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Facebook Says Cyber Spies Are Using Bogus WhatsApp and Signal Apps to Snoop on Thousands
A cyber espionage group believed to be operating out of India and Pakistan has been spying on thousands of people by using malware that masquerades as popular secure-messaging apps, according to a new report from Facebook.
Dubbed “Dracarys,” a name found in the malware code and a possible reference to Game of Thrones, Facebook says the malware can siphon off all kinds of information from an Android device, including call logs, contacts, files, text messages and geolocation data. It can also access a device’s camera and microphone.
Dracarys has been propagated on Meta’s social media sites, Facebook and Instagram, by hackers posing as attractive young women, journalists or activists, who convince their targets to download the bogus app. Once they’ve done so, Dracarys abuses the accessibility features intended to assist users with disabilities to automatically click through and grant broad device permissions such as the ability to access the camera.
According to Facebook, that trick meant the malware could harvest data on the phone and appear to be legitimate, meaning anti-virus systems failed to detect it. “It shows that Bitter has managed to reimplement common malicious functionality in a way that went undetected by the security community for some time,” Facebook wrote in its report.
Your Amazon’s Ring Cameras Might Be Collecting Personal Information | Here’s What It Knows About You
Security cameras are almost everywhere since crimes are rampant in some places. You can see them anywhere: in your neighborhood, local coffee shop, bookstore, and other locations.
One of the most popular security cameras comes from Amazon. The Ring doorbell can be used for protection. If you feel someone might harm you, this surveillance is a good start to stay safe against intruders.
However, most people don’t know how these cameras collect data. Without you knowing, it might bypass your rights or privacy even as an owner. Almost all devices can now collect your personal information. For instance, Facebook relies on your choices’ algorithm and the pages you visit. The same case goes with Spotify when it uses your data so you can see different playlists depending on your streaming history.
Of course, Ring can gather some information about you. Before you grow alarmed with this, you will be informed that your details will be shared with Amazon. As such, you will be sharing your email, phone number, and even your bank account information once you connect your Ring account to your social media account.
The Tricky Math in Amazon’s Climate Report — Amazon Really, Really Wants You to Think It’s Trying on Climate
The company released its 2021 sustainability report this week, the third year in a row that it has logged its progress since committing to a net zero by 2040 goal in 2019. But hidden among the slick photos of wind turbines and electric delivery vans are two language tricks that show how Amazon may be dragging its feet on real progress.
They’re a valuable lesson in reading between the lines of corporate jargon.
At first glance, it might seem like everything is hunky dory in Bezosland. “Even as we scaled our business at an unprecedented pace to help meet the needs of our customers through the pandemic, we saw a 1.9% reduction in our carbon intensity in 2021,” the report’s summary reads.
But the tech giant’s overall emissions actually rose in 2021, and rose by quite a lot. Emissions from their direct operations shot up an enormous 26% between 2020 and 2021, while the company’s total carbon footprint — combining emissions from both direct operations, electricity produced, and indirect sources — rose 18%.
How, then, is the company able to brag about reductions of any kind?
Elon Musk Accuses Twitter of Fraud for Hiding Real Number of Fake Accounts
Elon Musk is accusing Twitter of fraud for hiding the real number of bots on its platform, according to The New York Times.
In the latest installment of the Twitter-vs-Musk saga, the Tesla chief’s team claimed in a legal filing that 10 percent of the social network’s daily active users who see ads are inauthentic accounts. If you’ll recall, Twitter has long maintained that bots represent less than five percent of its userbase, and Musk put his planned acquisition of the social network on hold in mid-July to confirm if that’s accurate.
The Tesla and SpaceX chief, who’s also a prolific Twitter user, launched an aggressive takeover of the social network in April after it became the company’s largest shareholder. While Twitter quickly accepted his offer, they butted heads over the number of fake accounts on the platform shortly after that — he also accused the company of not giving him access to enough information to verify the number of bots on the website. Twitter gave him full access to its internal data in response, but in the end, Musk told the Securities and Exchange Commission that he wanted to terminate the acquisition over “false and misleading representations” made by the social network.
