Technology Tips

Malicious Messages In PlayStation Can Cause It To Crash

October 24, 2018 by Joseph Martin

Gamers take the games they play seriously. So seriously, in fact, that they’re not above resorting to dirty tricks to score a win.

Recently, social media has been abuzz with reports of a messaging app bug on Sony’s PlayStation devices. Specifically, there’s a bug in both the Android and iOS messaging apps that allow malicious gamers to send a poisoned character via group chat that will brick your gaming console.

If you’re in the middle of a tense death match, you lose by default, because you’re booted from the system entirely.

Here’s an example of what we’re seeing on Reddit:

“There is a new glitch that basically bricks your console and forces you to factory reset it. Even deleting the message from the mobile app doesn’t work. It happened to me during Rainbow Six: Siege. A player from the other team used a dummy account to send the message and crashed my entire team. We all have had to factory reset. Only one of our guys wasn’t affected, and he has his messages private.”

This note holds the key to the workaround until Sony makes some type of official response. If you haven’t yet had the dubious honor of being the recipient of this poisoned message, set your messages to private immediately.

Here’s how you do that:

Go to “Settings” and select “Account Management, Privacy Settings”

Enter your password

Select “Messages” and change it to either “Friends Only” or “No One,” then exit out of the subsystem. You’re all set from there.

If you’d rather change your message settings from your PC and a web browser, you can do that too, though the process is a bit different.

Here’s how:

From your PC, surf your way to the PSN Privacy Settings Management Page

Select “Personal Information/Messages”

Select “Edit,” then change the setting to either “Friends Only” or “No One.” Save and exit.

Joseph Martin

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I hope you enjoyed this article. My mission is to take your stress away from dealing with IT problems. Call (252) 565-1235 or send me a message at our contact us page if you have a question, comment or want help.

Popular NAS Device May Easily Be Compromised

September 27, 2018 by Joseph Martin

Western Digital has a big problem, and if you use the company’s “My Cloud” network-attached storage (NAS) storage devices, you’ve got one too. The WD My Cloud service is enormously popular because it’s so convenient, allowing both business owners and individuals to store their files, perform periodic backups, and of course, access their data from anywhere in the world.

Recently, security researchers have discovered an authentication bypass vulnerability that could allow an attacker to gain admin-level control over the device. This means they’d be able to monitor all of the files sent to, opened, or deleted on it, make copies of, or even delete the files found there.

The vulnerability has been given the designation CVE-2018-17153 and is about as serious as it gets. Without going into the technical details, essentially, all a hacker would have to do to take complete control over the device is for the hacker to “tell” the device that he’s an Admin via an uploaded cookie file. The device will accept it with no password required.

When the researchers notified Western Digital of the security flaw, they also released a proof of concept detailing the attack, and disturbingly, it can be executed using just six lines of code.

There is one silver lining in that to make use of the exploit, the hacker would need either local access or an internet connection to a specific WD My Cloud device. But this is a relatively low bar that most any experienced hacker could clear without a trace.

Western Digital has responded quickly, and according to a recent blog post on the company’s website, promises to have a patch that will resolve the issue “within a few weeks.” They also stressed to their customers the importance of ensuring that the firmware on all their products is always up to date and recommended enabling auto updates.

It’s good advice that will simplify your life and ensure you never miss an update, although not always practical for SMBs.

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

Air Canada Customers May Have Had Their Data Exposed

September 17, 2018 by Joseph Martin

If you fly Air Canada and use their mobile app, it may be time to change your password. The company recently announced that between August 22nd and August 24th of this year, they detected “unusual log-in behavior,” and that a small fraction (some 20,000) of their 1.7 mobile app users may have had their data compromised as a result.

The company stressed that no credit card information was compromised, but that doesn’t make the breach much less damaging.

The exposed data included:

Customer name

Physical address

Email address

Phone number

Any information an individual customer added to his or her profile

Worst of all is the fact that passport numbers were also exposed. Using that information, a hacker could easily gain access to the countries that a person has been to, when the passport expires, country of residence, the flight numbers of any flights they’ve taken, their gender, birthday and more.

As is usually the case when events like this occur, Air Canada has apologized to their customers and has reached out to all of their potentially impacted users.

Even if you didn’t get a notification from Air Canada, it would be prudent to change your password as soon as possible.

The company has not released any details about exactly how the breach occurred, and the matter is still under investigation.

Note that in terms of scope and scale, this is a fairly small breach. The 20,000 users represents about 1 percent of the total user base. Even so, the data stolen has the potential to be quite damaging. Even after you change your password, since email addresses were compromised during the breach, be on the alert for phishing emails, as the group responsible may attempt to leverage the information they have to get even more.

Joseph Martin

Survey Shows Teens Are Concerned About Their Screen Time

August 31, 2018 by Joseph Martin

According to a recent survey conducted by Pew Research Center, 54 percent of teens say that they spend too much time on their cellphones.

