The makers of two phone surveillance services appear to have shuttered after the owner agreed to settle state accusations of illegally promoting spyware that his companies developed. PhoneSpector and Highster were consumer-grade phone monitoring apps that facilitated the covert surveillance…
Tag: Security News | TechCrunch
Stalkerware apps PhoneSpector and Highster appear shut down
The makers of two phone surveillance services appear to have shuttered after the owner agreed to settle state accusations of illegally promoting spyware that his companies developed. PhoneSpector and Highster were consumer-grade phone monitoring apps that facilitated the covert surveillance…
Stalkerware apps PhoneSpector and Highster appear to shut down
The makers of two phone surveillance services appear to have shuttered after the owner agreed to settle state accusations of illegally promoting spyware that his companies developed. PhoneSpector and Highster were consumer-grade phone monitoring apps that facilitated the covert surveillance…
FTC orders Blackbaud to overhaul ‘reckless’ security practices in wake of 2020 breach
Education tech company Blackbaud agreed to settle with the U.S. Federal Trade Commission over the company’s security practices that resulted in a 2020 data breach. The FTC alleges that Blackbaud, a U.S.-based company that provides financial and administrative software to…
Here is Apple’s official ‘jailbroken’ iPhone for security researchers
In 2019, Apple announced it would start sending some security researchers a “special” version of the iPhone designed to be used to find vulnerabilities, which could then be reported to Apple so the company could fix them. In 2020, the…
US gives federal agencies 48 hours to disconnect flawed Ivanti VPN tech
U.S. cybersecurity agency CISA has ordered federal agencies to urgently disconnect Ivanti VPN appliances given the risk of malicious exploitation due to multiple software flaws. In an update to an emergency directive first published last week, CISA is now mandating…
Okta lays off 400 employees — almost exactly a year after last staff cuts
U.S. access and identity management giant Okta has said it is laying off approximately 400 employees, or 7% of its global workforce. The layoffs come almost exactly a year to the day after Okta announced plans to reduce its workforce…
Europcar says someone likely used ChatGPT to promote a fake data breach
On Sunday, a user in a well-known hacking forum advertised what they claimed was a cache of stolen data from the rental car giant Europcar. The user claimed to have stolen the personal information of more than 48 million Europcar…
Apple fixes zero-day bug in Apple Vision Pro that ‘may have been exploited’
A day after reporters published their first hands-on review of Apple’s Vision Pro, the technology giant released its first security patch for the mixed reality headset to fix a vulnerability that “may have been exploited” by hackers in the wild.…
US disrupts China-backed hacking operation amid warning of threat to American infrastructure
The U.S. government announced Wednesday it had disrupted a China-backed hacking operation targeting U.S. critical infrastructure, amid warnings that Beijing is preparing to cause “real-world harm” to Americans in the event of a future conflict. Speaking during a U.S. House…
Hackers steal $112 million of XRP Ripple cryptocurrency
On Tuesday, hackers stole around $112 million of the Ripple-focused cryptocurrency XRP from a crypto wallet, Ripple’s co-founder and executive chairman has disclosed. Ripple’s Chris Larsen said on Wednesday that the stolen crypto was his. Larsen wrote on X (previously…
Security giant Proofpoint is laying off 280 employees, about 6% of its workforce
Proofpoint is laying off about 6% of its global workforce, or 280 employees, the company confirmed to TechCrunch. “This decision was not taken lightly, and it is deeply rooted in our forward-looking company strategy of aligning our investments and hiring…
Ivanti patches two zero-days under attack, but finds another
Ivanti warned on Wednesday that hackers are exploiting another previously undisclosed zero-day vulnerability affecting its widely used corporate VPN appliance. Since early December, Chinese state-backed hackers have been exploiting Ivanti Connect Secure’s flaws — tracked as CVE-2023-46805 and CVE-2024-21887 —…
Oasis Security leaves stealth with $40M to lock down the wild west of non-human identity management
When people hear the term “identity management” in an enterprise context, they typically think of apps that help users authenticate who they are on a network in order to access certain services. In a security context, however, human users are…
Indian state government fixes website bugs that exposed residents’ sensitive documents
An Indian state government has fixed security issues impacting its website that exposed the sensitive documents and personal information of millions of residents. The bugs existed on the Rajasthan government website related to Jan Aadhaar, a state program to provide…
ICO confirms data breach probe as UK councils remain downed by cyberattack
Three local councils in the United Kingdom continue to experience disruption to their online services, a week after confirming a cyberattack had knocked some systems offline. The councils for Canterbury, Dover, and Thanet — all of which are based in…
NSA is buying Americans’ internet browsing records without a warrant
The U.S. National Security Agency is buying vast amounts of commercially available web browsing data on Americans without a warrant, according to the agency’s outgoing director. NSA director Gen. Paul Nakasone disclosed the practice in a letter to Sen. Ron…
Microsoft says Russian hackers also targeted other organizations
On Friday, Microsoft revealed that it had been the victim of a hack carried out by Russian government spies. Now, a week later, the technology giant said that it was not the only target of the espionage operation. In a…
How a mistakenly published password exposed Mercedes-Benz source code
Mercedes-Benz accidentally exposed a trove of internal data after leaving a private key online that gave “unrestricted access” to the company’s source code, according to the security research firm that discovered it. Shubham Mittal, co-founder and chief technology officer of…
23andMe admits it didn’t detect cyberattacks for months
In a data breach notification letter filed with regulators this weekend, 23andMe revealed that hackers started breaking into customers’ accounts in April 2023 and continued through most of September. In other words, for around five months, 23andMe did not detect…