Intro-to-Ethical-Hacking-Week-14

https://capture.fox.temple.edu/Mediasite/Play/63abf86c86f943eb85d5d510d1fc81231d

A survey by a Beijing research institute indicates growing pushback against facial recognition in China.

Some 74% of respondents said they wanted the option to be able to use traditional ID methods over the tech to verify their identity.

Worries about the biometric data being hacked or otherwise leaked was the main concern cited by the 6,152 respondents.

Facial recognitions systems are being rolled out in stations, schools, and shopping centres across the country.

The survey, first reported in the West by The Financial Times, was released on Thursday by the Nandu Personal Information Protection Research Centre.

It has been described as being one of the first major studies of its kind into public opinion on the subject in mainland China.

Some 80% of respondents said they were concerned that facial recognition system operators had lax security measures.

 

https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-50674909

 

As a smartphone maker, one plus is one of my favorite smartphones because of its high quality and reasonable price. In addition, they are really listening to users’ opinions on their community. The company discovered that some of our users’ order information was accessed by an unauthorized party last week while monitoring our systems. The company assured that not all customers were affected and that the attackers were not able to access any payment information, passwords, and associated accounts. The most serious influence would be phishing emails are sending out to the users. As a result of this breach, the company has also finally decided to launch an official bug bounty program by the end of December 2019. 

Offensive Security, creators of Kali Linux, released a new version of that can change your standard Xfce desktop environment into a Windows environment.

The theme is named ‘Kali Undercover,’ and was created for work in public places where discretion is required. I imagine that penetration testers, security researchers or hackers would find this theme beneficial.

Other updates included in this release version:

• PowerShell Support —Execute PowerShell scripts directly on Kali.
• Kali NetHunter KeX –Android device connectivity (HDMI and Bluetooth) for Kali desktop support on your smartphone.

https://thehackernews.com/2019/11/kali-linux-undercover-mode.html

 

HUMBLE BOOK BUNDLE: CYBERSECURITY 2019 BY PACKT

20 Cyber Security Books for $15 through humble bundle. Only 6 days left.

https://www.humblebundle.com/books/cybersecurity-2019-packt-books?hmb_source=humble_home&hmb_medium=product_tile&hmb_campaign=mosaic_section_2_layout_index_3_layout_type_threes_tile_index_1_c_cybersecurity2019packt_bookbundle

As we get closer to the end of the year and more importantly end of this most technologically advanced decade, here is a highlight of the all the major security cyber security incidents or events of 2010s. I found this article interesting because I wasnt truly aware of some of these incidents that had taken place in the earlier parts of this decade. In last 5 years alone, we have seen some monstrous data breaches, lots of hacking, cyber espionage and what not. It has truly been quite a decade from a cyber security perspective. This is a very detailed article with an insanely long list of data breaches and hacking incidents.

Source Link: https://www.zdnet.com/article/a-decade-of-hacking-the-most-notable-cyber-security-events-of-the-2010s/

 

1.2 Billion Records Found Exposed Online in a Single Server 

Here’s the next jumbo data leak, complete with Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn profiles.

“While the collection is impressive for its sheer volume, the data doesn’t include sensitive information like passwords, credit card numbers, or Social Security numbers. It does, though, contain profiles of hundreds of millions of people that include home and cell phone numbers, associated social media profiles like Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, and Github, work histories seemingly scraped from LinkedIn, almost 50 million unique phone numbers, and 622 million unique email addresses.”

https://www.wired.com/story/billion-records-exposed-online/

“I test my own technology – with all of them being called Alexa, I see which one is waking up and whether it is the right device,” says the chief scientist of the AI division responsible for the tech.

That’s a lot of Alexa. But, it seems, still not enough.

In a one-on-one interview with the BBC, Mr Prasad discussed plans for Alexa to both become smarter and to follow users wherever they go. This is known in the trade as ubiquitous ambient computing, and Amazon hopes to corner the market.

In the US, it already sells an Echo system that plays Alexa through a car’s speakers. And Mr Prasad says he also wants the virtual assistant to accompany users as they walk about too.

To achieve this, he explains, the tech needs to get better at contextual reasoning.

“If you are in a store and you say, ‘Where are the tomatoes?’ it will need to have the context,” he says.

https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-50392077

BlackFriday is approaching that might makes customers crazy about looking for tons of discount information to find the best possible deals online. At the same time, retailers might send out emails of discount information to their customers. However, cybersecurity experts have warned that consumers may be vulnerable to email scams during this annual shopping event. This big event every year could be a nightmare for cybercrime victims. Users can avoid being scammed by always checking customer reviews and complaints before downloading a new app or visiting an unfamiliar site. If the Black Friday deals look too good to be true, they probably are.

Cybersecurity experts warn of Black Friday deals email scams