Acknowledging you have a problem is the first, necessary step toward correcting it, and the survey reports that significant percentages of teens are taking steps to do just that.

The Survey Specifically States:

52 percent of teens report that they are actively trying to cut back on their mobile phone use

57 percent report that they’re taking steps to limit the amount of time they spend on social media

58 percent report that they’re cutting back on the time they spend playing video games

Some other interesting and noteworthy statistics collected via the survey include the following:

72 percent of teens say that they often or sometimes check for messages and notifications first thing in the morning, just after waking up.

56 percent of teens report feeling lonely or anxious if they find themselves separated from their cherished phones.

36 percent of parents admit that they, like their teen children, spend too much time on their phones.

51 percent of teens report that their parents are distracted by their phones when teens try to have a conversation with them.

57 percent of parents say they set screen time restrictions for their teens in an attempt to limit phone use.

Smartphones are deeply embedded in our day to day activities, so these numbers are perhaps unsurprising.

What is both surprising and more than a little disturbing is the fact that a significant percentage of both teens and parents report that excessive cellphone use impacts their school and work performance, with 31 percent of teens admitting that their phone is a source of distraction that causes them to lose focus in school, and 39 percent of parents reporting that they lose focus at work for the same reason.

Unfortunately, while the statistics are illuminating, there are no easy solutions here. There’s little evidence that self-imposed use limits are having an impact.

Joseph Martin

Fax Machines Might Be Gateway To Next Hacker Attack

August 24, 2018 by Joseph Martin

Nothing bad could possibly happen to your company’s network if the only piece of information the hackers have is your fax number, right?

Unfortunately not, according to recent research by employees at Check Point.

They recently revealed details about not one, but two different REC’s (Remote Code Execution) techniques that exploit flaws in the communications protocols of tens of millions of fax machines spread all over the globe.

If you think the Fax machine has largely gone the way of the dinosaur, think again. Many printers sport “all in one” functionality, which includes both scan and fax functionality, and therein lies the problem. Since these printers are invariably attached to your network, your fax number is a good a way in, since most people don’t even think about it.

Called the “Faxploit,” the new attack type involves a pair of known buffer overflow vulnerabilities, CVE-2018-5925 and CVE-2018-5924, which allows anyone who takes advantage of them to have the ability to execute code remotely.

The researchers who discovered the issue created a proof of concept video demonstrating the attack in action. In their demo, they made use of an HP Officejet Pro 6830 and an OfficeJet Pro 8720, sending an image file with a malicious payload through the phone line. The moment the fax machine receives it, the image is decoded and uploaded into the fax/printer’s memory.

From there, the sky is the limit. Having gained a foothold on the network, what happens next is entirely dependent on the nature of the payload delivered. One thing you can be sure of, however, is that none of the outcomes you can expect will be good.

The researchers point out that there’s nothing special about the two all in one printers they selected, and the vulnerability will work on just about any make or model. Something new to be worried about.

Joseph Martin

Social Media App Filters Could Alter Beauty Perception

August 21, 2018 by Joseph Martin

File this one away under “unintended consequences.” There’s a newly emerging trend in the medical community called “Snapchat Dysmorphia” that’s leaving plastic surgeons around the country to sound the alarm, and in some cases, scratch their heads in disbelief.

Recent research conducted at Boston University has discovered that the digital filters featured prominently in social media services like Snapchat are influencing how Millennials think about beauty. It’s causing significant numbers of them to investigate the possibility of getting plastic surgery in order to look more like the filtered pictures of themselves.

The newly minted term, ‘Snapchat Dysmorphia’ is a variant of body dysmorphia, which is a mental health condition that causes people to be stressed and obsessed with the way they look. Previously, one of the leading causes of body dysmorphia has been the unrealistic standards of beauty portrayed in magazines and on televisions. These media portrayals include supermodels with perfect bodies setting a standard of perfection that few can ever hope to achieve.

The more recent trend, however, is an increasing percentage of young people wishing to look more like their filtered-image selves, with, as the report highlights, “fuller lips, bigger eyes, or a thinner nose.”

The researchers went onto say, “This is an alarming trend because those filtered selfies often present an unattainable look and are blurring the line of reality and fantasy for these patients…overall, social media apps, such as Snapchat and Facetune, are providing a new reality of beauty for today’s society. These apps allow one to alter his or her appearance in an instant and conform to an unrealistic and often unattainable standard of beauty.”

If you have a child who spends a significant amount of time on social media, then it’s something to keep a close eye on. Based on the data, this trend is only going to get stronger over time.

Joseph Martin

New Scam Targets Apple Users

August 11, 2018 by Joseph Martin

There’s a new, surprisingly elaborate phishing scam targeting iPhone users. The scam starts with an email informing users that their phones have been locked due to “illegal activity” and instructing them to call “Apple Care” to get the problem fixed.

