By: Zack Whittaker
"The data breach at Capital One may be the “tip of the iceberg” and may affect other major companies, according to security researchers. Israeli security firm CyberInt said Vodafone, Ford, Michigan State University and the Ohio Department of Transportation may have also fallen victim to the same data breach that saw more than 106 million credit applications and files copied from a cloud server run by Capital One by an alleged hacker, Paige Thompson, a Seattle resident, who was taken into FBI custody earlier this week."
By: Diana Bradley
"Marketers are using LinkedIn to help their peers laid off by Uber this week find new jobs. Michael Houck, product manager at Airbnb Plus, created a Google Sheet and shared it on LinkedIn on Wednesday. One tab, labeled "candidates," includes a list of 243 of the 400 staffers who were affected, as well as their LinkedIn details. The other tab, labeled "roles," lists open jobs."
By: Jeff Stone
"There’s at least one part of the financial sector where hackers are good for business.
Direct cyber insurance premiums grew to $2 billion last year, up 26 percent since 2015, according to figures published July 25 by Moody’s Investors Service. That figure represents less than 1 percent of premium insurance revenue in the U.S., but it’s clear the increasing claims over the past three years are driven largely by concerns about data breaches, distributed denial-of-service attacks and, perhaps most notably, ransomware."
By: Lee Matthews
"Ransomware continues to menace public and private computer networks around the globe. This week an incident in Louisiana prompted a dramatic response from Governor John Bel Edwards. On Wednesday, Gov. Edwards declared a state of emergency after "severe, intentional security breaches" hit school computer systems in the Parishes of Oachita (City of Monroe School District), Morehouse and Sabine. Phone systems were reportedly also disrupted."
By: Anna Washenko
"Voice assistants are growing in popularity, but the technology has been experiencing a parallel rise in concerns about privacy and accuracy. Apple’s Siri is the latest to enter this gray space of tech. This week, The Guardian reported that contractors who review Siri recordings for accuracy and to help make improvements may be hearing personal conversations."
By: Catalin Cimpanu & Angelica Mari
"Four suspects have been arrested in Brazil this week for hacking into over 1,000 Telegram accounts, including some owned by Brazilian government officials, such as Brazil President Jair Bolsonaro, Justice Minister Sergio Moro, and Economy Minister Paulo Guedes. Other lower-ranking politicians such as congresswoman Joice Hasselmann, a key ally of President Bolsonaro and Minister Moro, also claimed to have been targeted earlier this week."
Wall Street Journal: ‘Deepfakes’ Trigger a Race to Fight Manipulated Photos and Videos
"Startup companies, government agencies and academics are racing to combat so-called deepfakes, amid fears that doctored videos and photographs will be used to sow discord ahead of next year’s U.S. presidential election."
Motherboard: One Million Bank Phone Calls Found in Exposed Server
By: Joseph Cox
"The calls contain employees from Bank of Cardiff, based in California, talking to potential customers about business loans and other sensitive conversations. A bank has left more than one million audio recordings of phone calls seemingly made by bank employees exposed to the open internet, letting anyone listen in on sensitive conversations, including ones with potential customers."
By: Nicholas Wells & Leslie Picker
"We’ve all done it: When signing up for an account online, we’ve clicked “I agree” to have our data sold to third parties. It will be anonymized, we’re assured, and only a small percentage of data will be made available to others. But how secure can we be that our personal data can’t be traced back to us? That’s the central question that a team of researchers at Université catholique de Louvain in Belgium and Imperial College London sought to answer."
"Have you ever been in a public place and hopped onto a public WiFi network?
We conducted a survey of 1,195 US residents over the past two weeks asking about internet connectivity and one interesting trend stood out. 82% of respondents (980 total) said they connect to any freely available network while out in public. When asked about the security implications of such a decision, the majority of the respondents said they didn't think about such things, and that it wasn't a concern for them."