This is a weekly series to highlight the best articles and news stories going on in the Community.
What was your favorite story? What topics would you like to see? Sound off in the comments!
Predictions A - Z for 2018 - Dystopian or Utopian dawn?
A main theme for 2018 is automation - for good or ill. Cyber-inflicted fatalities and AI induced mass unemployment are weighed against freedom from repetition and a speed and intelligence of response beyond anything we have now to provide a greater understanding of the interrelationships of disparate data. Fileless attacks, use of IOT and IIOT vulnerabilities will increase further, and even blind spots in machine learning will be exploited. And its already clear that the many not ready for GDPR can expect a rude awakening.
Check out SC Magazine's in-depth predictions!
6 Tips to Protect Against Technical Support Fraud
Tech support scams have become big business for criminals, so don’t expect them to stop over the holidays. In fact, the FBI’s most recent Internet Crime Report lists tech support fraud as one of the top cybercrime trends, costing victims some $8 million last year alone. The biggest points to take away are:
- If you get an unexpected or urgent call from someone who claims to be tech support, hang up. It’s not a real call. And don’t rely on caller ID to prove who a caller is. Criminals can make caller ID seem like they’re calling from a legitimate company or a local number.
- If you get a pop-up message that tells you to call tech support, ignore it. There are legitimate pop-ups from your security software to do things like update your operating system. But do not call a number that pops up on your screen in a warning about a computer problem.
- If you’re concerned about your computer, call your security software company directly – but don’t use the phone number in the pop-up or on caller ID. Instead, look for the company’s contact information online, or on a software package or your receipt.
- Never share passwords or give control of your computer to anyone who contacts you.
Study finds that hackers could guess your phone PIN using its sensor data
Instruments in smartphones such as the accelerometer, gyroscope and proximity sensors represent a potential security vulnerability, according to researchers from Nanyang Technological University, Singapore (NTU Singapore), whose research was published in the open-access Cryptology ePrint Archive on 6 December.
The previous best phone-cracking success rate was 74 percent for the 50 most common pin numbers, but NTU's technique can be used to guess all 10,000 possible combinations of four-digit PINs. The researchers believe their work highlights a significant flaw in smartphone security, as the sensors within the phones require no permissions to be given by the user, and are openly accessible for all apps.
Get the whole story!
Web Trackers Exploit Flaw in Browser Login Managers to Steal Usernames
Princeton privacy experts are warning that advertising and analytics firms can secretly extract site usernames from browsers using hidden login fields and tie non-authenticated users visiting a site with their profiles or emails on that domain.
The two services are Adthink (audienceinsights.net) and OnAudience (behavioralengine.com), and Princeton researchers said they identified scripts from these two that collected login info on 1,110 sites found on the Alexa Top 1 Million sites list. Fortunately, neither of the two services collected password information, but only the user's username or email address —depending on what each domain uses for the login process.
Learn more!
US ISP Tells Users That Repeat Piracy Notices May Lead To "Thermostat Issues"
A letter sent out by a US ISP warns customers that by engaging in persistent online piracy they will force the company to downgrade their access plan to the minimum, and customers may have problems with controlling thermostats in the dead of winter.
In its letter, the ISP warns customers that if the company receives repeated copyright infringement notices connected to a customers' IP address and account, the ISP will intervene by demoting the user's access plan to the lowest service level.
"Please be advised that this may affect other services which you may have connected to your internet service, such as the ability to control your thermostat remotely or video monitoring services," the letter reads.
Stay warm this Winter!
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What stories or topics would you like to see covered next week?
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