Showing posts with label CYBER CRIME. Show all posts
Showing posts with label CYBER CRIME. Show all posts

Tuesday, January 21, 2020

Amazon founder Bezos's phone 'hacked by Saudi crown prince' in 2018: Report


According to The Guardian, a digital forensic analysis revealed that the encrypted message from the number used by Mohammed bin Salman included a malicious file that infiltrated his phone.


Amazon founder and billionaire Jeff Bezos’s mobile phone was hacked after receiving a message from the Saudi Arabian crown prince, The Guardian newspaper reported.
According to the British daily, a digital forensic analysis revealed that the encrypted message from the number used by Mohammed bin Salman included a malicious file that infiltrated his phone.

The analysis also found that the intrusion could have been triggered by an infected video file sent from the account of of the Saudi prince.

"The two men had been having a seemingly friendly WhatsApp exchange when, on May 1 of that year, the unsolicited file was sent," Guardian said quoting anonymous sources.

While the details of the data taken from the is unclear, the revelation of the security breach comes almost a year after Jeff Bezos and his wife, MacKenzie announced that they would be separating after 25 years of marriage. After the divorce was finalised, Bezos, in a blog post, accused National Enquirer - a US tabloid - of threatening to publish embarrassing text messages and photos unless he publicly affirmed that there was no political motivation or outside force behind the tabloid’s coverage.

The National Enquirer had earlier disclosed an extramarital affair between Bezos and Lauren Sanchez, a former television anchor, in a series of reports that relied, in part, on intimate text messages sent by Bezos.

However, Gavin de Becker, a security consultant for Bezos, told The Guardian that he believed the Saudi Arabian government had accessed Bezos’s phone before the Enquirer exposed the affair.

Business Standard

Wednesday, October 31, 2018

Twitter gives users more freedom to report fake, suspicious account


The new tool unveiled by Twitter is the latest step that the social media site has taken to combat malicious activities on its platform.


Twitter has said that it is giving its users more freedom to report fake, suspicious accounts to intensify crackdown on online spamming activities a few days ahead of US midterms elections.

Twitter announced the new measure through its official safety account by saying that it will not allow any attempts to manipulate or disrupt its service, which came shortly before the US midterm elections are to take place on November 6, Xinhua news agency reported.

"You can now specify what type of spam you're seeing when you report, including fake accounts," Twitter Safety@TwitterSafety said in a tweeted post on Wednesday.

Twitter will allow users to flag tweets as originating from a fake account or a bot which are impersonating as something or someone else, and mark them as "fake".

The new tool unveiled by Twitter is the latest step that the social media site has taken to combat malicious activities on its platform.

Twitter said in July that it had purged about 70 million accounts in May and June of this year for conducting spamming or malicious behaviour.


Monday, September 3, 2018

Google announces new AI technology to fight online child sexual abuse 


Many tech companies are now more willing to leverage AI to detect various kinds of CSAM contents such as nudity and abusive comments.


US tech giant Google announced on Monday that it is employing a new Artificial Intelligence (AI) technology to combat online spreading of contents involving child sexual abuse.

Google said its cutting-edge AI technology uses deep neural networks for image processing to help discover and detect child sexual abuse material (CSAM) online.

The new tool based on the deep neural networks will be made available for free to non-governmental organizations (NGOs) and other "industry partners," including other technology companies, via a new Content Safety API service that could be offered upon request, Xinhua reported.

"Using the Internet as a means to spread content that sexually exploits children is one of the worst abuses imaginable," Google Engineering Lead Nikola Todorovic and Product Manager Abhi Chaudhuri wrote in the company's official blog post.

The new AI technology will significantly help service providers, NGOs and other tech firms to improve the efficiency of CSAM detection and reduce human reviewers' exposure to the content, said the two Google engineers.

"Quick identification of new images means that children who are being sexually abused today are much more likely to be identified and protected from further abuse," they noted.
"We've seen firsthand that this system can help a reviewer find and take action on 700 per cent more CSAM content over the same time period," they added.

Many tech companies are now more willing to leverage AI to detect various kinds of CSAM contents such as nudity and abusive comments, and Google's announcement represents its fresh commitment to fighting online CSAM contents by sharing "the latest technological advancements."

Google has been cooperating with some of its partners in combating online child sexual abuse, including the Britain-based charity the Internet Watch Foundation, the Technology Coalition and the WePROTECT Global Alliance, as well as other NGO organisations.

Article Source BS