Every Monday we bring you a review of the previous week’s hottest cyber-security and on-line privacy news articles.
Here at IronSocket, we work to continually call attention to the risks and threats to our online privacy and security that we as individuals face in our connected lives. We are 100% committed to helping our customers stay safe and secure while on-line, both through our VPN and proxy services as well as through education.
Here are the top articles we have fished from this week’s news cascade.
A New iPhone Phishing Attack
Last week I shared here a phishing email designed to capture my Apple/iTunes credentials. Here’s another scam designed to do the same thing but through SMS. The important point to note here is that these scams will continue, becoming more common, and more sophisticated. One always must be on guard when on-line.
http://bgr.com/2017/08/18/iphone-hacks-imessage-scam-steal-apple-id/
Enter Quantta Analytics
Pretty much everyone who uses the Internet understands that operations like Google and Facebook collect every datum they possibly can. Few are aware, however, that there are vast quantities of information available only on the dark web. According to this article, over 500 times as much information. Quantta Analytics is crunching all this data and using it to predict human behavior.
https://www.techinasia.com/dark-data-startup-quantta-analytics
MaaS – Malware-as-a-Service
There are two new malware offerings on the dark web designed to exploit Mac users: MacSpy and MacRansom. MacSpy was not discovered by researchers doing forensic data analysis. It we discovered because it is advertised on the dark web. Cyber-crime has become big business.
The Open Invitation of Hotel Wi-Fi
I frequently post articles here about the risks of using hotel and coffee house wi-fi. Here is the second article in as many weeks warning people who have recently stayed in hotels in continental Europe to change their passwords.
For people who have a large number of email and web site accounts, the solution to the password problem is a password manager. I have over 50 different email accounts and there is not one duplicate password among them. They all have unique passwords. That way if one email service gets hacked, my email accounts on other services are still safe.
http://metro.co.uk/2017/08/14/if-youve-used-hotel-wi-fi-recently-you-should-probably-worry-6850437/
The Risks of Relying Solely on Technology
Once again we see that the first line of cyber defense has to be our brains. Instead of blindly trusting everything we encounter on the Internet, we need to think critically and be suspicious of everything. We need to learn to recognize if something is potentially risky or dangerous and then how to determine if it is legitimate or not.
http://theconversation.com/end-to-end-encryption-isnt-enough-security-for-real-people-82054
It is not convenient to place everything new you encounter online on a blacklist and then move it to the whitelist only after you have verified legitimacy. Learning how to be cyber-secure takes some effort. Our privacy and security experts can help make this easier for you. If you have any concerns, questions, or comments, don’t hesitate to write to us. We’re here to help you stay safe, secure, and protected while online.
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