Security News Bites for the Week Ending August 31, 2018
Spyware Company Leaves Terabytes of Data Unprotected
Spyfone, a software company that allows parents to spy on their kids, spouses to spy on each other and employers to spy on employees allowed the world to spy on everyone.
The data left exposed on Amazon included photos, text messages, contacts, location information, Facebook messages and other information.
In addition to leaving all of their customer’s data exposed, their own backend servers were also left unprotected.
I guess you might call it Karma for spying on people. Source: Motherboard.
California Tech Execs Pushing Feds to Reverse Cali Privacy Law
Between GDPR, CCPA and other new privacy laws, the tech industry is concerned that their business model is at risk.
As a result Google, Microsoft, IBM, Facebook and others are lobbying aggressively to the Trump administration and Congress to pass a weak federal privacy law that would usurp California’s law and make it easier for those companies to continue their business model as is.
Whatever happens in DC (don’t count on anything happening, but you never know), that won’t affect the changes in Europe and many other countries that are passing similar laws to the EU to allow those countries to do business with the EU. Those laws will impact US businesses if they have customers in those countries. While they could create one policy for the US and another for the rest of the world, that would be complicated.
Historically DC has tried to pass a national privacy law, but those past attempts have been much weaker than existing state laws, which has made it difficult to get enough votes to pass it. A tough law will be heavily lobbied against. This is why, unlike most other countries in the world, we have no national privacy law. Source: NY Times .
Senator Wyden Confirms Stingrays Interfere with 911 Calls
Harris Communications, maker of the Stingray has confirmed that the feature which is designed to stop the Stingray from interfering with 911 calls was never tested and never confirmed to work.
Comforting.
As if that wasn’t a big enough problem, hobbyists can build a DIY Stingray for less than $1,000 in parts.
And, foreign spies are already using them in Washington, DC.
WHAT. COULD, GO, WRONG?? Source: Tech Crunch
Apple Forces Facebook VPN App Out of App Store
Facebook recently bought a company named Onavo that makes a VPN app. The claim is that it makes your browsing experience a more secure browsing experience.
Only problem is that they had an ulterior motive. They – Facebook – was collecting data on every web page the user visited, every app that you used, every bit of data that you transferred. While the bad guys couldn’t eavesdrop, Facebook could. And did.
Well apparently Apple had enough of the duplicity and told Facebook to either voluntarily withdraw the app or they would do it for Facebook. The app is now gone for iPhone users. It is still available to Android users. Source: The Hacker News.
by 