Security News Update for November 22, 2024
Texas AG Sue TikTok Under SCOPE Act
The Securing Children Online Through Parental Empowerment (SCOPE) Act is designed to protect kids online. The Texas AG claims that TikTok failed to comply with the parental verification requirement, unlawful sharing, disclosing or selling of a minor’s PII and failure to create and provide parental tools. While this suit won’t go to trial for years, the federal law requiring TikTok to sell or be banned is coming up to a deadline right in time for the new administration to deal with it – see below. This is the new administration’s opportunity to tick off 100 million voters in their first month. Credit: JDSupra and Texas AG and Hunton Andrews Kurth
Next President May Try to Reverse TikTok Ban
The ban goes into effect on the day before the next president gets inaugurated. It is probably not a great political strategy to Tik off (pun intended) 150 million Americans on your first day in office. It is possible the courts might rescue him and hold the ban as unconstitutional. On the other hand, there are lots of other options like telling the Justice Department to forget about enforcing it. There is an outside chance he could convince Congress to repeal the law that he forcefully pushed for in his first term. Of course, politics is nothing if not fickle. There are other possible options as well. Learn more here.
NO Software Has Zero Defects
Open source Linux variant Ubuntu Server has a bug that has been there for “decades”. Actually, exactly one decade. Which is still a long time. The bug is in the needrestart package, which has been installed by default since version 21.04. Qualys, who discovered the bug, says it is trivial to exploit, and has been there since April 2014. There are five CVEs, most of which score 7.8/10. The trivial to exploit part is concerning. Credit: The Hacker News
Several Families Sue TikTok For Kids Mental Health Decline, Suicide
I am not familiar with French law, so we shall see how this goes, but the families have started a criminal class action against TikTok. The main complaint is that they promote self-harm. One of the members of the class had already filed criminal charges against TikTok because their daughter committed suicide. Curiously, if you are a user in China, the app limits you to 40 minutes a day and focuses on scientific and educational content. I guess the executives at ByteDance understand that China’s legal system is more “final” than the ones in the west and if you want to stay alive, you don’t mess with mother China. Credit: CyberNews
Meta Removes 2 Million Accounts Accused of Pig Butchering
Pig butchering has nothing to do with what a hog slaughterhouse does. Instead, it is a scheme where hackers attempt to separate victims from their money with promises of riches beyond reality. The reality is that victims lose their money and hackers get rich. Meta says it has removed more than two million accounts and is working with experts to understand how these scams work. While not a fix, it certainly slows the bad guys down. Credit: The Hill
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