Security News for the Week Ending February 19, 2021

Parler is Back Online

After being down for a month after getting kicked off Amazon, Parler is back online. Existing accounts can log in now; new accounts can be created next week. They have a new interim CEO after the board fired the last one. It does not appear that old content was moved over to the new platform. Apple and Google have not restored Parler’s apps and there are lawsuits and Congressional investigations, so they are not completely out of the woods yet. It remains to be seen what their content moderation strategy will be. In their notice it says that they don’t moderate and then proceed to talk about all the content moderation they are doing – likely to try and stay out of jail. Credit: MSN

Even Though FBI Complains About Going Dark, they Unlock Phones

While the FBI will never be happy until we return to the 1990s when there was no encryption, apparently, according to court documents, the FBI can get into iPhones after first unlock after power up (which is 99.99% of the time) and even read Signal messages. Likely using tools like GrayKey and Cellebrite they can extract data from many encrypted phones. Credit: Hackread

Certification Labs UL Hit By Ransomware

Underwriters Labs, the safety certification organization – which also has a cybersecurity certification – has apparently been hit by a ransomware attack which caused them to shut down their IT systems. Attempts to connect to the MyUL.Com portal return a ‘can’t reach this page’ error message. They have been down for a week so far and have decided not to pay the ransom. This points to how long it takes to recover from ransomware, even for a big company. Credit: Bleeping Computer

Microsoft Says SolarWinds Hackers Stole Some Source Code

Microsoft is now admitting that the SolarWinds hackers were able to download some of their source code including parts of code for Intune, Exchange and Azure. While not complete code for anything, any code that makes it onto the dark web will make it easier for hackers to figure out how to hack Microsoft users in the future. Credit: ZDNet

John Deere Promised Right to Repair But Didn’t Quite Do That

In 2018 John Deere lobbyists successfully killed a number of state legislative bills that would have allowed farmers to repair their own tractors and heavy equipment. In exchange, Deere pinky-promised to make the software and manuals available in three years. That would be January 1 of this year. Apparently, Deere, while successful at killing the bills, has not lived up to their end of the bargain and some of the state legislators are not terribly happy. Expect at least some states to introduce new “right to repair” bills this year. What is unknown is how broad these bills will be. Will they just allow a farmer to repair his/her tractor or will it also allow iPhone users to also repair their phones? Credit: Vice

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