Security News for the Week Ending Feb. 18, 2022

Missouri Prosecutor Wisely Decides Governor is not Tech Smart

Remember when the governor got his feeling hurt after a St. Louis newspaper revealed that the education department’s website was publishing the PII of tens of thousands of teachers and asked the Highway Patrol to prosecute the reporter who embarrassed him? The PII was, as a reminder, just sitting there in the HTML code for anyone to find. The prosecutor has, wisely, decided to deal with the governor’s wrath rather than getting laughed out of court. I suspect he figures that the wrath is temporary while the court’s verdict is permanent. Don’t be surprised if there is a counter suit filed. Credit: Portswigger

New Tool Renders Pixelating Useless

Most of us have seen a picture when they rearrange the pixels on an image like a license plate or someone’s name to make it more “secure”. Now a tool is available on Github that allows anyone to do this for free. The tool, called UNREDACTOR, needs a little bit of information to do its magic, but it has that, it is game over. Credit: Hackread

Five Canadian Banks Online Systems go Down at Once

Users could not access online systems for hours, stranding them at stores and stopping them from making transfers. The banks – Royal Bank of Canada, Bank of Montreal, Scotiabank and Canadian Imperial Bank of Commerce – started having trouble around 5 PM Eastern time. This happened right after the government invoked the Emergencies Act amid the truckers’ protest. Are these related? Is the Russia? We don’t know yet. Credit: Bleeping Computer

Dad Takes Down Town’s Internet to Stop His Kids From Using Their Phones

Turns out dad’s strategy was super effective. Possibly a little too effective. Dad wanted his kids to go to sleep at night instead of playing on their phones. SO, dad went out and bought a signal jammer. Apparently, it was a pretty good one. Turns out this French father took out the cellular network in the neighboring town. The French authorities traced the jammer to dad and now the jammer-er may go to the slammer – err, bad pun. But the French prosecutors are investigating. Penalties could be as much as (e) 30,000 and 6 months in jail. It is a similar crime here. Credit: Bleeping Computer

Russia Continues to Make Token Effort to Reduce Cyberattacks

Russia continues to make modest efforts to cut down cyberattacks against other countries. The have arrested a third hacking group; this one specializes in fraudulent credit cards. While the Russians have not provided any details, three carding web sites have mysteriously gone away (they actually show a banner that says they were seized) – likely the work of the nice folks of the Russian police. This is only a spit in the ocean, so we should not get our hopes up too high, still any help is good. Credit: Bleeping Computer

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