Weekly Cyber Security News 28/12/2018

A selection of this week’s more interesting vulnerability disclosures and cyber security news. As we plummet to the end of 2018 in this odd Twilight-zone period between Xmas and New Year. If you’re not out there fending off the hackers then you could be stuck at home feeling in need of geeky fun as family and TV can only go so far 😉 How about this to wind up the family?

• Hacking Christmas Lights For Fun and Mischief

At least it takes your mind off of that Alexa present someone might have bought you…

• Alexa May Be Recording More Than You Realize

Though you might have to get used to it. I certainly agree this is where we’re heading and maybe it will be good, or utter hell:

• Douglas Adams was right: ‘Genuine people personalities’ are coming to our gadgets

 

Lots of other fun stuff going on to brighten the day:

• Chrome OS to block USB access while the screen is locked (ZDNet)

• FBI Denies Service to 15 DDoS-for-Hire Sites, Charges Operators The FBI has taken down several of the largest DDoS-as-a-service sites on the web.

• Feds Disrupt Top Stresser/Booter Services (InfoRiskToday)

• Home Affairs cannot be bothered listing all agencies with access to metadata (ZDNet)

• How Wellcome Trust Executives Got Whaled By Oldest Trick In The Fraud Playbook

• India authorizes 10 agencies to intercept, monitor, and decrypt citizens” data

• MD5 and SHA-1 Still Used in 2018

• Microsoft plans new 4K webcams to bring facial recognition to all Windows 10 devices, says report (ZDNet)

• New Shamoon Sample from France Signed with Baidu Certificate

• Review: The June oven made me want a camera in every cooking device

• UK Launches Long-Awaited Cyber Skills Strategy

• UK’s NCSC Adopts HackerOne for Vulnerability Coordination Disclosure

• Users report losing Bitcoin in clever hack of Electrum wallets

• BevMo notifying thousands of customers after malware compromise of ecommerce site

• JungleSec Ransomware Infects Victims Through IPMI Remote Consoles

• Researcher publishes proof-of-concept code for creating Facebook worm (ZDNet)

• Four months after its debut, sneaky Mac malware went undetected by AV providers

• 19K Orange Livebox Modems Open to Attack A simple flaw allows attackers to derive WiFi credentials with little effort.

• Chinese websites have been under attack for a week via a new PHP framework bug

• Demo Exploit Code Published for Remote Code Execution via Microsoft Edge