Russian hacker group Digital Revolution claims to have breached a contractor for the FSB — Russia’s national intelligence service — and discovered details about a project intended for hacking Internet of Things (IoT) devices. From a report: The group published this week 12 technical documents, diagrams, and code fragments for a project called “Fronton.” ZDNet has not seen the documents first…
Tag: contractor
Hack Turns Apple’s iPhone Into An Android
Ten years ago, David Wang pulled off a remarkable trick, installing Android on the first-generation iPhone. Now Wang and his colleagues at cybersecurity startup Corellium are doing it again with the ostentatiously titled Project Sandcastle. From a report: And Forbes got an exclusive hands-on look at their Android for iPhone product ahead of its public release scheduled for later this Wednesday….
Major Republican Donor Seeks Ouster of Twitter’s CEO
Jack Dorsey co-founded Twitter in 2006, coding up the first prototype (with the help of a contractor) when he was still in his 20s. Dorsey’s now it’s CEO — but “A major Republican donor has purchased a stake in Twitter and is reportedly seeking to oust him,” reports the Guardian. Bloomberg News first reported that Elliott Management has taken a “sizable…
Skype Audio Graded by Workers in China With ‘No Security Measures’
A Microsoft program to transcribe and vet audio from Skype and Cortana, its voice assistant, ran for years with “no security measures,” according to a former contractor who says he reviewed thousands of potentially sensitive recordings on his personal laptop from his home in Beijing over the two years he worked for the company. From a report: The recordings, both deliberate…
NASA contractor settles whistleblower complaint for $375,000
A NASA contractor on Monday agreed to pay $375,000 in order to settle a whistleblower complaint that accused the company of falsely certifying that ground support equipment for a rocket launch system followed the space agency’s requirements. Source: https://phys.org/news/2020-01-nasa-contractor-whistleblower-complaint.html…
IT Worker With Grudge Jailed
A former Jet2 IT contractor with a grudge has been jailed for a cyber-attack on the company. From a report: Scott Burns, 27, of Queen Street in Morley, Leeds, was jailed for 10 months for his actions, which cost the company $214,000. The attack shut down Jet2’s computer network for 12 hours in January 2018. Burns wanted revenge for the firm’s…
Facebook Fired a Contractor Who Was Paid Thousands In Bribes To Reactivate Banned Ad Accounts
BuzzFeed News has found that a Facebook contractor was paid thousands of dollars in bribes by a shady affiliate marketer to reactivate ad accounts that had been banned due to policy violations. From the report: A company spokesperson confirmed that an unnamed worker was fired after inquiries from BuzzFeed News sparked an internal investigation. The person in question was based in…
Trump Administration Drops Plans For Mandatory Face Scans of Citizens
schwit1 shares a report from U.S. News & World Report: The Department of Homeland Security is dropping plans to propose a regulation requiring all travelers — including U.S. citizens — to have their photos taken and faces scanned by facial recognition technology when entering and exiting the country, according to multiple reports. The proposed rule was slated to be issued in…
What Happened After The Explosion at a Virology Campus in Siberia?
Lasrick writes: You may remember the explosion at VECTOR, once a center of Soviet biological warfare research. Filippa Lentzos, senior research fellow jointly appointed in the Departments of War Studies and of Global Health and Social Medicine at King’s College London, just posted an update on what happened after the explosion. Her research focuses on biological threats and on the security…
‘Pre-Crime’ AI Is Driving ‘Industrial-Scale Human Rights Abuses’ In China’s Xinjiang Province
Long-time Slashdot reader clawsoon writes: Among Sunday’s releases from the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists on leaked Chinese documents about the detention of Xinjiang Uighurs — which they are calling the largest mass internment of an ethnic-religious minority since World War II — is a section on detention by algorithm which “is more than a ‘pre-crime’ platform, but a ‘machine-learning, artificial…