Cybersecurity

The US is expanding its China-targeted Clean Network program to include Chinese-made cellphone apps and cloud computing services that it claims are security risks, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo announced Wednesday.

A Florida teen was identified Friday as the mastermind of a scheme earlier this month that commandeered Twitter accounts of prominent politicians, celebrities and technology moguls and scammed people around the globe out of more than $100,000 in Bitcoin. Two other men were also charged in the case.

Russian intelligence services are using a trio of English-language websites to spread disinformation about the coronavirus pandemic, seeking to exploit a crisis that America is struggling to contain ahead of the presidential election in November, U.S. officials said Tuesday.

Apple on Wednesday invited security researchers to apply to receive modified iPhones designed to help them hunt for flaws in the company’s mobile operating system.

A file circulating on WhatsApp named “Argentina is Doing it” is fake news, says the National Information Technology Development Agency (NITDA).

Twitter says it has “no evidence” user passwords were accessed as part of yesterday’s massive attack targeting the company’s internal tools, but it is still working to restore access to locked accounts. The updates were shared as part of a series of tweets posted Thursday afternoon.

Mozilla’s VPN service has officially launched and is now available for Windows and Android in six countries worldwide, including the US, Canada, and the UK, the company announced today. The service is available for $4.99 a month, and, like other VPNs, it’s designed to make your web-browsing more private and secure. As part of the move, the service is being rebranded from Firefox Private Network to Mozilla VPN, a change that was announced last month.

France’s decision to give only temporary security approval for fifth-generation mobile equipment shows the government intends to gradually sideline Huawei Technologies Co., a majority party lawmaker said.

The report “is likely to force Boris Johnson to abandon the company entirely,” according to The Telegraph. A source told Bloomberg that the British prime minister is preparing to phase out Huawei as soon as this year, although the exact timetable is reportedly yet to be confirmed.

When Apple announced its Security Bounty Program last year, researchers lined up to locate potentially dangerous bugs in the company’s platforms, keeping them secret in exchange for potentially large payouts

A newly discovered spyware effort attacked users through 32 million downloads of extensions to Google’s market-leading Chrome web browser, researchers at Awake Security told Reuters, highlighting the tech industry’s failure to protect browsers as they are used more for email, payroll and other sensitive functions.

A bug in Android means that setting a certain image as your phone’s wallpaper could be enough to crash it. The issue gained widespread attention over the weekend after leaker Ice Universe tweeted the image that causes the issue, and the bug has since been verified by 9to5Google and Android Authority. Ice Universe says that the bug affects Samsung handsets in particular, but it’s also been replicated on Google Pixel phones, among others.

Australia has expressed concern over “malicious” hacking attacks across the world by cyber criminals and state-based actors targeting hospitals, medical services and facilities as well as crisis response organisations amid the COVID-19 pandemic.

President Donald Trump has extended his executive order banning US companies from working with or buying telecommunications equipment from companies deemed a national security risk until May 2021, via Reuters.

Zoom has acquired Keybase, an encryption and security service meant to serve as a secure home for your online identities. The acquisition is meant to quickly add a team of security-focused developers to Zoom, which has been widely criticized in recent weeks for lapses in security inside its increasingly popular video conferencing software.

Microsoft is offering hackers up to $100,000 if they can break the security of the company’s custom Linux OS. The software giant built a compact and custom version of Linux last year for its Azure Sphere OS, which is designed to run on specialized chips for its Internet of Things (IoT) platform.

The National Information Technology Development Agency, NITDA, has licensed consulting and integration firm, Digital Encode, to provide training, auditing and consulting services throughout the country, in line with the Nigeria Data Protection Regulation, NDPR, principles.

YouTube has started banning content that is in direct contradiction to the World Health Organization’s guidelines as the coronavirus pandemic continues to ravage the United States.