A Review of the Best News of the Week on AI, IoT, & Mobile Security
How I Accidentally Hijacked Someone’s WhatsApp (VICE, Jun 18 2020)
Because of phone number reuse, I ended up receiving a load of a stranger’s personal WhatsApp messages.
VirusTotal Adds Cynet’s Artificial Intelligence-Based Malware Detection (Hacker News, Jun 23 2020)
VirusTotal, the famous multi-antivirus scanning service owned by Google, recently announced new threat detection capabilities it added with the help of an Israeli cybersecurity firm.
More ad fraud apps found hiding on Google Play Store (Naked Security – Sophos, Jun 17 2020)
Fraudulent Android app developers have been discovered trying to manipulate Google’s Play Store security by removing suspicious code before adding it back in to see what trips detection systems.
Filter Out the Noise
Since I started this curated newsletter in June 2017, I’ve clipped ~14,000 articles and narrowed them down into the best 20 per day & best 15 per week. This is my favorite way to cut through all the security marketing and hype. If you’re enjoying it, tell a friend. If you hate it, tell an enemy.
Thanks! – Lucas Samaras
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How to Secure Machine Learning (Dark Reading, Jun 19 2020)
Part two of a series on avoiding potential security risks with ML.
Global IoT spending dropping significantly in 2020, but expected to rebound in 2021 (Help Net Security, Jun 21 2020)
Worldwide IoT spending has been significantly impacted by the economic effects of the pandemic in 2020, although a back to double-digit growth rebound is expected both in the mid and long-term, according to IDC. IoT spending is growing 8.2% year over year to $742 billion in 2020 down from 14.9% growth forecast in the November 2019.
Microsoft Acquires IoT/OT Security Firm CyberX (Dark Reading, Jun 22 2020)
Deal extends Microsoft Azure for legacy industrial devices.
5G subscriptions to top 190 million this year, 2.8 billion by the end of 2025 (Help Net Security, Jun 16 2020)
The global number of 5G subscriptions to top 190 million by the end of 2020 and 2.8 billion by the end of 2025, according to a report by Ericsson. The report also takes an incisive look at the role of networks and digital infrastructure in keeping societies running and families connected during the COVID-19 pandemic.
Virtually no mobile phone app is safe from data theft: report (SC Media, Jun 17 2020)
More than three-fourths (76 percent) of mobile banking vulnerabilities can be exploited without physical access to the device is just one of numerous sobering findings from Positive Technologies in a report released today. The research, which began in 2019, did not name the banks or the apps that have been downloaded more than 500,000 times…
Encrypted Phone Network Says It’s Shutting Down After Police Hack (VICE, Jun 22 2020)
Encrochat’s customers include hitmen and drug gangs across Europe.
How do I select a mobile security solution for my business? (Help Net Security, Jun 23 2020)
The percentage of companies admitting to suffering a mobile-related compromise has grown, despite a higher percentage of organizations deciding not to sacrifice the security of mobile devices to meet business targets. To make things worse, the C-suite is the most likely group within an organization to ask for relaxed mobile security protocols – despite also being highly targeted by cyberattacks.
Apple Pushes Back Against Ad Tracking in Safari and iOS 14 (Wired, Jun 22 2020)
At WWDC, the company detailed a litany of privacy-friendly improvements to its software.