Google is developing a version of Chrome for Android that supports browser extensions, a feature long absent from mobile versions, AndroidAuthority reports. The report adds: Specifically, the company is experimenting with "desktop" builds of Chrome for Android. These "desktop" builds are currently intended for Chromebooks as they transition to use more parts of Android, but there's hope the work will benefit mobile devices, too.

U.S. public utility giant American Water says it has disconnected some of its systems after discovering that hackers breached its internal networks last week. From a report: American Water, which supplies drinking water and wastewater services to more than 14 million people across the United States, confirmed the security incident in an 8-K regulatory filing with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission on Monday. The New Jersey-based company said in its filing that its water and wastewater facilities are "at this time" not affected and continue to operate without interruption, though the company noted that it's currently "unable to predict the full impact of this incident." American Water said it also notified law enforcement of the intrusion.

The company said it discovered "unauthorized activity" within its networks on October 3 and promptly moved to disconnect affected systems. In a statement on its website, American Water said it is "pausing billing until further notice." "In an effort to protect our customers' data and to prevent any further harm to our environment, we disconnected or deactivated certain systems," Ruben E. Rodriguez, a spokesperson for American Water, told TechCrunch in a statement. "There will be no late charges for customers while these systems are unavailable." Rodriguez declined to state which systems were unavailable and also declined to comment on the nature of the cybersecurity incident.

An anonymous reader shared this report from Engadget: Three new theft protection features that Google announced earlier this year have reportedly started rolling out on Android. The tools — Theft Detection Lock, Offline Device Lock and Remote Lock — are aimed at giving users a way to quickly lock down their devices if they've been swiped, so thieves can't access any sensitive information. Android reporter Mishaal Rahman shared on social media that the first two tools had popped up on a Xiaomi 14T Pro, and said some Pixel users have started seeing Remote Lock.

Theft Detection Lock is triggered by the literal act of snatching. The company said in May that the feature "uses Google AI to sense if someone snatches your phone from your hand and tries to run, bike or drive away." In such a scenario, it'll lock the phone's screen.
The Android reporter summarized the other two locking features in a post on Reddit:

• Remote Lock "lets you remotely lock your phone using just your phone number in case you can't sign into Find My Device using your Google account password."

• Offline Device Lock "automatically locks your screen if a thief tries to keep your phone disconnected from the Internet for an extended period of time."

"All three features entered beta in August, starting in Brazil. Google told me the final versions of these features would more widely roll out this year, and it seems the features have begun expanding."

"Pig Butchering Alert: Fraudulent Trading App targeted iOS and Android users."

That's the title of a new report released this week by cybersecurity company Group-IB revealing the official Apple App Store and Google Play store offered apps that were actually one part of a larger fraud campaign. "To complete the scam, the victim is asked to fund their account... After a few seemingly successful trades, the victim is persuaded to invest more and more money. The account balance appears to grow rapidly. However, when the victim attempts to withdraw funds, they are unable to do so."

Forbes reports: Group-IB determined that the frauds would begin with a period of social engineering reconnaissance and entrapment, during which the trust of the potential victim was gained through either a dating app, social media app or even a cold call. The attackers spent weeks on each target. Only when this "fattening up" process had reached a certain point would the fraudsters make their next move: recommending they download the trading app from the official App Store concerned.

When it comes to the iOS app, which is the one that the report focussed on, Group-IB researchers said that the app remained on the App Store for several weeks before being removed, at which point the fraudsters switched to phishing websites to distribute both iOS and Android apps. The use of official app stores, albeit only fleetingly as Apple and Google removed the fake apps in due course, bestowed a sense of authenticity to the operation as people put trust in both the Apple and Google ecosystems to protect them from potentially dangerous apps.
"The use of web-based applications further conceals the malicious activity," according to the researchers, "and makes detection more difficult." [A]fter the download is complete, the application cannot be launched immediately. The victim is then instructed by the cybercriminals to manually trust the Enterprise developer profile. Once this step is completed, the fraudulent application becomes operational... Once a user registers with the fraudulent application, they are tricked into completing several steps. First, they are asked to upload identification documents, such as an ID card or passport. Next, the user is asked to provide personal information, followed by job-related details...

