1:M Cyber Security News 3/17/20

I hope you guys are all staying safe online, as well as safe at home to ‘squash the curve’ on this dreaded Covid-19 pandemic.

I’ll start by saying please make sure your Windows system are updated ASAP, as there are a few very nasty vulnerabilities that have been recently patched by Microsoft. So make sure to apply those updates now to protect yourselves.

OK lets check out some interesting news tidbits as of late:

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A recent study showed the Brave Browser beating all other browsers with respect to privacy (even Firefox, which surprised me a bit):

More:

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@NyTimes shows you how to research yourself online, and remove any personal information you find

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Facebook and Twitter have revealed new evidence suggesting that Russian efforts to interfere in the 2020 U.S. presidential election are becoming more sophisticated and harder to detect. They are using proxies in West Africa, for instance, to do their online trolling for them.

And U.S. Intelligence agencies are stressing that the Russians are trying to help Sanders win the Democratic nomination. But not because they like him. They just want to sow more chaos into U.S. politics by turning the democratic voters against each other. Same thing they tried back in 2016:

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A revealing article that discusses how much incredible personnel, travel, health and financial data Chinese state hackers have stolen from the US, which can now be used with its Artificial Intelligence and Big Data capacities for decades to come against the US. Intelligence agencies say this may take decades to recover from.

Speaking of Chinese state hackers, here is a breakdown of how Chinese hackers broke into Equifax and remained in their network for 2 months!

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Good news ahead! The Department of Justice is suing 2 telecom providers for helping scam call centers make fraudulent calls to victims in the US. The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) is also saying they will start saying Telecom providers unless they stop allowing these calls to occur 🙂

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For those of you using Microsoft Windows, please migrate ASAP over to their new Chromium-based Edge browser. It shows very promising signs of being more secure than their previous Edge browser

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If you have an iPhone, but no security key yet for doing 2FA, fret not! Google now allows you to log into Gmail using your iPhone as a security key. Nice move Google:

Pay attention to Google Chrome’s new Password Checker popups. They are here to help you make your passwords more secure:

And while we are talking about Google, Gmail is using deep learning algorithms to stop a huge amount of malicious attachments in their tracks. Its a great free web-based solution (not so great on the privacy side though)

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Microsoft says that when they reviewed all their enterprise accounts that had been compromised, 99% DID NOT use 2FA. I’m telling you guys, 2FA will protect you like no other! Please turn ON 2FA.

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A crazy story about a bunch of drug dealers that were set free because ransomware wiped all the evidence the police was going to use against them in court. The police said “We all went home one day and the next day we came back to work and we were back in the year 1984. Back in 1984 if you wanted to look somebody up you had to find them in the phone book.” Please patch your systems and back up your data!

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And on a separate note, scientists have developed the first programmable human cells. So not exactly a robot, and not a human either. Mind blowing stuff:

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Please be safe out there everyone.

#ClickGameOver

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