be one of the biggest in law enforcement to...

Researchers discovered four flaws in TikTok's Android app which made users vulnerable to benign third-party Android apps. These flaws allowed attackers to possibly compromise a target's TikTok account, along with access to their private messages and videos on the app. These flaws also allowed the attackers to override the app's permission settings, allowing them to access all pictures, videos, contacts, web browser downloads and recording functions of the user's device. The flaws were discovered by...

A survey of 13,000 remote workers conducted by Trend Micro has discovered that almost 40% are accessing company data from their personal computers, tablets and phones. This could be potentially damaging to a company as such devices often don't have the necessary security software to protect the device and the information on it. What's more, 36% claimed that they didn't password-protect their personal devices putting this information at even more risk. These findings show companies...

Social media giants are coming together to fight against misinformation in lieu of the US election in November. The most recent platform to join the likes of Facebook and Google is Twitter which will prohibit any information about presumed winners pre-election in an effort to fight the spread of misinformation. This is a new rule for Twitter, who currently only count misinformation tweets as anything that can cause direct harm. However, such tweets that fall...

Fairfax County Public Schools are working alongside the FBI to investigate a ransomware attack on their technology system. The schools were targeted by a hacking group who admitted to stealing information from the school district. FCPS said “we are taking this matter very seriously and are working diligently to address the issue”, in a statement on Friday. The schools said that that system “may have been victimized by cybercriminals who have been connected to dozens of...

The use of online services as a result of the coronavirus has increased exponentially compared to this time last year. However, the risk of cyber-attacks has also increased along with it. This has particularly been the case within the healthcare industry as patients take their appointments online via video/phone calls, also known as telehealth. This service has become massively popular in the last few months. According to the U.S. Department of Health, the number of...

The government has announced that their new contact-tracing app for coronavirus will be launched from 24th September across England and Wales. The app will allow people to scan QR codes to register their visits to hospitality venues, such as restaurants, libraries and leisure centres, and it will utilise Google and Apple's methods of detecting other smartphones. This scheme will require businesses to display QR code posters around their venues to help support the app. The...

Since the COVID-19 pandemic, Indian companies have reported more cyberattacks than any other country, with 56% reporting a rise in their IT costs in recent months. This is two times the global average, according to the Acronis Cyber Readiness Report 2020. The report also provides some key findings which highlight that 92% of companies globally have begun using technology which enables them to work remotely, with technology covering areas such as privacy solutions, endpoint security...

Emma Heathcote-James who owns and runs "The Little Soap Co.' on Instagram was made aware of a clone account selling the same products and acting as her when she was mistakably tagged in images on the fake account. Alarmingly the page looked exactly the same with the only difference being an extra 'o' added to the end of the 'Co'. The cloned account was seemingly set up to scam Heathcote-Jame's customers into sending them money...