The first discovered application, distributed through the Apple App Store, functions as a downloader, merely retrieving and displaying a web-app URL. In contrast, the second application, downloaded from phishing websites, already contains the web-app within its assets. We believe this approach was deliberate, since the first app was available in the official store, and the cybercriminals likely sought to minimise the risk of detection. As previously noted, the app posed as a tool for mathematical formulas, and including personal trading accounts within an iOS app would have raised immediate suspicion.
The app (which only runs on mobile phones) first launches a fake activity with formulas and graphics, according to the researchers. "We assume that this condition must bypass Apple's checks before being published to the store. As we can see, this simple trick allows cybercriminals to upload their fraudulent application to the Apple Store." They argue their research "reinforces the need for continued review of app store submissions to prevent such scams from reaching unsuspecting victims". But it also highlights "the importance of vigilance and end-user education, even when dealing with seemingly trustworthy apps..."

"Our investigation began with an analysis of Android applications at the request of our client. The client reported that a user had been tricked into installing the application as part of a stock investment scam. During our research, we uncovered a list of similar fraudulent applications, one of which was available on the Google Play Store. These apps were designed to display stock-related news and articles, giving them a false sense of legitimacy."

T-Mobile experienced three major data breaches in 2021, 2022, and 2023, according to CSO Online, "which impacted millions of its customers."

After a series of investigations by America's Federal Communications Commission, T-Mobile agreed in court to a number of settlement conditions, including moving toward a "modern zero-trust architecture," designating a Chief Information Security Office, implementing phishing-resistant multifactor authentication, and adopting data minimization, data inventory, and data disposal processes designed to limit its collection and retention of customer information.

Slashdot reader itwbennett writes: According to a consent decree published on Monday by the U.S. Federal Communications Commission, T-Mobile must pay a $15.75 million penalty and invest an equal amount "to strengthen its cybersecurity program, and develop and implement a compliance plan to protect consumers against similar data breaches in the future."

"Implementing these practices will require significant — and long overdue — investments. To do so at T-Mobile's scale will likely require expenditures an order of magnitude greater than the civil penalty here,' the consent decree said.
The article points out that order of magnitude greater than $15.75 million would be $157.5 million...

Last week the Register warned "If you're running the Unix printing system CUPS, with cups-browsed present and enabled, you may be vulnerable to attacks that could lead to your computer being commandeered over the network or internet." (Although the CEO of cybersecurity platform watchTowr told them "the vulnerability impacts less than a single-digit percentage of all deployed internet-facing Linux systems.")

But Tuesday generic (Slashdot reader #14,144) shared this new warning from Akamai: Akamai researchers have confirmed a new attack vector using CUPS that could be leveraged to stage distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attacks. Research shows that, to begin the attack, the attacking system only needs to send a single packet to a vulnerable and exposed CUPS service with internet connectivity.

The Akamai Security Intelligence and Response Team (SIRT) found that more than 198,000 devices are vulnerable to this attack vector and are accessible on the public internet; roughly 34% of those could be used for DDoS abuse (58,000+). Of the 58,000+ vulnerable devices, hundreds exhibited an "infinite loop" of requests.

The limited resources required to initiate a successful attack highlights the danger: It would take an attacker mere seconds to co-opt every vulnerable CUPS service currently exposed on the internet and cost the attacker less than a single US cent on modern hyperscaler platforms.

WordPress co-founder Matt Mullenweg has asserted his personal ownership of WordPress.org in a new interview, offering new insight into his clash with hosting provider WP Engine. "WordPress.org just belongs to me personally," Mullenweg told The Verge, justifying his decision to cut WP Engine's access to WordPress.org servers. He cited trademark concerns and insufficient ecosystem contributions as key reasons for the action.

Mullenweg said he altered WordPress Foundation's trademark policies to specifically target WP Engine, adding language about their lack of donations. He likened his approach to getting "Al Capone for taxes," using trademark leverage to pressure the company into greater contributions.

A sophisticated malware strain has infected thousands of Linux systems since 2021, exploiting over 20,000 common misconfigurations and a critical Apache RocketMQ vulnerability, researchers at Aqua Security reported. Dubbed Perfctl, the malware employs advanced stealth techniques, including rootkit installation and process name mimicry, to evade detection. It persists through system reboots by modifying login scripts and copying itself to multiple disk locations. Perfctl hijacks systems for cryptocurrency mining and proxy services, while also serving as a backdoor for additional malware. Despite some antivirus detection, the malware's ability to restart after removal has frustrated system administrators.

