Weekend Reads 021821


A new DeadBolt ransomware group is encrypting QNAP NAS devices worldwide using what they claim is a zero-day vulnerability in the device’s software.


A simulated phishing attack against more than 82,000 workers found that emails with a personal impact resulted in more clicks and that technical teams — such as IT workers and DevOps teams — clicked just as often and reported suspected phishing attacks less often compared with nontechnical teams


Google on Tuesday announced that it is abandoning its controversial plans for replacing third-party cookies in favor of a new Privacy Sandbox proposal called Topics, which categorizes users’ browsing habits into approximately 350 topics.


NFTs continue to explode in popularity, reaching $25 billion in sales in 2021 as reported by Reuters. NFTs, or non-fungible tokens, are cryptoassets in which each token is unique.


The use in almost every aspect of human activity adds value to the need of UAS evolution, but it also increases security risks. Imagine what can happen when smart and cheap drones that anyone can easily purchase from a local hobby store become weapons at the hands of adversaries and cyber criminals.


Researchers have demonstrated a new type of fingerprinting technique that exploits a machine’s graphics processing unit (GPU) as a means to persistently track users across the web.


A regional court in the German city of Munich has ordered a website operator to pay €100 in damages for transferring a user’s personal data — i.e., IP address — to Google via the search giant’s Fonts library without the individual’s consent.


Have you considered how often your phone number has been shared? Most of us give out our cell phone numbers all the time – to friends, acquaintances, colleagues, and even big, monolithic, impersonal companies. We may even print them on business cards or list them on public forums.


If you received a link to LinkedIn.com via email, SMS or instant message, would you click it?


Meta, formerly known as Facebook, might have to entirely stop operating Instagram and Facebook in Europe, the company warned in its filings with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission.


Recently, two computer scientists had an idea: if computers use energy to perform calculations, could stored data be a form of stored energy? Why not use computing as a way to store energy?


Criminals netted $1.3 billion in ransom payments from hacking victims in the past two years, reflecting a massive surge in cybercrime that has prompted a global effort to stop it, according to a new report from Chainalysis Inc.


In the US, the number of workers quitting has now exceeded pre-pandemic highs for eight straight months, according to consumer data company Statista.


Cyber criminal gangs are getting increasingly adept at hacking and becoming more professional, even setting up an arbitration system to resolve payment disputes among themselves, according to a new report by the United States, Australia and the United Kingdom that paints a bleak picture of ransomware trends.


According to the Seattle Times, the problem began on January 30 and afflicted Mazdas from model years 2014 to 2017 when the cars were tuned to the local NPR station, KUOW 94.9. At some point during the day’s broadcast, a signal from KUOW caused the Mazdas’ infotainment systems to crash—the screens died and the radios were stuck on 94.9 FM.


French data protection regulators on Thursday found the use of Google Analytics a breach of the European Union’s General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) laws in the country, almost a month after a similar decision was reached in Austria.


After a pilot project in the past years, the world’s most widely used email services, such as Gmail and Hotmail, have adopted Brand Indicators for Message Identification (BIMI) and the Verified Mark Certificate (VMC) to heighten the digital presence for brands and ensure more security in the mailbox.


We investigate how hardware specifications can impact the final run time and the required number of physical qubits to achieve a quantum advantage in the fault tolerant regime.


Sadly, while organizations the world over constantly hope to give every Internet user a fighting chance against attackers, threat actors still find ways to poison pages supposedly touting support for data privacy protection.


Despite many advances in DNS security and privacy, Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attacks can still use spoofed DNS queries for overwhelming their victim today.