Security News Bites for the Week Ending May 19, 2023
Part Time Hackers Get Rich
A business email compromise hacking group, based in Israel, is so good that it only needs to work part time. Only targeting large companies and their executives, the average haul for this team is $712,000. The overall average from BEC attacks is only $65,000. Learn their success strategy and avoid becoming their next victim. Credit: Cybernews
Cops Sell Seized Phones Without Wiping Them
Researchers at the University of Maryland purchased 228 phone sold by Property Room dot Com, which says it is the largest auction house for police departments. Of the phones they bought for an average of $18 a phone, about a quarter had no PIN and they were able to guess another 11 via brute force. These phones had every text message, picture, data about the crimes committed, etc. Property Room is hiding and will continue to do that until they are hit with a class action. There is no reason not to do a factory reset on these phones before selling them. Credit: Brian Krebs
Alabama Legislature Votes on Bill to Block Porn on Phones Automatically
The Alabama House approved a measure to require manufacturers to enable existing filters that prevent the viewing of pornography or sexually explicit content to help prevent children from inadvertently seeing inappropriate content. This follows Utah’s half-hearted law to do similar things. That law would not go into effect until five other states passed similar laws, so that the millions of dollars in legal fees these states will incur can be shared, I guess. Several lawmakers praised the legislation, saying not all parents know how to enable the content filters. I think they could save millions of dollars by creating a PSA explaining how to enable these filters (I am not sure what they are talking about), but the purpose of a law like this is not to protect children, but rather to score brownie points with their base. Credit AP and AP
Why Go To All of the Trouble of Clicking on Infected Links When You Can Buy Electronics with Malware Preinstalled from Amazon
Price is often the enemy of security and this is no exception. Researchers following up on a presentation from Black Hat reported that as many as 8.9 million phones from 50 different brands were infected with malware. Another report, from Tech Crunch, says that a number of Android based TVs sold on Amazon are laced with malware. Major brands are both more expensive and also less likely to come with free malware. As a security measure, those devices should always be put on their own, totally separate network, something most homeowners and work from home employees do not know how to do. Credit: Ars Technica
Not Everyone is in Love with ChatGPT – Apple Bans it
Right after Apple releases a ChatGPT app in the app store, Apple told employees they can’t use it due to security concerns. I am guessing that this has nothing to do with the fact that Apple is trying to develop its own competitor to (a) Microsoft/ChatGPT, (b) Google/Bard. (c) Facebook AI Bot, (d) ElonGPT and, oh, yeah, where is Apple in all of this. Apple is definitely playing catchup here; but don’t rule them out. In the meantime, they don’t want their employees giving information to their competitors. Credit: Cyber News
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