Apple

Some iOS Users Report Call Issues After Latest Update

October 22, 2018 by Joseph Martin

This hasn’t been a great month for two of the titans of tech. Both Apple and Microsoft have been plagued with bug-riddled updates to their operating systems. In Apple’s case, their new iOS 12 had to be patched just three weeks after its release because of all the bugs the company’s burgeoning user base discovered almost immediately after updating.

Unfortunately, the 12.0.1 patch seems to have created almost as many issues as it solved for some users. In particular, some users are reporting network and signal connectivity problems, leading to an increasing number of broken calls. It has created such a stir that it’s even caught the attention of national media.

A recent Forbes article had this to say:

“Since upgrading, owners of both new and old iPhones are finding their phones either don’t make or receive calls. Bluetooth connectivity, Wi-Fi and battery-related issues are again surfacing on an iOS generation which Apple has promoted as being all about efficiency, stability, and speed.”

We’re also seeing an interesting incarnation of the law of unintended consequences where iOS 12 is concerned. One of the things Apple did differently in this latest version of the OS was to reorganize how the OS recognizes people in your contacts list, referring to the Apple ID number.

Unfortunately, many users tended to group contacts under a common Apple ID (family under one, co-workers under another, and so on).

Recently, select users got a shock when they used iMessage to send a note to a friend and wound up sending it to a whole group, simply because iMessage uses the same Apple ID that now organizes your contacts. The company issued a quick patch to fix that, but as you might expect, it caused a fair amount of concern for the short period the but/unintended consequence existed.

All that to say, Apple is off to a rocky start with iOS 12. So far, at least, we’ve been underwhelmed. The promised speed, stability and efficiency isn’t being delivered.

Joseph Martin

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Major Facebook Breach May Have Affected Your Account

October 16, 2018 by Joseph Martin

Facebook got hit hard by a currently unknown group of hackers. If you recently found yourself inexplicably logged out of the social media site, Facebook did it in response to the breach.

The breach resulted in the theft of data pertaining to more than fifty million of the site’s users.

Here’s what we know so far about the attack:

The hackers pulled off their heist by taking advantage of three different vulnerabilities.

Facebook detected the breach after spotting an unusual spike in traffic.

Your password has not been compromised, but unfortunately, the hackers don’t need it.

The hackers stole more than fifty million access tokens. These tokens can be used to take over Facebook accounts without passwords, even if you have two-factor authentication enabled.

If you were in the compromised group, the hackers have every scrap of personal information you’ve entered into the social media site.

If you use the “Logged in as Facebook” feature on other websites, those accounts are also at risk. The hackers can use the stolen tokens to access any site you log into with your Facebook credentials.

The reason you got logged out was because Facebook reset access tokens for everyone they suspected may have had their data stolen.

To find out if you’ve been hacked, you can check “Active Sessions” on Facebook. If you see an unknown IP address, or a location in some other country, that’s a sure sign that you’ve been hacked.

This breach is not connected in any way to the hacker who pledged to delete Mark Zuckerberg’s personal Facebook page.

In addition to that, you should know that Facebook is now facing a class-action lawsuit over the hack. The suit alleges that the company failed to protect their personal data from falling into the wrong hands due to the company’s lack of proper security practices.

While the vulnerabilities have been fixed, the class-action lawsuit has a good chance of succeeding. The investigation is still in its early stages, and there may be updates to this story as we learn more.

Joseph Martin

Apple IOS12 Users’ Photos And Contacts May Be Vulnerable

October 13, 2018 by Joseph Martin

Jose Rodriguez, a Spanish Apple enthusiast, has discovered a new security flaw to be aware of. He posted a Proof of Concept video showing the exploit in action.

We’ll say upfront that this is a highly convoluted attack involving more than two dozen discrete steps. A hacker would need to be in possession of the phone to pull it off, so it’s not something that’s likely to become a major threat.

Even so, we’ll provide the details below.

Apple has built in security measures that are designed to prevent someone from tricking Siri into allowing unauthorized access to the phone. Unfortunately, by using a complex series of steps involving both Siri and Apple’s Notes application, it’s possible for a hacker to bypass those security measures, access images stored on the phone, and then change the image associated with a contact or the owner of the phone.

