Security News Update for Week Ending June 28, 2024

NYC’s Gotham Restaurant Forced to Close After Cyber Scam

Hopefully they will be able to re-open, but for businesses, the law is much less forgiving. The ritzy Greenwich Village restaurant fell for a business email compromise attack that had it send its payroll money to what they thought was their payroll service’s “new” bank account. Now they don’t have money to make payroll and they are “pausing” operations. The law is much less friendly to businesses than to consumers; it assumes that businesses are smart enough to detect scams and not fall for them. Credit: NY Post

What Happens When Hackers do What They Say They Will – Ask the Fed

The LockBit ransomware gang claims to have stolen 33 terabytes of data from the Federal Reserve Bank. The threatened to release the data if the Fed did not pay up. They claim the Fed offered then $50,000 to go away. Now LockBit has started releasing data that they claim came from the Fed hack. So far they posted 21 separate links. Update: after we heard this we learned that the attack was not on the fed, but rather on Evolve bank. Hopefully the fed did not pay. Evolve, on the other hand, may wish that they did. Credit: Cybernews

Is Amazon Joining Silicon Valley and Going After Monthly Recurring $?

Rumor is that Amazon is developing a ChatGPT killer, code named Metis, after the Greek goddess of wisdom. It may be accessed via a web browser and may power a much more powerful version of Alexa – one that comes with a monthly fee. Cha-ching! They predict it will generate more than $1 billion in annual revenue and tens of billions of dollars in sales. Credit: Cybernews

Arkansas Governor Says Temu App is Spyware

Temu is a Chinese owned online shopping app. Similar to Amazon and other online apps, it collects a lot of data. It was, for a short time, banned by both app stores. Arkansas says that Temu is led by former CCP officials, that the Chinese government, like the American government (wait, he forgot to mention that part), could force them to spy on Americans. Likely this is a knockoff of the claims against TikTok and likely both companies are doing similar things – similar to what American companies do, but what is okay for American companies to do is not okay for Chinese companies. Mostly, this is a campaign year stunt because it is highly unlikely that would be resolved in less than 5-10 years unless Temu just decides to leave the US, which is unlikely. Credit: PC Mag

Polish Parliament Strips Official of Immunity After Using Spyware

I don’t think I have ever heard of this before. The Polish parliament voted to revoke an opposition leader’s immunity in order to prosecute him for using commercial spyware when he was in power. He spied on nearly 600 people, including opposition politicians and their aides. Is the future or a one-off of politicians who are ticked off at the opposition. Credit: The Record

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