ITACS 5211: Introduction to Ethical Hacking
Wade Mackey
https://www.technewsworld.com/story/84962.html
In this article, it speaks about how Blackberry is looking to add security to various industries. It also has the capability to provide more security and help governments than Apple or Google, which sounds good because even though it’s not smartphones they are building but security and making us believe we may see Blackberry make a comeback for the long run.
https://www.infosecurity-magazine.com/news/gozi-trojan-banks-on-element-of/
The Gozi Trojan is usually targeted towards North America, Europe, other countries in Asia but not really Japan according to the article. The reason is there are cyber-criminals who are in a gang who claim Japan as their turf. So the Gozi Trojan hasn’t hit Japan and with the country having such a low malware rate, they want to use it to their advantage. I think Japan should be prepared since a Trojan may hit them that is usually aimed at other countries – maybe the other gangs might team up to stop this. Who knows?
In this article, it talks about how India has become the second largest market for smartphones usage. This means new malicious actors can appear and introduce new threats to the market. Not only are smartphones are at risk but also businesses. Since in India they have a high percentage of piracy for software, businesses need to make sure they get the original software and install it in their systems, harden the OS, implement secure password policies, make their employees aware of such threats and pretty much have backups and backup plans.
This article talks about the advantage that Google has over Apple – the hardware. The earbuds for the Pixel phone acts as a translator for when someone speaks another language and vice versa, the Google apps such as Google cloud is much more integrated within the phones and it gets better with the AI component, Google Assistant – it’s much more smarter and way ahead of Siri. Google is using AI to make the competition between them and Apple right now a runaway with Google far in the lead.
http://www.businessinsider.com/google-ai-advantage-a-weapon-to-totally-embarrass-apple-2017-10
https://thehackernews.com/2017/09/blueborne-bluetooth-hacking.html
So more news about this – it’s a wormable attack, once the attacker gets finds an active Bluetooth connection and can spread it to different Bluetooth devices. It can spread ransomware to devices also and it finds vulnerability in old software on Android phones and Apple. Apple phones with the newer update are fine, Android and Microsoft have applied security patches.
There is a vulnerability called BlueBorne that is a vulnerability in Android phones and Apple devices that aren’t upgraded to iOS 10. When it’s left turned on, people can use it to connect to it and sometimes through cars as well. They say when it’s not in use, turn it off. It’s interesting to read this because I usually leave it on and don’t think about it but now that reading this, I would turn it off and on my laptop too.
https://lifehacker.com/stop-leaving-your-smartphones-bluetooth-on-1817176967/amp