When wheeled spies are not enough, drones can do the job, and other privacy & security news

Privacy

The big privacy news last week was about Amazon’s Astro: Amazon Astro: What If Wall-E but Evil? Amazon's $1,000 personal robot promises to patrol your home with cameras and Alexa. What could go wrong? For more information, Leaked Documents Show How Amazon’s Astro Robot Tracks Everything You Do. As if wheeled spies are not enough, Ring’s security drone could be flying in your home soon and be more invasive. This leaves us with the question: Alexa, Ring, and Astro: Where's my privacy, Amazon?

We all want to know How to find and remove spyware from your phone However, we need to find the right way. That 'anti-NSO Pegasus spyware' download is actually a Trojan – so don't touch it

Security

In serious escalations, hackers now are attacking hospitals

• Ransomware attacks against hospitals are having some very grim consequences

• Hospitals say cyberattacks increase death rates and delay patient care

As Police arrest two in operation against 'prolific' gang that targeted big businesses, the crooks are also turning against each other: Ransomware gangs are complaining that other crooks are stealing their ransoms

As usual, we found out about a variety of hacks and leaks:

• Bandwidth CEO confirms outages caused by DDoS attack

• Coinbase hackers exploit multi-factor flaw to steal from 6,000 customers

• Hundreds of scam apps hit over 10 million Android devices

• Fraudster jailed for stealing US military health records, millions in benefits

In addition to enterprise security vulnerabilities …

• Exploit released for VMware vulnerability after CISA warning

• FinSpy surveillance malware is now spreading through UEFI bootkits

• Microsoft warning: This malware creates a 'persistent' backdoor for hackers

• Attacks against Remote Desktop Protocol endpoints have exploded this year, warns ESET's latest Threat Report

… some serious vulnerabilities in consumer software became public

• Password-stealing Android malware uses sneaky security warning to trick you into downloading

• Researchers discover bypass 'bug' in iPhone Apple Pay, Visa to make contactless payments

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• Apple forgot to sanitize the Phone Number field for lost AirTags

• Google just patched these two Chrome zero-day bugs that are under attack right now

With the increasing attention of cyber risks, the government starts to become active

• NSA, CISA partner for guide on safe VPNs amid widespread exploitation by nation-states

• White House to convene 30-country cybersecurity meeting

• New offensive cyber force will “confront aggressive behaviour”, says Foreign Secretary

While it’s not know yet what took Facebook down: Major global outage drags on this has some unexpected security consequences: the failure stopped the badge entry system to work. Engineers can’t enter the buildings to fix things!

Regulation

The FCC got busy last week:

• New FCC rules could force telephone companies to block robocalls to 911 call centers

• FCC aggressively moves to block spam calls

• FCC considers new rules to stop scammers from hijacking your cell phone