The good ship Yahoo is still battling troubled waters on its journey to the safe harbor of a Verizon purchase. Reuters has just released a massive bombshell that may blockade if not outright scuttle the $4.8bln deal: two former employees of the beleagured media company have alleged that Yahoo complied with a classified directive from a government agency to directly surveil the millions of email accounts hosted by Yahoo in 2015. According to the Reuter sources, the decision to open Yahoo Mail’s kimono was made behind closed doors, excluding Yahoo’s then Chief Information Security Officer, who apparently resigned because of this incident.
Whiskey Tango Foxtrot, Yahoo?
Normally, I don’t urge folks to get out the pitchforks and torches, but on reading this I actually used language not normally heard in polite company. Thus far the government agencies named are declining comment. If the allegation proves accurate, I’d say Yahoo customers had their Fourth Amendment rights violated and thoroughly trod upon any trust they might have had left with their still substantial customer base. Coupled with the recent massive breach they experienced in 2014 and the debacle that was their conversion to a new email platform in 2013, it’s no wonder Yahoo has gone from an Internet powerhouse to second-tier media company up for sale. If you are still using Yahoo as a primary email provider for work, you should stop doing so immediately, not only for security issues that they can’t seem to get ahead of, but now for serious breaches of privacy and trust.
It’s every business owner’s worst nightmare: dissatisfied customer takes to the internet and writes a scathing review on Yelp, possibly hurting new business or scaring away potential clients or even investors and vendors. Worse yet, the review itself may be fabricated, and unless the bad review breaks Yelp’s posting rules, there is typically very little the business owner can do except to respond to the reviewer in the same forum. This may change now that a recent court case has found its way to the California Supreme Court. Prior to the appeal that landed it in the upper court’s docket, two lower judges ruled in favor of the plaintiff who successfully sued to have a bad review removed from Yelp as defamatory.
What this means for you:
Before you hit the “Release the Lawyers!” speed dial on your phone it may be worth waiting to see what the Supreme Court has to say on this. I have spoken with many folks who are sympathetic or even empathetic to the plaintiff’s side in this case. They feel helpless to counter what they see as spiteful and vengeful reviews on Yelp and other review sites, especially when there seems no recourse to address the customer or have dishonest or misleading posts removed or even reviewed for accuraccy. As you can imagine, Yelp and several other Internet companies are watching this very closely. According to them, it could lead to a very chilling effect on crowd-sourced reviews, and if the hyperbole is to be believed, could even impact free speech. At minimum, we can hope it will lead to innovation, new thinking or a cultural shift that will add accountability to the type of free speech that the internet enables, and possibly even diminish the size of the “soap box” it grants to the more radical or dangerous fringes of the internet.
It’s taken many years, but it would seem that the US business world has finally agreed that throwing old technology straight into the trash is unsafe and bad for the environment. To capitalize on this, an entire cottage industry of electronic waste (e-waste) recycling companies have sprung up over the years as our rate of technology consumption increases. Unfortunately, though they may promise it in their marketing, an investigative study has found that as much as 40% of e-waste processed through these companies is actually illegally and improperly disposed of through shady overseas outfits that buy the e-waste for pennies on the pound, scavenge what precious metals they can, and then dump the rest in toxic landfills. Contrary to popular belief, e-waste recycling is costly to do properly, and not profitable at this current time.
What this means for you:
While you should still feel good for not just throwing your e-waste into the trash, you may want to scrutinize the vendors or organizers of any e-waste events that you use, especially if they promise “secure disposal” of items that may contain data, like old hard drives or mobile devices. If the vendor in question isn’t handling the actual recycling of the materials it collects, it’s possible they are reselling the e-waste to cover their costs (maybe even make a small profit) to another firm that is definitely not “green” in any sense other than profiteering.
There are two types of e-waste certifications recognized by the EPA – “R2” and “eStewards” – both of which are administered by nongovernmental organizations, and despite the certification and oversight, both seem to have bad apples, though eSteward companies are held to stricter standards and appear to cheat less than their R2 or non-certified counterparts. While you can’t be expected to control or direct the morality of these companies or the certification process, your scrutiny and attention to this issue will hopefully lead to less hazardous waste being improperly disposed of in overseas landfills.
