Cybersafety / Cybersecurity / Privacy
Avast Blog – 5.24.22
If you have heard of the process of social engineering, the ability of a hacker to trick you into divulging your private details, then you might have come across ethical hacker Rachel Tobac. She’s the CEO of SocialProof Security and board member of Women in Security and Privacy. I virtually attended one of her more recent talks, during which she explained her craft and gave some suggestions on how we all can improve our personal security and make her job more difficult.
Source: How to defeat social engineering attacks
Cybersafety / Cybersecurity / Privacy
Avast Blog – 5.23.22
The year is not even half over, but the FTC has already logged almost 500,000 fraud scams and over 300,000 cases of identity theft since January. According to the UN, an additional 782 million people have come online during the pandemic, raising the number of internet users globally from 4.1 billion to 4.9 billion. This increase brought a wealth of new and not-yet-savvy victims to the world of cybercrime, unfortunately at the same time that scams were growing more sophisticated and tricky.
Source: The biggest financial scams of 2022
Cybersafety / Cybersecurity / Privacy
Avast Blog – 5.20.22
At the beginning of May, Apple, Google, and Microsoft announced their commitment to a common password-less sign-in standard created by the FIDO Alliance and the World Wide Web Consortium.
Source: SSI and FIDO2: Different approaches for a passwordless world
Cybersafety / Cybersecurity / Privacy, Smartphones
Avast Blog – 5.19.22
Did you know that even when your iPhone is turned off, some of its components are still getting power? Researchers have found this to be one of the reasons why a new attack vector can operate without your knowledge. The issue lies with the iPhone’s Low Power Mode (LPM) and the fact that while using this functionality, certain communications chips continue to operate. Apple’s LPM features were introduced as part of iOS 15 and enable things such as Find My Phone, which can continue to track and function when a phone is turned off.
Source: Just because your iPhone is powered off doesn’t mean it can’t be attacked
Social Media / Websites
Avast Blog – 5.14.22
Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg announced in a Facebook post this week that Instagram is testing digital collectibles so users can display NFTs on their profiles by linking their third-party digital wallets. NFTs, or non-fungible tokens, are unique digital files that live on a blockchain, thus tying the ownership of each file to one individual. While a jpeg of the NFT could be copied ad infinitum, the owner of the original is identified by the blockchain data. “NFTs are a thing, that’s clear,” said Avast Security Evangelist Luis Corrons. “In fact, Twitter already made the first move, and, of course, Meta’s Instagram doesn’t want to get left behind.”
Source: Show off your NFT on Instagram
