From The Blog
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NetSPI’s Offensive Security Offering Leverages Subject Matter Experts to Enhance Pen Testing
Written by Sean KalinichBlack Hat 2023 Las Vegas. The term offensive security has always been an interesting one for me. On the surface is brings to mind reaching…Written on Tuesday, 12 September 2023 17:05 in Security Talk Read 747 times Read more...
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Black Kite Looks to Offer a Better View of Risk in a Rapidly Changing Threat Landscape
Written by Sean KalinichBlack Hat 2023 – Las Vegas. Risk is an interesting subject and has many different meanings to many different people. For the most part Risk…Written on Tuesday, 12 September 2023 14:56 in Security Talk Read 382 times Read more...
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Microsoft Finally Reveals how they Believe a Consumer Signing Key was Stollen
Written by Sean KalinichIn May of 2023 a few sensitive accounts reported to Microsoft that their environments appeared to be compromised. Due to the nature of these accounts,…Written on Thursday, 07 September 2023 14:40 in Security Talk Read 739 times Read more...
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Mandiant Releases a Detailed Look at the Campaign Targeting Barracuda Email Security Gateways, I Take a Look at What this all Might Mean
Written by Sean KalinichThe recent attack that leveraged a 0-Day vulnerability to compromise a number of Barracuda Email Security Gateway appliances (physical and virtual, but not cloud) was…Written on Wednesday, 30 August 2023 16:09 in Security Talk Read 557 times Read more...
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Threat Groups Return to Targeting Developers in Recent Software Supply Chain Attacks
Written by Sean KalinichThere is a topic of conversation that really needs to be talked about in the open. It is the danger of developer systems (personal and…Written on Wednesday, 30 August 2023 13:29 in Security Talk Read 682 times Read more...
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Leaked Data from Duolingo incident Shows US is most Impacted
Written by Sean KalinichDuolingo, is a language learning site (not to be confused with an LLM) and has a very large base of users. The site is a…Written on Tuesday, 29 August 2023 19:12 in Security Talk Read 1099 times Read more...
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We talk about the Ransomware Threat Landscape with SecureWorks at Black Hat 2023
Written by Sean KalinichBlack Hat 2023 – Las Vegas, NV – One of my personal focuses is understanding the “Why” behind changes in the threat landscape. In simple…Written on Tuesday, 29 August 2023 18:26 in Security Talk Read 611 times Read more...
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Now Patched Flaw Leverages Abandoned Reply URL found in Entra ID allows for Privilege Escalation
Written by Sean KalinichMicrosoft has not been having the greatest of months. First it was identified that a stollen MSA signing key was used by a Nation State…Written on Monday, 28 August 2023 15:39 in Security Talk Read 1323 times Read more...
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Qrypt Looking to Attack the Inefficiencies in Quantum Encryption to make Quantum Secure Communication a Reality Today
Written by Sean KalinichBlack Hat 2023, Las Vegas – At Black Hat one of my favorite things to do is see what the latest buzzword(s)/phrases are. One of…Written on Monday, 28 August 2023 12:53 in Security Talk Read 824 times Read more...
Recent Comments
- Sean, this is a fantastic review of a beautiful game. I do agree with you… Written by Jacob 2023-05-19 14:17:50 Jedi Survivor – The Quick, Dirty, and Limited Spoilers Review
- Great post. Very interesting read but is the reality we are currently facing. Written by JP 2023-05-03 02:33:53 The Dangers of AI; I Think I Have Seen this Movie Before
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Displaying items by tag: Privacy
Let’s Talk a Minute About Meta’s Threads and the Data it Wants
Yesterday (July 5, 2023) Social Networking Giant, Meta launched their competitor to Twitter. This new app is a companion app to Instagram called threads. Ironically, Twitter had a lot of buzz about the new app including from people that routinely talk about how terrible Twitter is under Elon Musk. These Twitter detractors have been posting count down timers, information on how to ensure you can be on threads as soon as it launches and more. It is interesting, if not a bit funny, to see the dialog there. However, there is a very dark cloud (heavy black and pendulous) over the green pastures of Meta’s Threads. This is the very serious concern about Privacy and Security.
