News

Jeff Bezos Reminds Us: It’s So Easy To Hack Via WhatsApp

Published

1 year ago

January 23, 2020

Jeff Bezos reminds us It's so easy to hack via WhatsApp

You have all noticed: Jeff Bezo’s smartphone has been hacked and the Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman seems to be directly involved in this hack, which is said to have taken place via WhatsApp. At least this is the conclusion of forensic experts that Jeff Bezos commissioned himself.

What happened? Billionaire Bezos and bin Salman are said to have exchanged their phone numbers in spring 2018 at a meeting in Los Angeles. As a result, an encrypted video from the Crown Prince’s WhatsApp account is said to have been sent at some point. Then copious amounts of data would have flowed from the smartphone of the Amazon mastermind.

The story is not a new one, because Bezos’ accusation against the Saudis has been around for a long time. Now, however, it can be assumed with a “medium to high” certainty that the data could be stolen from Jeff Bezo’s smartphone due to this hack by the Crown Prince.

The Kashoggi case played a decisive role in the fact that the relationship between the Crown Prince and the Amazon boss deteriorated significantly because the journalist who had been killed previously also worked for the Washington Post, which is also known to belong to Bezos.

As of now, it is assumed that the Pegasus software of the NSO group, which is based in Israel, made espionage possible. Last year it was WhatsApp itself that sued this NSO group. The reason: Over 1,400 people, including journalists and activists from all over the world, are said to have been spied on using this software. Sure, the company denies these allegations, but various investigations have shown that the spied victims had just this Pegasus software on their devices.

4. The Bezos hack was not about Amazon. It was about the Washington Post
5. There is an extensive forensic report upcoming
6. Full details around this will become available to the public in a few months

— İyad el-Baghdadi | إياد البغدادي (@iyad_elbaghdadi) January 21, 2020

It could be everyone.

Jeff Bezos was hit twice by this story: private pictures ended up in third-party possession and contributed to the fact that this dirt campaign against him could spread so large, and also a lot of business data flowed out, which led to a financial loss for Bezos,

The latter is probably pretty bad for the multi-billionaire. Still, the message to all of us is different: It can affect everyone, even top business people, politicians, journalists or anyone else. You weigh yourself in supposed security because you have in mind that WhatsApp and Co meanwhile everything is encrypted from end to end. But it is very deceptive security.

Now, most of us probably won’t get the benefit of being able to save both private and business data from a billion-dollar company on their smartphones. But everyone – no matter whether it’s a big name or an average smartphone owner – can fall victim to such an attack.

One would think that someone like Bezos is professional enough and consultant enough to separate private and business data strictly. Okay, that probably wouldn’t have helped him much either – either the compromising private photos or the business data would have been gone, depending on which number Bezos would have given the Crown Prince. But the other half would still have been safe.

Such behaviour is probably not rare, even if the US president doesn’t give a shit about his security advisors and prefers to use his smartphone to tweet etc. instead of the one that is particularly secure and is owned by the president for this purpose located.

So we can now tick off the Bezos number as a message, but also consider it a friendly reminder of how vulnerable our smartphones are and that the perceived security is not actual security. Jeff Bezos will undoubtedly be smart enough in the future to have his private data on a different handset than the business one – even if we are probably not as exciting as him for a long time, maybe we should stick to it and above all always be aware of how we handle sensitive data. What are your strategies for protecting data on your smartphone?

Source:- TheNextWeb

News

Google Threatens to Stop Its Search Engine Service in Australia, Why

Published

2 days ago

January 22, 2021

The Digit News

Google Threatens to Stop Its Search Engine Service in Australia, Why

Google has just announced that it is threatening the Australian government to stop its search engine services or search engines.

This was done by Google because it did not agree with new laws that have been issued by the Australian government where Google must pay news publishers for content displayed on Google Search.

Apart from Google, other technology companies such as Facebook are also entering and must comply with the new regulations. Then Google was the first and said that it did not agree.

