Month: September 2018

Brian Krebs is reporting that the four major U.S. wireless carriers today detailed a new initiative that may soon let Web sites eschew passwords and instead authenticate visitors by leveraging data elements unique to each customer’s phone and mobile subscriber account, such as location, customer reputation, and physical attributes of the device. Here’s a look at what’s coming, and the potential security and privacy trade-offs of trusting the carriers to handle online authentication on your behalf.

https://krebsonsecurity.com/2018/09/u-s-mobile-giants-want-to-be-your-online-identity/

Brian Krebs is reporting that later this month, all of the three major consumer credit bureaus will be required to offer free credit freezes to all Americans and their dependents.

https://krebsonsecurity.com/2018/09/in-a-few-days-credit-freezes-will-be-fee-free/

LILY HAY NEWMAN is reporting in Wired is reporting BRITISH Airways disclosed a data breach impacting customer information from roughly 380,000 booking transactions made between August 21 and September 5 of this year.

https://www.wired.com/story/british-airways-hack-details/

Bruce Schneier is reporting that an Internet of Things (IoT) botnet of high wattage devices — such as air conditioners and heaters — gives a unique ability to adversaries to launch large-scale coordinated attacks on the power grid.

https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2018/09/using_hacked_io.html

VALENTINA PALLADINO is reporting in Ars Technica that Apple removed several anti-malware apps from its Mac App Store after the apps were found to export users’ browser histories. All of the apps in question are made by the cyber-security company Trend Micro, which initially denied the allegations but has since issued an apology to its users.

https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2018/09/apple-takes-down-trend-micro-mac-apps-that-collected-stored-user-data/