Bleeping Computer: Flash Used on 5% of All Websites, Down From 28.5% Seven Years Ago. YAAAAAAAY! “Only 4.9 percent of today’s websites utilize Flash code, a number that has plummeted from a 28.5 percent market share recorded at the start of 2011. The number, courtesy of web technology survey site W3Techs, confirms Flash’s decline, and a reason why Adobe has decided to retire the technology at the end of 2020.”
security
CNET: Company formerly known as Yahoo to pay $35M over massive breach
CNET: Company formerly known as Yahoo to pay $35M over massive breach. “Yahoo’s cybersecurity failures continue to haunt the company — now to the tune of $35 million. The US Securities and Exchange Commission said Tuesday that Altaba, the company formed from the ashes of Yahoo’s sale to Verizon, has agreed to pay a penalty of that amount to settle charges that Yahoo failed to disclose a massive data breach from December 2014.”
Bloomberg Quint: Google Aims at Privacy Law After Facebook Lobbying Failed
Bloomberg Quint: Google Aims at Privacy Law After Facebook Lobbying Failed. “While Mark Zuckerberg and Sheryl Sandberg were publicly apologizing this month for failing to protect users’ information, Google’s lobbyists were drafting measures to de-fang an Illinois law recognized as the most rigorous consumer privacy statute in the country. Their ambition: to strip language from a decade-old policy that regulates the use of fingerprints, iris scans and facial recognition technology, and insert a loophole for companies embracing the use of biometrics.”
IoT Inspector: Princeton releases a tool to snoop on home IoT devices and figure out what they’re doing (Boing Boing)
Boing Boing: IoT Inspector: Princeton releases a tool to snoop on home IoT devices and figure out what they’re doing. “IoT Inspector is a new tool from Princeton’s computer science department; it snoops on the traffic from home IoT devices and performs analysis to determine who they phone home to, whether they use encryption, and what kinds of data they may be leaking…. The first 50 devices are basically a security/privacy dumpster fire.”
Krebs on Security: A Sobering Look at Fake Online Reviews
Krebs on Security: A Sobering Look at Fake Online Reviews. “In 2016, KrebsOnSecurity exposed a network of phony Web sites and fake online reviews that funneled those seeking help for drug and alcohol addiction toward rehab centers that were secretly affiliated with the Church of Scientology. Not long after the story ran, that network of bogus reviews disappeared from the Web. Over the past few months, however, the same prolific purveyor of these phantom sites and reviews appears to be back at it again, enlisting the help of Internet users and paying people $25-$35 for each fake listing.”
The Register: Oh, baby! Newborn-care website leaves database of medics wide open
The Register: Oh, baby! Newborn-care website leaves database of medics wide open. “A US healthcare company seemingly exposed on the public internet contact information for roughly 10,000 medical professionals. IT pro Brian Wethern said he warned Health Stream nine days ago that one of its now-removed websites had left a database of users out in the open, allowing anyone to slurp the first and last names of medics, and their email addresses and ID numbers. These professionals appear to be connected to Health Stream’s Neonatal Resuscitation Program.”
Google’s new chat service won’t be secure like iMessage and WhatsApp: Amnesty International (Indian Express)
Indian Express: Google’s new chat service won’t be secure like iMessage and WhatsApp: Amnesty International . “Google has been slammed by Amnesty International’s Technology and Human Rights researcher Joe Westby for a new ‘Chat’ feature that will not be encrypted. Westby called the decision to launch a messaging service without end-to-end encryption ‘baffling’ and said the move aims to show Google’s ‘utter contempt for the privacy of Android users’ as it easily allows cybercriminals and government spies to access to take control of users’ private communication.”