With as many as 70 reports of exploding batteries in the US alone, Samsung has officially announced that it is recalling all Galaxy Note 7 phones sold prior to, well, this week. In case you were considering ignoring the recall to continue using your shiny new phablet, know that even the US Consumer Product Safety Commission is recommending everyone stop using the device immediately. Still not convinced? Just do a search on YouTube for exploding batteries to gain a new understanding of just how Samsung’s “hot” new phone is really not one you want in your pocket or purse. While certain less savory media outlets may be sensationalizing Samsung’s flagship recall with lurid headlines, there are at least several lawsuits pending which allege grave bodily injury and extensive property damage.
What this means for you:
Make sure your important data is backed up somewhere other than the device, stop using your Note 7, and head to your nearest carrier service center/store. Know that in most cases, carrier personnel are being instructed by their leadership to not turn on the phone or assist customers in transferring data off the device (which they normally do). Expect your phone to go straight into a box, and if you’ve not retrieved your data, you will not see it again. Depending on your carrier, you will have options to replace the device with something else, get a loaner while you wait for a “safe” Note 7, or just get a full refund for your purchase. Here is Samsung’s official page on the “exchange” program. You should also know that Samsung plans to “nudge” Note 7 holdouts by sending an over-the-air update to lower the phone’s battery capacity to 60%, hoping to provide further incentive to reluctant Note 7 owners to turn in their phablets.
Even if you don’t own a Note 7, there are several valuable lessons that can be learned from the recall.
- Any mobile device that is too hot to touch, especially while being charged, is potentially very dangerous. Immediately unplug it, power it down (if you can do so safely/quickly), and set it away from any flammable materials until it cools down. Definitely replace the charger with a high quality charger – be careful of “booster” or “fast” chargers, especially cheap ones – even if they don’t explode your battery, you can do serious damage to your phone with repeated use if the amperage/voltage is not aligned with your devices requirements.
- Make sure your important data is backed up and retrievable from another device that isn’t your phone. This includes contacts, emails, photos and text messages, as well as any other content you create exclusively on your phone. Both iOS and Android offer “native” cloud platforms that can help you store your phone data, and most major carriers also have custom apps/plans that will also cover you there, but don’t assume these services are activated and working from the start. Most need to be set up, and depending on the amount of data that needs to be stored, may require additional payment to expand your cloud storage. Also, backing up data takes time, especially if your internet connection isn’t very fast.
If you can’t live without your mobile device for more than couple hours, why not swap to your older phone for awhile until Samsung can ship you a phone that has less potential to cause 3rd degree burns. At minimum, know how to check your phone voicemail from another number/device. This will allow you to answer all those concerned calls from friends and colleagues who know you are still walking around with Samsung’s “hottest” new phone.
Image courtesy of Stuart Miles at FreeDigitalPhotos.net
You know the general public is suffering from security fatigue when something as big as the Dropbox breach appears in the news, and almost as quickly, disappears. In case you blinked, online magazine Vice.com broke the news last week that a database recently surfaced which contains over 60 million Dropbox.com user accounts (email addresses) and hashed passwords. Almost immediately following this news, Dropbox itself issued an email warning to its users that it was resetting passwords of users who might have been impacted by a 2012 breach. Breach notification site HaveIBeenPwned.com also corroborated the reports that the account information found in the database does contain valid usernames and encrypted passwords.
What this means for you:
Even though breach data may be years old it can still be valuable, especially if the passwords are stored with weak, easy-to-crack encryption. In the case of the Dropbox breach, approximately half of the passwords are strongly encrypted, and are unlikely to be decoded, and the other half stored in a slightly weaker, but still formidable encryption method. As proof of their continued value, many databases from breaches as far back as 2012 and earlier as still actively traded and sold in the digital blackmarket, and as technology continues to advance, you can bet that even strongly encrypted databases will eventually be cracked. If your account and password only showed up in the Dropbox.com breach, you could consider your password relatively safe (change it anyways!) for now, but if you used it elsewhere, and that account was exposed in another breach, like the LinkedIn.com breach that happened in the same year, and you used the same password as you did for Dropbox, your security is considerably more compromised. Multiply that exposure for every other breach you were a part of and used the same password again, and we can’t even account for the breaches that haven’t yet been publicized!
Long story short: check HaveIBeenPwned.com, change your passwords, and don’t reuse passwords!
