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BleepingComputer
Going viral shouldn’t lead to bomb threats, with Leigh Honeywell: Lock and Code S05E06
Going viral shouldn’t lead to bomb threats, with Leigh Honeywell: Lock and Code S05E06
[[{“value”:”
This week on the Lock and Code podcast…
A disappointing meal at a restaurant. An ugly breakup between two partners. A popular TV show that kills off a beloved, main character.
In a perfect world, these are irritations and moments of vulnerability. But online today, these same events can sometimes be the catalyst for hate. That disappointing meal can produce a frighteningly invasive Yelp review that exposes a restaurant owner’s home address for all to see. That ugly breakup can lead to an abusive ex posting a video of revenge porn. And even a movie or videogame can enrage some individuals into such a fury that they begin sending death threats to the actors and cast mates involved.
Online hate and harassment campaigns are well-known and widely studied. Sadly, they’re also becoming more frequent.
In 2023, the Anti-Defamation League revealed that 52% of American adults reported being harassed online at least some time in their life—the highest rate ever recorded by the organization and a dramatic climb from the 40% who responded similarly just one year earlier. When asking teens about recent harm, 51% said they’d suffered from online harassment in strictly the 12 months prior to taking the survey itself—a radical 15% increase from what teens said the year prior.
The proposed solutions, so far, have been difficult to implement.
Social media platforms often deflect blame—and are frequently shielded from legal liability—and many efforts to moderate and remove hateful content have either been slow or entirely absent in the past. Popular accounts with millions of followers will, without explicitly inciting violence, sometimes draw undue attention to everyday people. And the increasing need to have an online presence for teens—even classwork is done online now—makes it near impossible to simply “log off.”
Today, on the Lock and Code podcast with host David Ruiz, we speak with Tall Poppy CEO and co-founder Leigh Honeywell, about the evolution of online hate, personal defense strategies that mirror many of the best practices in cybersecurity, and the modern risks of accidentally becoming viral in a world with little privacy.
“It’s not just that your content can go viral, it’s that when your content goes viral, five people might be motivated enough to call in a fake bomb threat at your house.”
Leigh Honeywell, CEO and co-founder of Tall Poppy
Tune in today to listen to the full conversation.
Show notes and credits:
Intro Music: “Spellbound” by Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com)
Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 4.0 License
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
Outro Music: “Good God” by Wowa (unminus.com)
Listen up—Malwarebytes doesn’t just talk cybersecurity, we provide it.
Protect yourself from online attacks that threaten your identity, your files, your system, and your financial well-being with our exclusive offer for Malwarebytes Premium for Lock and Code listeners.
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Malwarebytes
Apple warns people of mercenary attacks via threat notification system
Apple warns people of mercenary attacks via threat notification system
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Apple has reportedly sent alerts to individuals in 92 nations on Wednesday, April 10, to say it’s detected that they may have been a victim of a mercenary attack. The company says it has sent out these types of threat notifications to over 150 countries since the start in 2021.
Mercenary spyware is used by governments to target people like journalists, political activists, and similar targets, and involves the use of sophisticated tools like Pegasus. Pegasus is one of the world’s most advanced and invasive spyware tools, known to utilize zero-day vulnerabilities against mobile devices.
The second number became known when Apple changed the wording of the relevant support page. The change also included the title that went from “About Apple threat notifications and protecting against state-sponsored attacks” to “About Apple threat notifications and protecting against mercenary spyware.”
If you look at the before and after, you’ll also notice an extra paragraph, again with the emphasis on the change from “state-sponsored attacks” to “mercenary spyware.”
The cause for the difference in wording might be because “state-sponsored” is often used to indicate attacks targeted at entities, like governments or companies, while these mercenary attacks tend to be directed at individual people.
The extra paragraph specifically calls out the NSO Group and the Pegasus spyware it sells. While the NSO Group claims to only sell to “government clients,” we have no reason to take its word for it.
Apple says that when it detects activity consistent with a mercenary spyware attack it uses two different means of notifying the users about the attack:
Displays a Threat Notification at the top of the page after the user signs into appleid.apple.com.
Sends an email and iMessage notification to the email addresses and phone numbers associated with the user’s Apple ID.
Apple says it doesn’t want to share information about what triggers these notifications, since that might help mercenary spyware attackers adapt their behavior to evade detection in the future.
The NSO Group itself argued in a court case started by Meta for spying on WhatsApp users, that it should be recognized as a foreign government agent and, therefore, be entitled to immunity under US law limiting lawsuits against foreign countries.
NSO Group has also said that its tool is increasingly necessary in an era when end-to-end encryption is widely available to criminals.
How to stay safe
Apple advises iPhone users to:
Keep devices up to date.
Protect devices with a passcode.
Use Multi-Factor-Authentication (MFA) for your Apple ID.
Only install apps from the App Store.
Use strong and unique passwords online.
Don’t click on links or attachments from unknown senders.
We’d like to add:
Use an anti-malware solution on your device.
If you’re not sure about something that’s been sent to you, verify it with the person or company via another communcation channel.
Use a password manager.
We don’t just report on phone security—we provide it
Cybersecurity risks should never spread beyond a headline. Keep threats off your mobile devices by downloading Malwarebytes for iOS, and Malwarebytes for Android today.
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Malwarebytes