“Nearly 100 journalists and other members of civil society using WhatsApp, the popular messaging app owned by Meta, were targeted by spyware owned by Paragon Solutions, an Israeli maker of hacking software, the company alleged on Friday.The journalists and other civil society members were being alerted of a possible breach of their devices, with WhatsApp telling the Guardian it had “high confidence” that the 90 users in question had been targeted and “possibly compromised”.It is not clear who was behind the attack. Like other spyware makers, Paragon’s hacking software is used by government clients and WhatsApp said it had not been able to identify the clients who ordered the alleged attacks.Experts said the targeting was a “zero-click” attack, which means targets would not have had to click on any malicious links to be infected.”
“According to a proposed class action in San Francisco federal court, Amazon obtained « backdoor access » to consumers’ phones by providing tens of thousands of app developers with code known as Amazon Ads SDK to be embedded in their apps. This allegedly enabled Amazon to collect an enormous amount of timestamped geolocation data about where consumers live, work, shop and visit, revealing sensitive information such as religious affiliations, sexual orientations and health concerns. « Amazon has effectively fingerprinted consumers and has correlated a vast amount of personal information about them entirely without consumers’ knowledge and consent, » the complaint said.”
Source : Lawsuit accuses Amazon of secretly tracking consumers through cellphones | Reuters
“As DeepSeek made waves in the AI space, the Wiz Research team set out to assess its external security posture and identify any potential vulnerabilities. Within minutes, we found a publicly accessible ClickHouse database linked to DeepSeek, completely open and unauthenticated, exposing sensitive data. It was hosted at oauth2callback.deepseek.com:9000 and dev.deepseek.com:9000. This database contained a significant volume of chat history, backend data and sensitive information, including log streams, API Secrets, and operational details. ”
“Most disturbing for Curry, though, was that they found they could also track the Subaru’s location—not merely where it was at the moment but also where it had been for the entire year that his mother had owned it. The map of the car’s whereabouts was so accurate and detailed, Curry says, that he was able to see her doctor visits, the homes of the friends she visited, even which exact parking space his mother parked in every time she went to church.”
Source : Subaru Security Flaws Exposed Its System for Tracking Millions of Cars | WIRED
“U.S. President Donald Trump on Monday revoked a 2023 executive order signed by Joe Biden that sought to reduce the risks that artificial intelligence poses to consumers, workers and national security.Biden’s order required developers of AI systems that pose risks to U.S. national security, the economy, public health or safety to share the results of safety tests with the U.S. government, in line with the Defense Production Act, before they were released to the public.The order also directed agencies to set standards for that testing and address related chemical, biological, radiological, nuclear, and cybersecurity risks. Biden’s order came as U.S. lawmakers have failed to pass legislation setting guardrails for AI development.”
Source : Trump revokes Biden executive order on addressing AI risks | Reuters
“Une certaine «Léa Rossier» a envoyé un courriel aux quelque 47’000 collaborateurs de l’État de Vaud durant la première semaine de novembre. Mais Léa n’existe pas. Il s’agit d’un «faux mail malveillant» diffusé dans le cadre de la sixième campagne de sensibilisation aux dangers de l’hameçonnage par messagerie. La première à une échelle aussi large à l’État. Résultat: c’est un échec. Comme le relate la Gazette de l’État de Vaud dans un article de décembre, plus d’un quart des destinataires (29%), soit 13’661 employés de l’État, se sont fait avoir par ce mail envoyé par «lea.rossier@adminaccounts.ch» et ont cliqué sur la pièce jointe «Plan_amelioration_processus_Urgent». En outre, 5182 (11%) d’entre eux ont même saisi un identifiant et un mot de passe.”
Source : Cybercriminalité: «Léa Rossier» a berné plus de 13 000 fonctionnaires vaudois | 24 heures
“Fuck you Facebook. That was the first thought I had when I woke up this morning. Followed by: What ministry is Mark Zuckerberg volunteering to manage for the dictators of the world? All I could think of is how Orwell’s Ministry of Love is about hate. So what are we creating here? The Ministry of Empowerment to ensure the oppression of the most vulnerable? Lovely. But maybe you, dear reader, have a better Ministry name for their new organizational identity?”
Source : The Ministry of Empowerment
- “Starting in the US, we are ending our third party fact-checking program and moving to a Community Notes model.
- We will allow more speech by lifting restrictions on some topics that are part of mainstream discourse and focusing our enforcement on illegal and high-severity violations.
- We will take a more personalized approach to political content, so that people who want to see more of it in their feeds can.”
“Civil rights advocates across the US have long fought to free people from their criminal records, with campaigns to expunge old cases and keep people’s past arrests private when they apply for jobs and housing.The efforts are critical, as more than 70 million Americans have prior convictions or arrests – roughly one in three adults. But the policies haven’t addressed one of the most damaging ways past run-ins with police can derail people’s lives: old media coverage. Some newsrooms are working to fill that gap. A handful of local newspapers across the US have in recent years launched programs to review their archives and consider requests to remove names or delete old stories to protect the privacy of subjects involved in minor crimes.”
“Your glasses will be able to translate speech in real time between English and either Spanish, French, or Italian. When you’re talking to someone speaking one of those three languages, you’ll hear what they say in English through the glasses’ open-ear speakers or viewed as transcripts on your phone, and vice versa. Not only is this great for traveling, it should help break down language barriers and bring people closer together. ”
Source : Ray-Ban Meta Glasses Add Live AI, Live Translation, & Shazam Support | Blog Meta Quest | Meta Store