“If this rule becomes law, we will have no choice but to stop Google Search services in Australia,” said Vice President of Google Australia and New Zealand, Meg Silva quoted from The Verge.

It states that Google was forced to decide this because they had no other choice and they also didn’t want to spend a lot of money just to comply with regulations in one country.

“It will bring things that we cannot sustain for this business, the digital economy, and do not fit the way search engines work,” Google continued.

Actually, Google has announced a program to pay a number of news publishers in Australia, Germany, and Brazil, but the Australian government thinks that this is still not enough so they make this law.

News

WhatsApp is increasingly anxious to be left by the user, now advertises in newspapers

Published

3 days ago

January 21, 2021

The Digit News

WhatsApp is increasingly anxious to be left by the user, now advertises in newspapers

India, which is one of the largest WhatsApp user countries in the world, is busy deleting WhatsApp and switching to rival applications such as Signal and Telegram.

Indeed WhatsApp has finally postponed its new privacy policy, but it seems that this is not enough to stem user migration.

Most recently, WhatsApp has advertised in newspapers to convince its users that they care about user privacy.

WhatsApp spent a lot of money to advertise in 10 newspapers that speak English and Hindi.

“WhatsApp respects and protects your privacy. Respect for your privacy is embedded in our DNA” reads the WhatsApp ad.

WhatsApp forces a new “privacy policy” on India, its biggest market.
Indians start leaving the platform.
WhatsApp runs full-page ads on privacy.
Why would a “FREE” service spend so much money to retain users?
India needs stronger regulation to protect data.
What’s the govt doing? pic.twitter.com/G2DkKRxsT3
— Palki Sharma (@palkisu) January 13, 2021

WhatsApp has clarified that its data-sharing policy with Facebook does not affect the privacy of messages sent by users.

Encryption continues and WhatsApp until Facebook can’t read the messages sent. WhatsApp’s actions to advertise are actually quite reasonable.

Facebook has an estimated $5.7 billion investment in India so there is no way they will let it drift for nothing.

Such an investment is aimed at boosting digital transactions for MSMEs in India. WhatsApp has also received government permission to launch WhatsApp Pay.

News

Microsoft Increases Download Limits on OneDrive, Teams, and SharePoint

Published

1 week ago

January 16, 2021

The Digit News

Microsoft Increases Download Limits on OneDrive, Teams, and SharePoint

Working from home ( work from home, WFH) continued to require workers to do their jobs remotely. Included in sending important documents. Not infrequently, what is sent is a video or large file.

Of course, large project files such as 4K and 8K videos, CAD files, and other large data often become obstacles to sharing in the cloud.

In response to this, Microsoft will increase the file upload limit from 100GB to 250GB. These upload limits will apply to OneDrive, Teams, and SharePoint.

In addition, this upload limit is also available to personal OneDrive users. Reportedly, this feature will be available at the end of January 2021.

Microsoft in a written statement said to continue to strive to support workers around the world. He said he accepted all feedback given by customers.

“We always try to innovate and empower our users to be more productive,” wrote Microsoft employee Ankita, Saturday (16/1/2021).

Optimize for Azure

He added that each file is divided into several parts and each part is encrypted with a unique key, to keep the file safe.

All files will be backed up in Azure storage to make it easier for users to upload and download anywhere.

Previously, Microsoft had increased the upload limit from 15GB to 100GB in July 2020.

Microsoft Teams Will Compete with Browsers

Microsoft CEO, Satya Nadella, said Microsoft Teams will be as important as internet browsers and operating systems. This means that Teams will be a service that is prioritized by their users.

This statement came after Nadella highlighted the growth of Teams over the last few years.

According to company data, there were a surge of inactive users from 13 million users in July 2019 to 115 million users in September 2020.

Quoting UCToday , Thursday (13/1/2021), he added that Teams has turned into a communication tool as well as an organizing layer because it acts as a hub for other Microsoft services.

This is what makes Teams a platform that is expected to compete with internet browsers and operating systems.