1 – Argentinian security researcher arrested after tweeting about government hack
Argentinian police briefly detained and raided the home of a well-known security researcher last week on suspicion of hacking and leaking data from government systems. Following his release, Javier Smaldone, the security researcher, obtained and published court documents pertaining to his arrest on Twitter. The documents showed that authorities arrested and raided the security expert just for tweeting about a recent government hack, with no tangible evidence that he was involved.
2 – “BriansClub” Hack Rescues 26M Stolen Cards
“BriansClub,” one of the largest underground stores for buying stolen credit card data, has itself been hacked. The data stolen from BriansClub encompasses more than 26 million credit and debit card records taken from hacked online and brick-and-mortar retailers over the past four years, including almost eight million records uploaded to the shop in 2019 alone. Last month, KrebsOnSecurity was contacted by a source who shared a plain text file containing what was claimed to be the full database of cards for sale both currently and historically through BriansClub[.]at, a thriving fraud bazaar named after this author. Imitating my site, likeness and namesake, BriansClub even dubiously claims a copyright with a reference at the bottom of each page: “© 2019 Crabs on Security.”
3 – Domain Typosquatters Target the 2020 Presidential Election
With a large playing field of candidates for the upcoming 2020 United States presidential election, political campaigns and scammers are capitalizing on searchers mistypeing a candidate’s name in order to bring them to sites they weren’t expecting. Popular sites or keywords are commonly targeted by domain typosquatters who purposely register misspelled domain names in order to funnel visitors to their own products, scams, or malware. For example, Chrome browser extension developers have registered the domain blepingcomputer.com in order to target the visitors of bleepingcomputer.com and redirect them to sites promoting unwanted extensions.
4 – NBN chief blames Australia’s poor speed rating on ‘unrepresentative’ data
NBN Co chief executive Stephen Rue has argued Australia’s poor showing in global speed test rankings cannot be relied on because the data is “unrepresentative” of broadband available in the rest of the world. Broadband speed reports released by companies such as Ookla, M-Lab and Akamai show how each country fares for broadband, with Australia lagging behind. According to the latest Ookla report for September, Australia ranks at 61 in the world for fixed broadband. The result is often seized upon by people unhappy with the speeds they can get on the Coalition’s multi-technology mix NBN, but NBN Co said the results cannot be relied upon and has devised another measure to make the rankings a more “fair” representation of Australia’s broadband.
5 – WAV audio files are now being used to hide malicious code
Two reports published in the last few months show that malware operators are experimenting with using WAV audio files to hide malicious code. The technique is known as steganography — the art of hiding information in plain sight, in another data medium. In the software field, steganography — also referred to as stego — is used to describe the process of hiding files or text in another file, of a different format. For example, hiding plain text inside an image’s binary format.
6 – Australian government introduces new telco regulations to fight phone scams
The federal government has announced new telco regulations in a move to prevent fraudsters from hijacking mobile numbers to access personal and financial information, and reduce phone scams. Under the new industry-wide measures, telcos will be required to introduce two-factor authentication, such as inputting a code on a website or responding to a text message, before mobile numbers can be transferred from one provider to another. Pre-port verification measures are already being used by many Australian telcos, including the major players Telstra, Optus, and Vodafone. However, the government believes there are still one million services that are yet to have these consumer safeguards implemented.
7 – Facebook’s Libra facing ‘core’ legal, regulatory challenges before launch
U.S. Federal Reserve Governor Lael Brainard said Wednesday that Facebook’s efforts to launch a Libra cryptocurrency must overcome a “core set of legal and regulatory challenges” before facilitating a single payment. Brainard added that central banks’ efforts to conduct monetary policy could be “complicated” by widespread adoption of an external stablecoin like Libra. But she suggested the Fed is in no rush to issue its own digital currency, saying it raises “profound legal, policy and operational questions.”
8 – Any fingerprint unlocks Galaxy S10, Samsung warns
The scanner sends ultrasounds to detect 3D ridges of fingerprints in order to recognise users. Samsung said it was “aware of the case of S10’s malfunctioning fingerprint recognition and will soon issue a software patch”. South Korea’s online-only KaKao Bank told customers to switch off the fingerprint-recognition option to log in to its services until the issue was fixed. Previous reports suggested some screen protectors were incompatible with Samsung’s reader because they left a small air gap that interfered with the scanning.
