Your car is and data gold mine. Every trip you make produces a lot of data – from your location to your use of infotainment systems – and car manufacturers get better at using that information. An analysis from 2019 showed that cars could generate up to 25 gigabytes of data per hour. As companies improve their ability to mine this data, your car may prove to be the next national security threat. This week, the Chinese city of Beidaihe banned Teslaer from its streets as the country’s communist party leaders gather in the area. One possible reason for the ban is that the cars could reveal sensitive details about China’s most senior figures.
Elsewhere, German mobile providers are testing “digital tokens” as a way to display personalized advertising on people’s phones. The TrustPid test by Vodafone and Deutsche Telekom generates pseudo-anonymous tokens based on people’s IP addresses and uses them to display personalized product recommendations. The move has been compared to “supercookies, ”Which has previously been used to track people without their permission. While Vodafone denies that the system is related to supercookies, privacy advocates say it is a step too far. “Businesses that operate communications networks should neither track their customers nor help others track them,” privacy researcher Wolfie Christl told WIRED.
In other stories this week, we’ve gathered the critical updates from Android, Chrome, Microsoft and others that appeared in June – you should make these updates now. We have also looked at how the new ZuoRAT router malware has infected at least 80 targets worldwide. And we detailed how to use Microsoft Defender on all your Apple, Android and Windows devices.
But that’s not all. We have an overview of this week’s major safety news, which we have not been able to cover ourselves. Click on the headlines to read the full stories. And be safe out there.
California’s weapons database, called the Firearms Dashboard Portal, was intended for improve transparency around the sale of weapons. Instead, when new data was added on June 27, the update turned out to be one accident. During the planned release of new information, the California Department of Justice made a spreadsheet publicly available online, revealing more than 10 years of information about gun owners. Included in the data breach were the names, dates of birth, sex, race, driver’s license numbers, addresses and criminal histories of persons who were granted or denied permission to conceal and carry weapons between 2011 and 2021. More than 40,000 CCW permits were published in 2021; However, the California Department of Justice said financial information and CPR numbers were not included in the data breach.
While the spreadsheet was online for less than 24 hours, a preliminary investigation appears to indicate that the breach was more prevalent than first assumed. In a press release released on June 29th, the California DOJ said other parts of its weapons databases were also “affected.” Information contained in dashboards for the assault weapon register, handguns certified for sale, dealer registration on sale, firearms safety certificate and firearms restraining order may have been revealed in the breach, the department said, adding that it is investigating what information could have been revealed. In response to the data breach, Fresno County Sheriff’s Office said it was “worse than previously expected” and that some of the potentially impacted information “came as a surprise to us.”
Indian hacker-for-rent groups have been targeting lawyers and their clients across the globe for most of a decade, a Reuters poll revealed this week. Hacking groups have used phishing attacks to gain access to confidential legal documents in more than 35 cases since 2013, targeting at least 75 U.S. and European companies, according to the report, which is based in part on a crowd of 80,000 emails sent by Indian hackers over the past seven years. The study describes how hack-for-hire groups work and how private investigators exploit their ruthless nature. As Reuters published its study, Google’s Threat Analysis Group published dozens of domains belonging to alleged hack-for-hire groups in India, Russia and the United Arab Emirates.
Since 2009, the Chinese hacker group APT40 has targeted companies, government agencies and universities around the world. APT40 has hit countries including the US, UK, Germany, Cambodia, Malaysia, Norway and more, according to the security firm Mandiant. This week, a Financial Times investigation found that Chinese university students have been tricked into working for a front company affiliated with APT40 and have been involved in investigating their hacking targets. The newspaper identified 140 potential translators who had applied for job advertisements with Hainan Xiandun, a company allegedly affiliated with APT40 and named in an indictment from the U.S. Department of Justice in July 2021. Those who applied for jobs with Hainan Xiandun were asked to translate sensitive U.S. government documents and appear to be “unknowingly drawn into a life of espionage,” according to history.
In 2021, North Korean hackers stole about $ 400 million in crypto as part of the country’s efforts to circumvent international sanctions and strengthen its nuclear weapons program. This week, investigators began linking the theft of about $ 100 million in cryptocurrency from Horizon Bridge on June 23 to North Korean actors. Blockchain analytics firm Elliptic say it has revealed “strong indications” that North Korea’s Lazarus group may be linked to the Horizon Bridge hacking incident – and Ellipictic is not the only group has made the connection. The attack is the latest in a series of blockchain bridges that have become more and more common targets in recent years. Investigators say, however, that the ongoing cryptocurrency has wiped out millions in value from North Korea’s crypto theft.