Of course, there is no such company as Apple Care, but it’s an official enough sounding name that it’s luring a surprising percentage of victims into calling. In fact, opening the email will open a call dialog box, making connecting to “help” a very simple, and incredibly tempting option.

Naturally, the person on the other end of the phone isn’t tech support, but a hacker who’s looking to obtain as much information about the caller as possible. It’s a well thought out, well-engineered scam and it’s taking a lot of people in.

Given that smartphones have officially overtaken PCs as the primary means of surfing the web, it should come as no great surprise that phishing attacks targeting smartphone users are on the rise. Since most people keep their whole lives on their phones these days, it’s no wonder that so many people are quick to try and get help at the first sign of trouble with their cherished device.

Hackers are all too aware of that fact and are increasingly using it to prey on unsuspecting victims. Unfortunately, people tend to be more distracted when they’re on their phones versus when they’re using a PC, which explains why phishing attacks directed at smartphone users tend to succeed more often than they do against PC users.

Don’t fall for it.

Train your brain to be more mindful of any email you get that hints at a problem with any account or device you control. The best thing you can do if you get an email like that would be to close it and test the account or device yourself to verify that it’s locked. If it isn’t, delete the email and assume it was a scam. If it is locked, reach out to the company directly, rather than clicking links embedded in an email, or calling numbers obtained from an email.

That’s still not a fool proof solution, but it will help to minimize your risks.

Joseph Martin

Connecting To Aiport Wi-Fi Puts Your Data At Risk

August 9, 2018 by Joseph Martin

File this away under things you already knew. Coronet recently released a report entitled “Attention All Passengers: Airport Networks Are Putting Your Devices & Cloud Apps At Severe Risk,” and the news is about what you’d expect.

The report was more than five months in the making. The analysts poured over oceans of data on device vulnerabilities and Wi-Fi network risks from more than a quarter of a million consumer and corporate endpoints that passed through the 45 busiest airports in the United States.

The bottom line is simply that airport Wi-Fi is woefully unsafe, especially as compared to most corporate networks, and anyone connecting to those networks is asking for trouble.

Some offenders proved to be worse than others. The report names the San Diego International Airport, John Wayne Airport – Orange County (CA), and the William P. Hobby International Airport (Houston, TX) as being among the least secure in the nation.

The risk is that while traveling, most people don’t think about what network they’re connecting to or how secure it might be. This is an incredible opportunity for hackers, because once an employee’s laptop or mobile device is infected, the integrity of the employers’ cloud-based work apps is jeopardized.

Coronet’s founder, Dror Liwer, had this to say about the findings:

“Far too many US airports have sacrificed the security of their Wi-Fi networks for consumer convenience. As a result, business travelers in particular put not just their devices, but their company’s entire digital infrastructure, at risk every time they connect to Wi-Fi that is unencrypted, unsecured, or improperly configured.

Until such time when airports take responsibility and improve their cybersecurity posture, the accountability is on each individual flyer to be aware of the risks and take the appropriate steps to minimize the danger.”

Be sure your employees are aware of the risks any time they travel. Your company’s future might depend on it.

Joseph Martin

Clinic Employee Learns That Traveling Increases Data Theft Risk

July 25, 2018 by Joseph Martin

On May 14th, the Billings Clinic in Montana issued a breach notification statement, which explained that they detected unusual activity within one of its employee’s email accounts.

The employee in question was traveling overseas on a medical mission when the email account was compromised.

“As a result of the forensics investigation, we learned that an unauthorized individual had access to emails and attachments within that one account, some of which included patient information.”

As for scope and scale, information on more than 8,400 individuals was exposed. While the data varied from one patient to the next, the data included patient names, dates of birth, contact information, medical record numbers, internal financial control numbers, diagnoses, and some information about medical services received.

The incident highlights a common, but often overlooked problem.

As analyst Rebecca Herold explains:

“It is very common for data and devices to be hacked while traveling and for those who were hacked to not even realize it. People are often unaware of what is going on around them when they are travelling. They are using any charger station they can find, they speak loudly, and they use free Wi-Fi.

Shoulder surfing is also still very common; it’s a decades-old tactic that still works effectively today. The skimmers on charging stations are increasing in use. Don’t think that if you are in a frequent flyer lounge that these things do not happen there; they happen in those exclusive lounge areas possibly more than in other places.”

The bottom line is, any time your employees are away from your office, the risks of hacking increase. While there are no simple solutions, it bears making your employees aware of the added risks any time they’re travelling. It’s far from a perfect solution, but it’s a good place to start.

Joseph Martin

Malicious Messages In PlayStation Can Cause It To Crash

Popular NAS Device May Easily Be Compromised

New Google Chrome Feature Created For Better Password Security

Air Canada Customers May Have Had Their Data Exposed

Fax Machines Might Be Gateway To Next Hacker Attack

New Scam Targets Apple Users

Connecting To Aiport Wi-Fi Puts Your Data At Risk

Clinic Employee Learns That Traveling Increases Data Theft Risk

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