Security News Update for the Week Ending March 10, 2023
Even the DoJ Thinks John Deere Should Let Farmers Fix Their Tractors
The “right to repair” movement has been growing for the last decade. John Deere has been leading the “its not safe for you to fix your own tractor” movement for years, saying they have made tractors too complicated for owners to fix. The reality is that repairs constitute a huge revenue source, both for Deere and their dealers and now the Justice Department is coming out on the side of the farmers in a class action filed by the farmers. Even Apple has seen the handwriting on the wall, but Deere is resisting. Deere will lose, but they are going to drag it out for as long as they can. Credit: Motherboard by Vice
Thousands of Pro-Trump Bots Attacking DeSantis, Hayley and Dems
It looks like the 2024 Presidential election cycle has begun. Using techniques pioneered by the Russians, some group has, over the last year, created thousands of bots. The bots are spewing spam mocking Trump’s opponents, both democratic and republican. The bots were uncovered by an Israeli firm. Musk said he would get rid of the bots when he bought Twitter. Now he gets to prove it – or not. Credit: The National News
Twitter Has Second Outage in a Week
For the second time in the past week, Twitter services broke down for thousands of users Monday, causing broken links and issues with loading videos and images from the site. A malfunction in Twitter’s API had broken all direct links, as well as videos and images. As Twitter attempts to remake itself, there will be more glitches. Elon says that eventually, the site will need a complete rewrite. Credit: Cybernews
Yet Another Government Caught Spying on its Own People
Here is the sub head. Internal documents show Mexican army used spyware against civilians, set up secret military intelligence unit. Governments don’t like dissidents, so reporters and activists, if they don’t please the government, are fair game. Unfortunately, Mexico got caught at it. Credit: The Record
Hackers Targeting Law Firms with Malware
Lawyers don’t have a reputation for being tech wizards so hackers have figured out that they might be an easy target. Six law firms were hit in January and February. The attack is simple. The hackers compromised unpatched WordPress sites and added new blog posts without the owner knowing. Using SEO poisoning the hackers get lawyers to go to these malicious new posts and click on the link in the post to download a document. Poof, you are infected. Since the hackers don’t install ransomware, what are they installing? Possibly a back door for later fun. Credit: The Hacker News
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