With the hotly anticipated announcement of the next iPhone right around the corner, some parts of the technology media are once again navel-gazing about the world’s continuing love affair with Apple’s popular smartphone. It’s easy to see why so many are devoted consumers: the iPhone is a stellar example of a beautiful device that is highly functional. Long gone are the days where using high-tech tools were the sole domain of the unfashionably nerdy or productivity-obsessed workaholics, and there is no doubt who we have to thank for this change. But the eternal question is raised again: are we sacrificing function for form? Has the iPhone become of the stiletto heels of mobile devices?
Has Woo gone off the deep end?
Before you get the pitchforks and torches out, let me be clear: I’ve got nothing against stiletto heels. They are only one example in a sea of thousands that illustrated the “form over function” ideal, but they make for a handy and familiar analogy. Over time, the iPhone has become thinner because, let’s face it, chunky phones just aren’t “sexy” in today’s world. This had led to some interesting trends including antennae-gate, bend-gate, Touch disease, and the telling statistic that up to 1 in 4 of iPhones will suffer a cracked screen during their functional life, and that as many as 15% of all iPhone users are walking around with cracked screens rather than replacing them. What’s troubling is that an affordable, shatter-proof screen is readily available: use plastic instead of glass! But time and again, market research and testing shows that people don’t want plastic because it feels cheap, and right now, iPhones (and smartphones in general) are still very much a status symbol. Not that other smartphones aren’t seeing a similar trend in flawed design, but Apple is an easy, high-profile target that continues to market on its esthetics, and like a purebred pet with predisposition to genetic health issues, the iPhone could be evolving into a fragile, unsustainable extreme. How many more “flaw”-gates will people suffer through before demanding a more functional, practical smartphone? I still see a lot of stiletto heels out there.
Last week, the majority of US Windows 10 users received a big update from Microsoft nicknamed the “Anniversary Update”, primarily because it was initially released on Aug 2, approximately one year after the official launch of Microsoft’s latest operating system. Amongst a host of improvements to core features like Edge and Cortana and presumably numerous bug fixes, the update also managed to render millions of webcams inoperable. Depending on what you use your computer (and webcam) for, and even what generation you hail from, the impact of this could have been non-existant to a complete showstopper. In the ongoing videochat fight, Apple and Google just scored a TKO without even stepping into the ring.
What this means for you:
Obviously if you don’t use Windows 10 and a webcam, feel free to point and laugh or shake your head in sympathy. What might make this very aggravating for the average Windows 10 user is that they may not even know their computer was updated last week. All they know is their Skype or favorite videochat app is now locking up after a minute with no visible explanation. Even more exasperating is Microsoft’s new rollback policy for Windows 10. Previous versions of Windows allowed the user to uninstall any MS update applied to their system at any time. Now, with Windows 10, you have ten days to rollback your OS to a previous version, otherwise you are just out of luck. In the grand scheme of things, ten days is a very short time to figure out the root cause of an obscure problem like this, so you can imagine that many folks are discovering the root cause of this problem too late to easily solve it.
Though Microsoft has finally acknowledged the problem (WARNING: technical jargon galore!), a patch is unlikely to be released until September. Until that day arrives, the only fix is to rollback the Anniversary update (if you catch it within 10 days) or manually edit your computer’s registry. Buying another webcam won’t necessarily fix this problem unless you know for a fact it can process video through a codec known as YUY2, as Microsoft intentionally removed support for the more common MJPEG and H.264 protocols. According to them, these two older codecs have significant performance issues and support was removed to improve Windows 10. So now instead of degrading performance, your webcam will have zero impact on your computers performance. Working as intended?
Get ready for 1000% of your daily dose of Irony: America’s top surveillance outfit, the National Security Agency appears to have been hacked, according to announcements made by a group known as the “Shadow Brokers” and backed by a sample of data released as proof. Not only that, it may have happened as early as 2013, just days after NSA whistleblower Snowden went public. The spy agency has yet to comment on the matter, though given their usual taciturn stance on sharing information with the public, further enlightenment is unlikely to come from that source. Snowden himself weighed in on the issue shortly after this news became public, attributing the original hack as likely being the Russian government. In a further dose of irony, Snowden currently resides in Russia, presumably as part American exile and part Russian political trophy.
