How Facebook Silenced an Enemy of Turkey To Prevent a Hit To the Company’s Business

Long-time Slashdot reader schwit1 shares this report from ProPublica: As Turkey launched a military offensive against Kurdish minorities in neighboring Syria in early 2018, Facebook’s top executives faced a political dilemma. Turkey was demanding the social media giant block Facebook posts from the People’s Protection Units, a mostly Kurdish militia group the Turkish government had targeted. Should Facebook ignore the request,…

SolarWinds’ Former CEO Blames Intern for ‘solarwinds123’ Password Leak

“Current and former top executives at SolarWinds are blaming a company intern for a critical lapse in password security that apparently went undiagnosed for years,” reports CNN. The password in question, “solarwinds123,” was discovered in 2019 on the public internet by an independent security researcher who warned the company that the leak had exposed a SolarWinds file server… It is still…

SolarWinds Hack Was ‘Largest and Most Sophisticated Attack’ Ever, Microsoft President Says

A hacking campaign that used a U.S. tech company as a springboard to compromise a raft of U.S. government agencies is “the largest and most sophisticated attack the world has ever seen,” Microsoft Corp President Brad Smith said. From a report: The operation, which was identified in December and that the U.S. government has said was likely orchestrated by Russia, breached…

How the NSA’s Hubris Left America Vulnerable

A new book promises “the untold story of the cyberweapons market — the most secretive, invisible, government-backed market on earth — and a terrifying first look at a new kind of global warfare.” Its author — a New York Times cybersecurity reporter — shares the book’s story about David Evenden, a former National Security Agency analyst who later worked in Abu…

Amazon’s Next CEO Says He’s Committed To Making Video Games

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Bloomberg: One day before he was named the next chief executive officer ofAmazon.com Inc., Andy Jassy reaffirmed his commitment to making video games while acknowledging the stark challenges the team has faced, according to an email to staff reviewed by Bloomberg. Jassy expressed support for Mike Frazzini, the head of Amazon Game Studios and…

Scientists create spinach that can send emails

A recent experiment has produced spinach plants capable of sending information over a network. The unorthodox experiment concerns a relatively niche a… Source: https://www.unexplained-mysteries.com/news/343620/scientists-create-spinach-that-can-send-emails…

Dutch COVID-19 Patient Data Sold on the Criminal Underground

Dutch police arrested two individuals late last week for allegedly selling data from the Dutch health ministry’s COVID-19 systems on the criminal underground. From a report: The arrests came after an investigation by RTL Nieuws reporter Daniel Verlaan who discovered ads for Dutch citizen data online, advertised on instant messaging apps like Telegram, Snapchat, and Wickr. The ads consisted of photos…

Researchers Test UN’s Cybersecurity, Find Personal Data On 100K Employees

chicksdaddy shares a report from The Security Ledger: Independent security researchers testing the security of the United Nations were able to compromise public-facing servers and a cloud-based GitHub development account used by the U.N. and lift data on more than 100,000 staff and employees, according to a report by The Security Ledger. Researchers affiliated with Sakura Samurai, a newly formed collective…

Ubiquiti Tells Customers To Change Passwords After Security Breach

An anonymous reader quotes a report from ZDNet: Networking equipment and IoT device vendor Ubiquiti Networks has sent out today notification emails to its customers informing them of a recent security breach. “We recently became aware of unauthorized access to certain of our information technology systems hosted by a third party cloud provider,” Ubiquiti said in emails today. The servers stored…

After the Riot, the US Capitol’s IT Staff Faces ‘a Security Mess’

After Wednesday’s invasion by protesters, America’s Capitol building is now grappling with “the process of securing the offices and digital systems after hundreds of people had unprecedented access to them,” writes Wired. Long-time Slashdot reader SonicSpike shares their report: Rioters could have bugged congressional offices, exfiltrated data from unlocked computers, or installed malware on exposed devices. In the rush to evacuate…