How to opt out of WhatsApp sharing your information with Facebook

Since Facebook owns WhatsApp, it’s finally time for the purchase to pay off. Facebook now wants your WhatsApp data, including your phone number. Here’s how to opt out.

Source: How to opt out of WhatsApp sharing your information with Facebook

You have 30 days.

Why is this a problem, what have they done? What do we not know? Does it matter?Read here

NASA publishes all papers funded by it for free!

The National Aeronautics and Space Act of 1958 challenged our Nation to grow our technical and scientific abilities in air and space. Since the 1970s, numerous economic reports and articles have demonstrated that NASA investments help grow the US economy. Perhaps most importantly NASA-funded R&D helped stimulate our long-term capacity for innovation and economic growth within the government, at universities, and at industrial companies. The disciplines advanced are many – including earth and space science, materials, computing and electronics, fuels, radio communications, safety, and even human health.

PubMed Central (PMC) is a full-text, online archive of journal literature operated by the National Library of Medicine. NASA is using PMC to permanently preserve and provide easy public access to the peer-reviewed papers resulting from NASA-funded research.

Find it all here

Microsoft and pals attempt to re-write Wassenaar cyber arms control pact written by people who have no idea about IT and will make IT security business almost impossible

Microsoft and a team of concerned engineers from across the security sector have joined forces to suggest a major re-write of the arms control pact the Wassenaar Arrangement, as they fear the document’s terms are a threat tot he information security industry.

The pitch is the result of brainstorming by the group to redefine the core aims of the Arrangement, which aims to restrict export of both weapons and “dual-use” items that have military potential beyond their main functions. The Arrangement was negotiated and signed behind closed doors in 2013, without the infosec industry’s participation.

Source: Microsoft and pals re-write arms control pact to save infosec industry

Find Out How Facebook Thinks You Think With This Setting

To get started, head to facebook.com/ads/preferences. Here, you’ll find a large collection of “interests” Facebook thinks you have, sorted into categories. Click on “Lifestyle and Culture” to find, among other things, where you land politically. If you haven’t explicitly Liked the Facebook page of a particular politician, Facebook will guess and place that guess here.

The entire ad preferences page is a fascinating look into how Facebook analyzes and categorizes its users. If you don’t want a particular topic influencing the ads you see, you can remove it here. Obviously, you can’t turn it off entirely, but you can tweak it.

Source: Find Out How Facebook Thinks You Lean Politically With This Setting

IPhones completely compromised by NSO Group. Update now!

Investigators discovered that a company called the NSO Group, an Israeli outfit that sells software that invisibly tracks a target’s mobile phone, was responsible for the intrusions. The NSO Group’s software can read text messages and emails and track calls and contacts. It can even record sounds, collect passwords and trace the whereabouts of the phone user.

In response, Apple on Thursday released a patched version of its mobile software, iOS 9.3.5. Users can get the patch through a normal software update.

Apple fixed the holes 10 days after a tip from two researchers, Bill Marczak and John Scott Railton, at Citizen Lab at the University of Toronto’s Munk School of Global Affairs, and Lookout, a San Francisco mobile security company.

Source: IPhone Users Urged to Update Software After Security Flaws Are Found

Hackers discover flaws in hospital security capitalise on it by shorting shares in the hospital

When a team of hackers discovered that St. Jude Medical Inc.’s pacemakers and defibrillators had security vulnerabilities that could put lives at risk, they didn’t warn St. Jude. Instead, the hackers, who work for cybersecurity startup MedSec, e-mailed Carson Block, who runs the Muddy Waters Capital LLC investment firm, in May. They had a money-making proposal.

MedSec suggested an unprecedented partnership: The hackers would provide data proving the medical devices were life-threatening, with Block taking a short position against St. Jude. The hackers’ fee for the information increases as the price of St. Jude’s shares fall, meaning both Muddy Waters and MedSec stand to profit. If the bet doesn’t work, and the shares don’t fall, MedSec could lose money, taking into account their upfront costs, including research. St. Jude’s shares declined 4.4 percent to $77.50 at 1:40 p.m. in New York with more than 25 million shares traded.