What this means for you:
Before you grab your bug-out bag and head for your internet-proof bunker, make sure you freak out for the right reasons. In this particular instance, the data for sale appears to be code, and not data on Americans (which they are assuredly collecting). Offered as proof of the deed, the Shadow Brokers posted source code of known malware apps the NSA is alleged (by Snowden and others) to have used to break firewalls and other security platforms in use by foreign nations, presumably to allow the install of other covert surveillance software on the computers behind those security measures. Security pundits, including industry vet Bruce Scheier, have evaluated the data released, and in light of the the current political climate between the US and Russia, are of the opinion that this might be a manuever by the Russian government in anticipation of criticism or accusations from the US about the DNC hacks. To put it in more understandable terms, we may be seeing the opening salvos in a new, thoroughly modern Cold War. Instead of warheads and undercover spies as pawns, this one may be waged via the internet through cyber warfare and social media. Ready to head to that bunker yet?
Researchers from security firm Check Point announced at this year’s DefCon security conference that up to 900 million smartphones may be vulnerable to a set of up to 4 vulnerabilities that appear in Qualcomm-powered devices. Discovered earlier this year and reported to the manufacturer, Qualcomm has since published fixes, but not all manufacturers have pushed these fixes to all the affected models, including Google’s own Nexus line which normally has a reputation for being kept more current than most Android devices.
What this means for you:
Based upon the affected Qualcomm chipset impacted by these four vulnerabilities, the following models are impacted:
- BlackBerry Priv
- Blackphone 1 and Blackphone 2
- Google Nexus 5X, Nexus 6 and Nexus 6P
- HTC One, HTC M9 and HTC 10
- LG G4, LG G5, and LG V10
- New Moto X by Motorola
- OnePlus One, OnePlus 2 and OnePlus 3
- Samsung Galaxy S7 and Samsung S7 Edge
- Sony Xperia Z Ultra
To find out if your phone is affected by the vulnerabilities, you can run this app on the Google Play Store: QuadRooter Scanner. Buyer beware: the app developer is very transparently marketing its mobile protection app through the publicity surrounding their discovery. I don’t begrudge them the opportunity – after all they did the hard work to discover these flaws, but I didn’t install their software as I am confident I can keep my device safe, and I’m sceptical of mobile security apps in general. If the app reports that you are vulnerable, it will state which CVE’s are still unpatched on your device. You have a few options at this point:
- Check to see if any outstanding OS updates are available to be installed on your device. Where this is shown will vary depending on your phone’s manufacturer, but typically it will be found in “Settings”
- Avoid “side-loading” apps from dodgy sources. Only install apps from the Google Play store and nowhere else. Even then, think twice and read the reviews on any new apps, especially ones that seem to be very new – hackers have been known to sneak malicious apps onto the Play Store for a short while before being detected and removed.
- As usual, avoid opening strange emails, URLs and attachments on your device.
- Send an email to your device manufacturer asking them when they plan to patch the vulnerabilities on your phone. The more people that write in, the more likely the manufacturer will move faster on deploying the fixes.
Just when you think Microsoft might have its act together security-wise, some clever/persistent security researcher will do their damndest to shatter your fledgling comfort with the latest exotic bug. In this case, the bug has been around since 1997 – it’s so old it’s officially Bug #4 in Internet Explorer. As in the fourth bug discovered in Internet Explorer, ever. And never fixed! Sadly, this negligence has arisen as a critical security flaw in both Windows 8 and 10, and could lead to your Microsoft Live account being exposed.
What this means for you:
This flaw does not affect the following:
- Windows 7,
- Windows 8 or 10 computers attached to a domain,
- Windows 8 or 10 computers accessed via local accounts,
- Windows 8/10 users who do not use Internet Explorer, Edge or any version of MS Outlook.
The people who fall into #2-4 are what I would call a “select” demographic, which is to say that it’s more likely you are using Windows 8 or 10 with a Live account. Via trivial exploit, a hacker could obtain your login and a hashed version of your password, and depending on how complex that password is, that hash could be cracked in less than a minute, meaning your Live account is now fully compromised. In case you weren’t sure what Live accounts can do, they give you a wide variety of access to Microsoft services including OneDrive, Skype, MS Office, and XBox Live to name a few, not to mention your actual computer, should the hacker somehow gain access to your local network or the device itself.
Before you start panicking, there is a (relatively) simple solution: change your password and switch your Live account to use 2-factor authentication. This won’t change how you log into your computer, but it will force anyone trying to use your credentials elsewhere online from using them without that second authorization that 2-factor provides, even if they manage to steal your password again. To really circumvent this bug from impacting you, switch to using a local account on your computer, or to stop using IE/Edge and Outlook until Microsoft fixes this ancient, but dangerous bug.
Image courtesy of Stuart Miles at FreeDigitalPhotos.net