This method is effective on both iOS12 and the iOS 12.1 beta, which means that Apple’s recent patch to their OS does not and will not prevent this exploit from working. Worse, the company has yet to comment on the matter, so at this point, there’s no timetable for a fix.

The independent news site Threatpost has been able to replicate the attack, so we have third-party confirmation.

Fortunately, there’s a simple way to negate the attack entirely while we’re waiting for a patch to close the loophole once and for all. Simply go to Settings – Face ID & Passcode – Touch ID & Passcode, and disable the “Allow access when locked” option for Siri.

Again, it’s important to reiterate that this is a highly complex attack that involves having both physical access to the device and more than two dozen steps, so this is not an issue that’s likely to be widespread. Even so, it pays to take precautions until Apple can roll out a fix.

Joseph Martin

Payment Pages Are Being Compromised To Steal Data

October 10, 2018 by Joseph Martin

Symantec’s most recent statistics have revealed a disturbing trend. Malware designed to compromise checkout pages is seeing a big spike in use, with the company reporting a staggering 248,000 attempts since August 13th of this year, with more than a third of them (36 percent) between September 13th through September 20th. As disturbing as those numbers are, that’s just the tip of the iceberg.

As Symantec notes on their website:

“If we compare the week of September 13 to 20 to the same week in August, the number of instances of formjacking attacks blocked by Symantec more than doubled, jumping from just over 41,000 to almost 88.500 – a percentage increase of 117 percent.”

Leading the surge is a particularly nasty strain of malware known as “Magecart.” Magecart campaigns are quite robust that begin by breaching the target website, then injecting malicious scripts into it that are designed to scrape card details and other customer information provided during the checkout process. This is an attack that’s alternately known as formjacking, payment card scraping, and web-based skimming.

Symantec isn’t the only company to take note of the trend. RiskIQ has been sink holing domains associated with Magecart infrastructure for much of the month and alerting companies compromised by Magecart attacks as they find them.

Kevin Beaumont, an independent security researcher, had this to say via Twitter :

“#TrackingMagecart I’ve updated the IoCs to double the number of domains, now tracking over 1000 objects – some of the domains have now been sink holed. Recommend InfoSec vendors block/flag domains.”

Magecart isn’t new. Security researchers have been tracking it since 2015, and independent researcher Willem de Groot has created a malware scanning website called MageReport, which allows business owners to check to see if their Magento-based webshop is vulnerable to this type of attack. If you think you might be, it certainly bears making use of.

At present, the one thing that’s not known is the reason behind the sudden spike. Only that it’s happening.

Joseph Martin

Google’s Emergency Location Service Improves 911 Response

October 3, 2018 by Joseph Martin

Google is making a small but pivotal change as it relates to calls placed to 911 operators. Having recently finalized a complex partnership with RapidSOS and West (two emergency technology companies) and T-Mobile, Google will now send location data from its “Emergency Location Service” when an Android user places a 911 call.

If the caller is a T-Mobile customer, the information will be passed along via the carrier. Where 911 call centers use RapidSOS, Google will send the location data via the technology company. In the US Virgin Islands, Google has made the same arrangement with the Emergency Tech company, West.

While the announcement may raise some surprised eyebrows, the change has been in the works for more than a year. Google has spent much of that time testing. Their findings were that the location data Google sent over was more accurate and arrived more quickly than the data the 911 call centers had been getting previously.

Not to be outdone, Apple announced in June of this year that it was developing a similar service for iOS users, and that beginning with iOS 12, Apple devices would automatically send location data to emergency call centers when users dial 911.

Even privacy advocates agree that this is generally a good move, and it’s one of the growing number of instances where smart use of technology can save lives. Anything we can do to give our nation’s emergency call centers an edge is an important change. Currently, those call centers take an average of 140,000 calls a day, so this is by no means a trivial issue.

Kudos to both Google and Apple for taking bold action on this issue. While we may not like the idea of having our location data shared, in this particular instance, it certainly seems like a smart play.

