Security News for the Week Ending November 8, 2019
Comcast Testing Encrypted DNS While Lobbing Against It
Encrypted DNS (either DoH or DoT) has become a political hotbutton. Recently Vice reported that Comcast is spending hundreds of thousands of dollars lobbying against it. Mozilla is writing to Congress saying that what Comcast is saying is not true and most interestingly, Comcast is testing its own DoT and DoH services. Apparently, what is important is that they can continue to sell your data and not much else. Source: Vice
Smart Speakers Can Be Hacked By Laser
Researchers have DEMONSTRATED the ability to talk to your Alexa or Siri by silently pointing a laser at the microphone and modulating the laser so that the microphone thinks you are talking to it. This will work through a window. In one test they were able to control an iPad from 33 feet, In another test, they were able to control a device from over 300 feet away.
The amount of mischief this could potentially cause is large.
The temporary solution is to hide your smart speaker so that no one can point a laser at it from outside your home, for example, and tell it to buy stuff or unlock the door or whatver. Source: Wired
Law Enforcement Obtains Warrant to Search DNA Database
A judge has approved a warrant to search the complete database of DNA profiler GEDMatch. While they are a small player (about a million people), this could be a way leading to other warrants of the bigger DNA players like Ancestry. Since DNA can provide family links, even if the person that the police are searching for is not in the database, if a distant cousin is, that dramatically reduces the number of people to question. Of course, this is not what people expected when they sent their DNA to these companies. Source: ZDNet.
Ransomware, Data Breaches at Hospitals Linked to Increase in Fatal Heart Attacks
Hospitals that have been hit by a data breach or ransomware attack can expect to see an increase in the death rate among heart patients in the following months or years because of cybersecurity remediation efforts, a new study posits.
A Vanderbilt study found that after data breaches, as many as 36 additional deaths per 10,000 heart attacks occurred annually. Source: Brian Krebs
Business Email Compromise Attacks Cause Big Losses
Nikkei, the big Japanese media conglomerate, says that an employee was duped into sending $27 million to a scammer’s bank account. The company is still trying to recover the funds.
In August, a Toyota subsidiary lost $37 million to a BEC attacker.
According to the FBI, BEC victims lost $1.2 billion to BEC attacks in 2018. The number is likely to be higher this year. Source: Bleeping Computer
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