In today’s cybersecurity news…
LinkedIn users have until Monday to opt out of its AI training program
As reported by Graham Cluley, the Microsoft-owned company professional networking site has “quietly announced” that as of this upcoming Monday, November 3, it will start using “profile details, public posts, feed activity data, and more from users in the UK, EU, Switzerland, Canada, and Hong Kong to train its artificial intelligence models – as well as to support personalised ads across the broader family of Microsoft companies.” The countries had been excluded from its AI training models to this point. Private messages will not be used, LinkedIn says. “Additional data from LinkedIn will also be shared with other Microsoft-related business entities, for the purposes of serving up more personalised and relevant ads,” Cluley says.
New names surface for NSA leadership
After months of being led in an acting capacity by Army Lt. Gen. William Hartman, the National Security Agency is apparently “readying a number of senior personnel moves meant to reinvigorate the organization.” Army Lt. Gen. Paul Stanton, currently the leader of Cyber Command’s network defense arm, and Air Force Lt. Gen. Thomas Hensley, the head of Air Force information warfare command, are “considered to be front-runners for the job, according to three people familiar with the administration’s search.”
Open-source security group pulls out of U.S. grant, citing DEI restrictions
The Python Software Foundation (PSF), “which promotes safe and secure Python coding practices and helps oversee PyPI, the world’s largest open-source code repository for Python,” said Wednesday it will withdraw from a $1.5 million research grant from the National Science Foundation. Loren Crary, the foundation’s deputy executive director said, “the organization could not agree to language in the contract that required a confirmation that the foundation would not “operate any programs that advance or promote Diversity, Equity and Inclusion.”
Business rival credits cyberattack on M&S for boosting profits
British clothing retailer Next reported that it was “continuing to see sales overperform in the wake of a cyberattack on its rival Marks & Spencer.” It credits “favourable weather conditions and competitor disruption” for a 7.6% surge in sales in the first half of this year. According to reports from analytics company Kantar, Marks & Spencer rivals that had an online presence, such as including Zara, H&M and Sainsbury’s “all experienced a sales uplift, while clothing retailers without a significant online presence, such as Primark, did not.”
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Marketing Agency Dentsu says U.S. unit suffered cyberattack and breach
The U.S. subsidiary of the Japanese multinational advertising and public relations company Dentsu suffered an attack recently that resulted in the theft of files, “exposing supplier, client, and employee data, including personal, payroll, and National Insurance details.” A statement posted on the Dentsu website did not elaborate on exactly when this happened. Merkle, Inc. is a customer experience agency that specializes in data-driven, performance-based marketing. It is unclear at this point whether ransomware was involved.
WhatsApp adds passkey protection to end-to-end encrypted backups
This new feature means if you lose your device, you can “use methods like fingerprint, face, or the screen lock code of your previous device to access WhatsApp’s backup.” This follows on from a backup encryption process that Meta added in 2021, but the addition of a passkey removed the need to dig up the recovery password. This feature will be rolled out over the next few months. Users can go to Settings > Chats > Chat backup > End-to-end encrypted backup to determine whether the option is currently available.
Cloud Atlas hackers target Russian agriculture sector ahead of industry forum
The Russia-based cybersecurity firm F6 is has reported on a cyber-espionage campaign by the state-backed threat actor Cloud Atlas, targeted the country’s agricultural sector. The attack “coincided with preparations for the Russian agriculture forum scheduled for the end of the month in Moscow. According to F6, the hackers “sent phishing emails disguised as the event’s official program, containing a malicious file that exploited an old Microsoft Office flaw active since 2017.
IBM Cloud experiences a quantum computer outage
The company sent out an advisory yesterday morning stating, “The quantum computer, ibm_aachen, is temporarily unavailable within the Qiskit Runtime service.” Aachen is physically based near Stuttgart in Germany, and the Qiskit Runtime is a cloud service that allows IBM customers to use its quantum processors. It came online in April of this year. IBM has not said much about the cause of the outage, but as posted in The Register, it is known in the industry that it can be difficult to maintain a qubit in a stable state and therefore current quantum machines can “produce errors or just fail to finish a job.”