The messages were chilling, and believable enough to force the Johnston School District in Iowa to close a school in 2017. “Your child still looks so innocent,” one text sent to parent read, according the Des Moines Register. “Don’t have anyone look outside….I’m just getting started.” The messages went on [Keep reading]
Perhaps you missed the tantalizing detail I reported earlier this week that Congressional investigators believe the initial Equifax hackers entered that company’s systems with computers using IP addresses in China. Or The New York Times reporting that U.S. authorities now blame China for the hack on Starwood / Marriott. You probably [Keep reading]
Initial attacks that led to the massive theft of data Equifax data came from computers in China, a Congressional investigation has found. A 96-page report issued Monday by the House Oversight Committee also lists a litany of dramatic errors inside the firm that led to the hack — many previously [Keep reading]
It’s easy to focus on the big number associated with today’s Starwood breach — 500 million accounts compromised. But I’m focused on a much smaller number: 4. As in, hackers had access to Starwood networks for four years. In the world of “advanced persistent threats,” this sounds like some kind [Keep reading]
Coffee giant Dunkin Donuts announced a security incident involving its mobile app yesterday, but I am afraid the firm isn’t telling quite the whole story. I’m hard at work trying to figure that out right now. The incident reminds me of what happened to Starbucks consumers, when criminals armed with [Keep reading]
Google and Facebook often do spooky things, without our informed consent. Recently, Google seemed to possibly ruin a holiday surprise for me…but ended up breaking my heart instead. Here’s a story about a clever tech going too far, doing things I never asked it to do, and ultimately, making a [Keep reading]
Internal Facebook documents seized by a member of British Parliament suggest Facebook was under siege from Russian hackers in late 2014. I can tell you Russian hackers were busy that year (as were Chinese hackers, and North Korean hackers, etc..) I spent months researching the hack of Yahoo — history’s [Keep reading]
When did you give Facebook consent to share intimate details of your life with the rest of the world? To have your birthday shared with third-party apps, you political leanings shared with advertisers (and Russian fake news purveyors?) When you signed up, a firm executive said today during a testy [Keep reading]
There’s a lot of noise around Facebook right now, and I suspect you’ll hear a lot more news soon. A member of parliament exercised an extraordinary power this weekend, seizing internal documents from the firm while one party to a lawsuit against Facebook was traveling in London. The British government is already [Keep reading]
It’s the annual health care enrollment clusterf**k, which means it’s a perfect time for scammers to prey on confused consumers. And they are pouncing. YouMail, which tracks robocalls, says phony calls targeting consumers shopping for health insurance are the most common phone scam now. The firm counted 500 million such calls [Keep reading]
Bob Sullivan