Security News for the Week Ending January 5, 2024
You Haven’t Migrated to WiFi 6 Yet? It is Already Obsolete. Here is WiFi 7
WiFi 7 or, officially, IEEE 802.11be is faster and more spectrum efficient that previous WiFi versions. WiFi 7, they say, is 3 times faster than either WiFi 5 or 6, which makes it useful for things like gaming apps. Of course, none of this will make any difference if your Internet connection or ISP is the bottleneck. Credit: Helpnet Security
Even if You are Not In Business You Can Still be Breached
Transformative Healthcare, which bought Fallon Ambulance in 2018 and then shut it down, notified HHS that it was hacked and the hackers stole information on the no-longer-in-business company. The breach affected almost a million people. So, just because you aren’t in business does not mean you can’t be hacked. Credit: The Record
US Court System Online Doc Service Could Not Handle the Epstein Docs
The federal court system runs a document archive system called PACER. It is a horrible piece of trash and expensive for anyone to use on top of being horrible vintage 1980s software. When a judge released the Epstein documents this week, the system just cratered into a pile of dust. So, enterprising people took matters into their own hands. Mirrors of the documents sprung up everywhere and since the Constitution prohibits the feds from copyrighting anything, documents which people might have to pay a lot of money to see became free. Capitalism at its best. Credit: Vice
India Tries to Twist Apple’s Arm to Downgrade Government Hacking
In October Apple alerted a number of Indian journalists and opposition politicians saying that state sponsored hackers could be targeting their phones. Apple did not say WHICH state, but people figured out it was their own country. India’s prime minister’s office tried to get Apple to water down the alert – even withdraw it – which kind of proves it was them that was doing it, otherwise, they would have no motive to try and kill the alert. Apple did send out follow up emails that sort of, kind of, watered down the alert and India’s ruling party said Apple’s systems contained vulnerabilities (such as the ones they were exploiting) and they also told the media that they (the government, NOT Apple) suspected the warnings were a result of an “algorithmic malfunction” (NOT!). Many of the people who received the warnings had been critical of the Indian government. You draw your own conclusion, but it seems pretty obvious that the government was trying to create an official disinformation campaign against Apple. Credit: The Hill
23 and Me’s Breach Strategy – Blame their Customers
23 and Me is facing dozens of lawsuits over their breach last year. In December they admitted that hackers stole genetic data for close to 7 million people. The hackers accessed around 14,000 accounts using password stuffing and then used 23andMe’s DNA relative feature to scrape data on 6.9 million people. In a letter to the people suing them they said that users negligently recycled passwords and did not change them after past breaches. Therefore, they say, the incident was not their fault. See you in court. Credit: Tech Crunch
by 