Joseph Martin

Data Breach Notifications May Get Standardized

October 2, 2018 by Joseph Martin

A new piece of legislation is making its way through the halls of Congress that could standardize and streamline the data security and breach notification process for financial institutions. This is something that most people in the industry tout as an improvement over the current situation.

The Consumer Information Notification Requirement Act (H. R. 6743) legislation was approved by committee not long after Congress received a letter cosigned by members from the American Bankers Association, the Consumer Bankers Association, the Credit Union National Association, the Independent Community Bankers of America and the National Association of federally-Insured Credit Unions.

The letter read, in part:

“Our existing payments system serves hundreds of millions of consumers, retailers, financial institutions and the economy well. Protecting this system is a shared responsibility of all parties involved and we must work together and invest the necessary resources to combat never-ending threats to the payment system.”

Despite so many influential organizations weighing in, many state regulators are skeptical of the proposed legislation and are actively pushing back against it over concerns that it would undermine state-level authority.

Whether you agree that those are valid concerns or not, the reality is both stark and terrifying. In the first half of 2018, ThreatMatrix recorded more than 81 million cybercrime attacks against financial institutions. 27 million of those targeted the mobile channel, given greater mobile banking adoption rates.

ThreatMatrix weighed in on the debate saying, “Financial services mobile transactions are growing globally, with China, South East Asia and India showing the strongest regional growth. Overall, the biggest threat in financial services comes from device spoofing, as fraudsters attempt to trick banks into thinking multiple fraudulent log-in attempts are coming from new customer devices, perhaps by repeatedly wiping cookies or using virtual machines.”

Clearly, something must be done, and while the politicians debate the issue, the attacks continue unabated.

Joseph Martin

An Exploited Website Can Cause Apple Products To Crash

September 28, 2018 by Joseph Martin

Users of Apple tech have a new reason to worry. A security researcher named Sabri Haddouche, who works for an instant messaging app called “Wire,” has published a proof of concept web page. It contains a fatal exploit that can crash and restart iPhones, iPads and any Mac.

Essentially then, the entire Apple ecosystem is vulnerable. Worse, the security flaw can be exploited using nothing more than CSS and HTML code. The flaw resides in Apple’s WebKit, which is its web rendering engine used by all apps and browsers running on Apple’s OS.

Haddouche tested the exploit using Chrome, Microsoft Edge, and the Safari web browser. He got the same result each time using both a MacBook Pro and an iPhone X. Apple users are advised to exercise extreme caution when visiting any web page until a patch can be issued.

The company is currently investigating the issue, and to this point has not given their legions of users a timeframe for a possible fix.

Sadly, this isn’t the first time a flaw like this has been discovered, and it’s unlikely to be the last. If there’s a silver lining, it is that Apple has historically been quick to patch flaws of this kind, and it should be noted that Linux and Windows systems are not affected.

It’s especially worrisome for small business owners, and until Apple gives us a time frame for a fix, your best bet is to steer clear of any websites but those that are business critical, and trusted sites that you know to be safe.

Although the exploit was specifically engineered to crash Apple devices, it’s easy enough to envision a nastier implementation which could critically damage the OS, rendering the device targeted by the attack completely inoperable. Stay vigilant, and stay tuned for a fix to what could be a devastating issue.

Joseph Martin

Malware Reports Continue To Rise

September 26, 2018 by Joseph Martin

We’ve known for some time now that the next big crisis the internet will have to come to grips with is the dramatic rise of the Internet of Things (IOT).

The problem isn’t with the devices themselves, which are enormously helpful and rapidly growing in their popularity. Rather, it lies in the fact that the overwhelming majority of IoT manufacturers have been notoriously lax when it comes to building even basic security protocols into the goods they make and sell.

The lack of security and the complete absence of any type of security has made the Internet of Things the new “low hanging fruit” of the internet, and hackers have been happy to take advantage of the incredibly easy access.

Kaspersky Lab has recently given us hard numbers to provide a sense of the scope and scale of the problem.

Last year, the company detected a total of 32,615 malware infections on IoT devices. In just the first six months of this year, the company has spotted 121,588 infections on IoT devices, representing a staggering 273 percent increase.

Far and away, the most commonly compromised devices were routers. Behind them were a whole raft of other IoT devices including smart TVs, refrigerators, DVRs, printers, washing machines and more.