Source: Carson Block’s Attack on St. Jude Reveals a New Front in Hacking for Profit

This is a very clever way to make money off hard security research. If it seems a bit mercenary, the hackers say that they took this extreme step for the following reasons:

“We were worried that they would sweep this under the rug or we would find ourselves in some sort of a hush litigation situation where patients were unaware of the risks they were facing,” said Bone, an experienced security researcher and the former head of risk management for Bloomberg LP, the parent of Bloomberg News. “We partnered with Muddy Waters because they have a great history of holding large corporations accountable.”

“As far as we can tell, St. Jude Medical has done absolutely nothing to even meet minimum cybersecurity standards, in comparison to the other manufacturers we looked at that have made efforts,” Bone said. There are steps St. Jude can take relatively quickly to protect patients, including changing the programming of implanted pacemakers and defibrillators through a method that would involve a doctor’s visit, she said.

Windows 10 shows why automatic updates are bad, breaking powershell, webcams and rebooting randomly during activities.

Microsoft’s update for version 1607 doesn’t fix two widespread problems with Windows 10 Anniversary Update, and it causes problems with PowerShell DSC operations

Source: Windows 10 cumulative update KB 3176934 breaks PowerShell

This update contained a fix for the borked update below:

The Windows 10 Anniversary Update has reportedly broken millions of webcams. If your webcam has been affected, there’s a workaround to get it back if you don’t mind tweaking your registry a bit.

Source: Windows 10 Anniversary Update Broke Millions of Webcams, Here’s How to Fix It

NSA cyberweapons being sold by hackers are real, Snowden Documents Confirm

On Monday, a hacking group calling itself the “ShadowBrokers” announced an auction for what it claimed were “cyber weapons” made by the NSA. Based on never-before-published documents provided by the whistleblower Edward Snowden, The Intercept can confirm that the arsenal contains authentic NSA software, part of a powerful constellation of tools used to covertly infect computers worldwide.

The provenance of the code has been a matter of heated debate this week among cybersecurity experts, and while it remains unclear how the software leaked, one thing is now beyond speculation: The malware is covered with the NSA’s virtual fingerprints and clearly originates from the agency.

Source: The NSA Leak Is Real, Snowden Documents Confirm

All of the Creepy Things Facebook Knows About You

Facebook knows more about your personal life than you probably realize. As part of the company’s increasingly aggressive advertising operation, Facebook goes to great lengths to track you across the web. The company compiles a list of personal details about every user that includes major life events and general interests. For years, details have been murky about how exactly the social network targets ads—but the company has finally given us a glimpse into how the secret sauce is made.
[…]
As The Washington Post points out, Facebook knows every time you visit a page with a “like” or “share” button. It also gives publishers a tool called Facebook Pixel that allows both parties to track visits from any Facebook user. It also works with companies like Epsilon and Acxiom who gather information from government records, warranties and surveys, and commercial sources (such as a magazine subscription lists) to learn more about Facebook users.
[…]
If you’re curious about all the data points Facebook is using to target ads to you, here’s the full list:

    Location
    Age
    Generation
    Gender
    Language
    Education level
    Field of study
    School
    Ethnic affinity
    Income and net worth
    Home ownership and type
    Home value
    Property size
    Square footage of home
    Year home was built
    Household composition
    Users who have an anniversary within 30 days
    Users who are away from family or hometown
    Users who are friends with someone who has an anniversary, is newly married or engaged, recently moved, or has an upcoming birthday
    Users in long-distance relationships
    Users in new relationships
    Users who have new jobs
    Users who are newly engaged
    Users who are newly married
    Users who have recently moved
    Users who have birthdays soon
    Parents
    Expectant parents
    Mothers, divided by “type” (soccer, trendy, etc.)
    Users who are likely to engage in politics
    Conservatives and liberals
    Relationship status
    Employer
    Industry
    Job title
    Office type
    Interests
    Users who own motorcycles
    Users who plan to buy a car (and what kind/brand of car, and how soon)
    Users who bought auto parts or accessories recently
    Users who are likely to need auto parts or services
    Style and brand of car you drive
    Year car was bought
    Age of car
    How much money user is likely to spend on next car
    Where user is likely to buy next car
    How many employees your company has
    Users who own small businesses
    Users who work in management or are executives
    Users who have donated to charity (divided by type)
    Operating system
    Users who play canvas games
    Users who own a gaming console
    Users who have created a Facebook event
    Users who have used Facebook Payments
    Users who have spent more than average on Facebook Payments
    Users who administer a Facebook page
    Users who have recently uploaded photos to Facebook
    Internet browser
    Email service
    Early/late adopters of technology
    Expats (divided by what country they are from originally)
    Users who belong to a credit union, national bank or regional bank
    Users who investor (divided by investment type)
    Number of credit lines
    Users who are active credit card users
    Credit card type
    Users who have a debit card
    Users who carry a balance on their credit card
    Users who listen to the radio
    Preference in TV shows
    Users who use a mobile device (divided by what brand they use)
    Internet connection type
    Users who recently acquired a smartphone or tablet
    Users who access the Internet through a smartphone or tablet
    Users who use coupons
    Types of clothing user’s household buys
    Time of year user’s household shops most
    Users who are “heavy” buyers of beer, wine or spirits
    Users who buy groceries (and what kinds)
    Users who buy beauty products
    Users who buy allergy medications, cough/cold medications, pain relief products, and over-the-counter meds
    Users who spend money on household products
    Users who spend money on products for kids or pets, and what kinds of pets
    Users whose household makes more purchases than is average
    Users who tend to shop online (or off)
    Types of restaurants user eats at
    Kinds of stores user shops at
    Users who are “receptive” to offers from companies offering online auto insurance, higher education or mortgages, and prepaid debit cards/satellite TV
    Length of time user has lived in house
    Users who are likely to move soon
    Users who are interested in the Olympics, fall football, cricket or Ramadan
    Users who travel frequently, for work or pleasure
    Users who commute to work
    Types of vacations user tends to go on
    Users who recently returned from a trip
    Users who recently used a travel app
    Users who participate in a timeshare

Source: All of the Creepy Things Facebook Knows About You

I’d quite like to know the answers Facebook has filled in to my datapoints myself!

With TLS encryption, attackers can use this as a tunnel to hide attacks from legacy packet inspection tools.

​Exactly a year ago, attackers used an advertisement on Yahoo to redirect users to a site infected by the Angler exploit kit. Just weeks before, users were exposed to more malicious software through compromised advertisements that showed up across the web. In total, at least 910 million users were potentially exposed to malware through these attacks. The common thread? The malware was hidden from firewalls by SSL/TLS encryption.
[…]
Companies can stop SSL/TLS attacks, however most don’t have their existing security features properly enabled to do so. Legacy network security solutions typically don’t have the features needed to inspect SSL/TLS-encrypted traffic. The ones that do, often suffer from such extreme performance issues when inspecting traffic, that most companies with legacy solutions abandon SSL/TLS inspection.

Source: Can Good Encryption be a Double-Edged Sword for Security in Australia?

A Design Defect Is Breaking a Ton of iPhone 6 Pluses: touchscreen controllers are dying

Microsolderer Jessa Jones can fix practically anything. But these days, she spends most of her time fixing just one thing. Because every single month, more and more iPhone 6 and (especially) 6 Plus devices show up at her shop with the same problem: a gray, flickering bar at the top of the display and an unresponsive touchscreen. And she’s not the only one. Repair pros all over the country are noticing the same trend.
[…]
Replacing the touchscreen doesn’t fix the problem. The gray bar eventually shows up on the new screen, too. Because, according to repair pros, the problem isn’t the screen at all. It’s the two touchscreen controller chips, or Touch IC chips, on the logic board inside the phone.
[…]
Apple’s repair Geniuses aren’t equipped to make specialized repairs to the logic board in-house, so they can’t actually fix Touch Disease. But skilled, third-party microsoldering specialists (most “unauthorized” to do Apple repairs, according to official company policy) can fix phones with symptoms of Touch Disease. And they can do it a whole lot cheaper than the cost of a new logic board or an out-of-warranty phone replacement.
[…]
the most popular theory I heard is that Touch Disease is the unanticipated, long-term consequence of a structural design flaw: Bendgate.

Source: A Design Defect Is Breaking a Ton of iPhone 6 Pluses