Google Says they Will Fight Doxxing, With Some Conditions of Course
Google is an odd company. They have used the personal vs corporate data ownership line like a jump rope over the years. We have watched them for a long time and all we can say is that their track record on protecting personal information and privacy has been both good and bad with them being on the bad side for most of recent history. After being a vehement opposer of bills like SOPA (Stop Online Piracy Act) and PIPA (Protect our Intellectual Property Act) they quickly dropped those stances and started facilitating blanket takedown noticed from the MPAA (now the MPA) and RIAA. The blanket notices often came from law firms that provided little more than links to Google which Google then removed from their search engine and YouTube.
Google Message and Phone Dialer App Quietly Collecting User Data without Consent
Once again Google has been caught with their hands in the personal data collection cookie jar. It seems that their Messages and Phone Dialer Apps were sending information about your calls and messages without giving the user any chance to opt-out of this data collection. They also perform this data collection without any user notification at all.
DuckDuckGo Makes Changes after Increased Pressure from US Lawmakers
DuckDuckGo, the privacy-focused search engine and browser company, has come under a lot of negative press recently and now are facing pressure from the US government. They have already been labeled as a search engine for “conspiracy theorists” by many media outlets despite not really catering to any one group of people. The reality of the search engine is that it is attractive to people that are not happy with increased data collection from groups like Google, Facebook, and many, many others. A benefit of this is that, until now, DuckDuckGo has also not altered or censored search results based on current political motivations or narratives.
Google Finds a Sneaky Way to Keep Tracking Paid Workspace Users
Google has a bit of a history (understatement) of abusing data collection and sneaking in ways to continue collecting data on its users. This type of collection is all in service to their ad business. They want to be able to send targeted ads to users and the only way to do that is to collection information about them. This pattern of behavior has led to more than one lawsuit in the past based on the way they word turning features on or off and what they collect. Even Google’s current proposed solution to excessive data collection for targeted ads is confusing and seems like nothing more than a way to maintain control of the collection process.
Meta Makes Changes to Instagram Daily Time Limit Warnings after Disappointing Revenue Report
Recently Mark Zuckerberg had to admit that Meta not only had lost a significant amount of money but stood to lose more as changes in attitudes around personal data privacy and targeted ads are changing. In the EU privacy protection laws have impacted Meta in, to them, negative ways. Meta has made what could be interpreted as a threat to pull their services from the EU, it some agreement cannot be reached. They are also upset at Apple after Apple made the outrageous, again to Meta, decision to allow users to opt-in to cross app tracking. This means that Meta’s current data collection schemes are at risk.
Concerned about Android Tracking? You Can Remove your Ad ID in Android 12 and Up to Help with This
After Google talked about their response to Apple requiring user acceptance for cross app tracking on mobile devices, the internet sort of exploded with different articles about the pros and cons of each. We wrote about this 2 days ago and gave out thoughts on both solutions. You can read the full article, or just read on for the summation. In short, Apple requiring a user to explicitly allow an app to perform cross tracking and data collection is better than Google’s current plan to collect everything and allow controlled access to the data via API. Google’s plan has even brought up the specter of anti-competition laws as they would literally control all the data on a mobile device. Yes, it is that bad.
After Apple Unveils Privacy Features that Block Meta Tracking, Google Says they Can Do it Too
A couple of weeks ago Meta, Facebook’s parent company, announced that they were losing money (to the tune of $10 Billion) due to changes in the way Apple mobile devices handle user tracking by apps. The move by Apple was a bit of a surprise considering some of Apple’s history, but when you consider that Apple and Meta will probably be VR competitors it was not that much of one. The announcement also caused many to wonder if Google would follow suit.
Is Firefox Going away and Taking Privacy Options with It?
Firefox was once one of the leading “alternative” browsers on the internet. After the death of Netscape Firefox came along and offered people an alternative to the building Windows Internet Explorer and even to Safari on macOS. This trend continued into the mobile arena, at least until Google launched the Chrome Browser. Although Chrome had a bit of a rocky start (with clear indications of data collection), it has grown in popularity and gobble up about 64% of the browsing on the internet.
Meta Settles 2012 Data Privacy Lawsuit to the Tune of $90 Million.
Meta (Facebook) has a long history of privacy and other abuses of the platform they control. We have seen everything from abusing facial recognition technology to tracking users’ internet history after existing the platform. These types of abuses are concerning for both obvious and not so obvious reasons. On the surface the collection of personal information outside of actual platform use by Facebook is not a good thing, but when you also roll in the fact that large tech groups like Facebook also share information with government agencies freely and without recourse it makes the problem larger.