Things have gotten so bad that earlier this year, the FBI issued a public service announcement in a bid to warn users of the dangers of unsecured devices.

These can be slaved by hackers to create enormous botnets like the one that brought down the internet on the entire eastern seaboard earlier this year. However, if they are connected to your home or office network, they provide a perfect launchpad for attacks against other network connected devices.

Sadly, manufacturers to this point have shown little interest in beefing up the security of the devices they sell, so the problem is likely to get much worse before it starts getting better.

Joseph Martin

New Google Chrome Feature Created For Better Password Security

September 24, 2018 by Joseph Martin

Google is taking yet another important step to help save us from ourselves. The company is releasing a complete redesign of their Chrome browser, which is exciting. There’s one feature in particular, however, that bears taking a special look at.

Perhaps the most significant change to the browser is the addition of a new password manager, which will offer to generate a random password when you sign into a website for the first time. The randomly generated password will be securely tucked away inside your Google Account and synced across both desktop and mobile versions of Chrome.

Password security is something humans aren’t very good at. Despite the risks and the repeated dire warnings, many people still have the tendency to use the same passwords that are only marginally different, across multiple websites they have accounts on.

The problem is that if one of the websites you have an account on is breached, it puts most (if not all) of your other web accounts at risk. It’s an extremely bad habit from a security standpoint, and unfortunately, it is one that has proved to be notoriously difficult to break.

Google’s solution to the problem is interesting,T but it should be noted that it is far from all-inclusive. Bear in mind that Chrome only manages passwords inside the browser, so if you log into services like Netflix on your smart TV, those login details won’t be captured in, or stored by your Google Account.

Google isn’t the only company doing what it can to save us from our worst password impulses. Apple is making changes too. With the release of iOS 12, Apple will give its OS the ability to autofill passwords across browsers and apps from third-party password managers.

Joseph Martin

Amazon Joins Trillion Dollar Club

September 18, 2018 by Joseph Martin

It’s official, Apple now has company in the Trillion Dollar Club as Amazon’s stock surged past $2,000, briefly pushing the company’s total value to just over the trillion-dollar mark.

This makes the company’s CEO Jeff Bezos the richest person in the world, with a net worth estimated at around $166 billion dollars.

Amazon started out as just another internet company struggling to turn a profit. Over the years, however, the company has become a true retail powerhouse, and a disruptive force in the industry.

Some analysts predict that the company’s stock price is poised to climb even higher. Brian Nowak, (an analyst at Morgan Stanley) cities some reasons for his continued optimism. These include the company’s rapid growth, their improving business mix and their profit potential. Overall, Amazon’s total value only trails Apple’s by about $100 billion.

The last twelve months have been kind to Amazon, and the company has seen its stock price surge nearly 75 percent. The company is aggressively expanding into new businesses and finding success in doing so, which is exciting investors. Last year, for example, Amazon purchased Whole Foods Market for $13.7 billion, and recently acquired the online pharmacy, PillPack.

While there are only two members of the trillion-dollar club, there are two other companies poised to join their ranks. Both Microsoft and Google’s parent company, Alphabet are currently valued at about $850 billion. A modest nudge in either company’s stock price could push either of them into the trillion-dollar stratosphere.

Although there are a number of analysts who are excited by the stock’s future prospects, there is also some cause for concern. At current prices, the stock is trading at nearly 100 times earnings, which is nearly five times the broader market’s P/E ratio of 21. Then there’s the considerable risk that Amazon may suffer from a regulatory crackdown, given its size and dominance in the market.

Even so, it’s great news, and even better if you already own Amazon stock!

Joseph Martin

Some iOS Users Report Call Issues After Latest Update

Apple IOS12 Users’ Photos And Contacts May Be Vulnerable

Payment Pages Are Being Compromised To Steal Data

Google’s Emergency Location Service Improves 911 Response

Data Breach Notifications May Get Standardized

An Exploited Website Can Cause Apple Products To Crash

Malware Reports Continue To Rise

New Google Chrome Feature Created For Better Password Security

Amazon Joins Trillion Dollar Club

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