Twitter sued its largest shareholder for trying to back out of its $44 billion buyout deal, telling the court that Musk is wrongfully breaking their agreement by doing so. The website accused him of backing out because Tesla’s and Twitter’s shares went down due to the economic downturn and the “deal he signed no longer serves his personal interests.”
TikTok Moderators Are Being Trained Using Graphic Images of Child Sexual Abuse
Nasser expected to be confronted with some disturbing material during his training to become a content moderator for TikTok. But he was shocked when he and others in his class were shown uncensored, sexually explicit images of children.
Nasser, who was working for a third-party company, Teleperformance, that moderates content for the social media giant, had been assigned to a special project: teaching TikTok’s AI to spot the worst of the worst posted in the app. Just a few days into onboarding, he and his colleagues were shown graphic images and videos of children involved in sexual acts — all material that had been removed from TikTok.
“I have a daughter, and I don’t think it’s right — just a bunch of strangers watching this,” Nasser, who left Teleperformance in 2020, told Forbes. “I don’t think they should use something like that for training.” (His last name, and some others in this story, have been omitted for privacy reasons.)
Whitney Turner, who worked for Teleperformance’s TikTok program in El Paso for over a year and departed in 2021, also recalled being shown sexually exploitative imagery of kids as part of her training. Whitney was given access to a shared spreadsheet that she and other former employees told Forbes is filled with material determined to be violative of TikTok’s community guidelines, including hundreds of images of children who were naked or being abused.
Former moderators said the document, called the “DRR,” short for Daily Required Reading, was widely accessible to employees at Teleperformance and TikTok as recently as this summer. While some moderators working in unrelated functions were restricted from viewing this material, sources told Forbes that hundreds of people across both companies had free access to the document. The DRR and other training materials were stored in Lark, internal workplace software developed by TikTok’s China-based parent company, ByteDance.
Twitter Obliterates Elon Musk’s Excuses for Trying to Kill $44 Billion Deal in Blistering Court Filing
Back in April, Elon Musk made a $44 billion offer to buy Twitter before he decided in July that he wanted to cancel the deal. But that’s not how it works when you’ve already made a legally binding commitment. And a new court filing from Twitter pokes hole after hole in every complaint the Tesla CEO has made about the purchase agreement.
Twitter sued Musk last month, explaining that he was still on the hook to fork over all that cash. Musk countersued and submitted explanations for why he didn’t want the social media company anymore and Twitter has responded to those claims in a court filing in Delaware unsealed on Thursday.
Twitter didn’t pull any punches in the 127-page filing, walking right up to the line of calling Musk an idiotic liar without actually using those words. But they were damn close.
“The Counterclaims are a made-for-litigation tale that is contradicted by the evidence and common sense,” Twitter said in the new court filing. The company called his complaints “factually inaccurate, legally insufficient, and commercially irrelevant.”
Astronomers Could Soon Get Warnings When SpaceX Satellites Threaten Their View
A system built by researchers from the University of Arizona is designed to warn astronomers of particularly bright satellites, affording them time to avert their telescopic eyes. The team used its satellite tracking device — a small sensor fitted with a camera lens — to measure the brightness and positioning of SpaceX’s Starlink satellites.
Elon Musk’s SpaceX is building out a constellation of internet satellites in low Earth orbit, with plans to launch a total of 42,000 satellites. To date, over 2,600 Starlink satellites have been launched as part of the project, which provides broadband internet to paying customers. Astronomers have expressed great concern over this tremendous influx of satellites and how bright they are in the sky. The company has made some effort to decrease the brightness magnitude of its satellites, using a shade to block out some of the sunlight, thereby making the satellites 1.6 times fainter than they were originally.
At the same time, SpaceX is gearing up to launch Starlink 2.0 satellites, which astronomers fear will be a full magnitude brighter than their predecessors. With thousands of the Starlink satellites in space, and additional plans by other companies like Amazon to send over 3,000 satellites to low Earth orbit, it is not looking good for our future views of the cosmos.