Cybersecurity firm IronNet, founded by former NSA director Keith Alexander, has collapsed after failing to deliver on its promise to revolutionize cyber defense. The company, which went public in 2021 with a $3 billion valuation, shut down in September 2023 after running out of money.

IronNet's downfall has left investors and former employees bitter, with some accusing the company of misleading them about its financial health. "I'm honestly ashamed that I was ever an executive at that company," said Mark Berly, a former IronNet vice president. He said the company's top leaders cultivated a culture of deceit "just like Theranos." Critics point to questionable business practices, subpar products, and associations that potentially exposed the firm to Russian influence. The company's board included high-profile national security figures, which helped attract investments and contracts. However, IronNet struggled to secure major deals and meet revenue projections.

Apple just fixed a duo of security bugs in iOS 18.0.1 and iPadOS 18.0.1, one of which might cause users' saved passwords to be read aloud. It's hardly an ideal situation for the visually impaired. From a report: For those who rely on the accessibility features baked into their iGadgets, namely Apple's VoiceOver screen reader, now is a good time to apply the latest update. In typical Apple fashion, the company hasn't released much in the way of details about the first security issue, tracked as CVE-2024-44204, which makes it tougher to understand the conditions under which this vulnerability could be triggered, or how to avoid it until the update is applied. What we do know is that it was characterized as a logic issue, which Apple rectified by improving validation. The disclosure of the bug comes less than a month after iOS 18 and iPadOS 18 debuted. Ironically, this release included Apple's first native password manager, the Passwords app.

Cloudflare has emerged victorious in a patent infringement lawsuit against Sable Networks, securing a $225,000 settlement and forcing the patent holder to dedicate its entire portfolio to the public domain. The case, which began in March 2021 with Sable asserting nearly 100 claims across four patents, concluded after a Texas jury found Cloudflare not guilty of infringement in February 2024.

Sable, described by Cloudflare as a "patent troll," had previously sued several tech companies, including Cisco and Juniper Networks, who settled out of court. Cloudflare's aggressive defense strategy included launching Project Jengo, a crowd-sourced initiative to invalidate Sable's patents. The settlement prevents Sable from asserting these patents against any other company in the future, marking a significant blow to patent trolling practices in the tech industry. In a blog post, Cloudflare adds: While this $225,000 can't fully compensate us for the time, energy and frustration of having to deal with this litigation for nearly three years, it does help to even the score a bit. And we hope that it sends an important message to patent trolls everywhere to beware before taking on Cloudflare.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from KrebsOnSecurity: Organizations that get relieved of credentials to their cloud environments can quickly find themselves part of a disturbing new trend: Cybercriminals using stolen cloud credentials to operate and resell sexualized AI-powered chat services. Researchers say these illicit chat bots, which use custom jailbreaks to bypass content filtering, often veer into darker role-playing scenarios, including child sexual exploitation and rape. Researchers at security firm Permiso Security say attacks against generative artificial intelligence (AI) infrastructure like Bedrock from Amazon Web Services (AWS) have increased markedly over the last six months, particularly when someone in the organization accidentally exposes their cloud credentials or key online, such as in a code repository like GitHub.

Investigating the abuse of AWS accounts for several organizations, Permiso found attackers had seized on stolen AWS credentials to interact with the large language models (LLMs) available on Bedrock. But they also soon discovered none of these AWS users had enabled logging (it is off by default), and thus they lacked any visibility into what attackers were doing with that access. So Permiso researchers decided to leak their own test AWS key on GitHub, while turning on logging so that they could see exactly what an attacker might ask for, and what the responses might be. Within minutes, their bait key was scooped up and used in a service that offers AI-powered sex chats online.

"After reviewing the prompts and responses it became clear that the attacker was hosting an AI roleplaying service that leverages common jailbreak techniques to get the models to accept and respond with content that would normally be blocked," Permiso researchers wrote in a report released today. "Almost all of the roleplaying was of a sexual nature, with some of the content straying into darker topics such as child sexual abuse," they continued. "Over the course of two days we saw over 75,000 successful model invocations, almost all of a sexual nature."

An anonymous reader shares a report: It's not exactly breaking news that people reuse passwords, but you might expect password manager subscribers to avoid the practice. You'd be wrong, according to a new study. Dashlane's downer of a report draws on saved logins analyzed on-device by Dashlane's software across "millions" of individual and business accounts. It finds dismally high percentages of password reuse worldwide. The US and Canada rank the worst of every region Dashlane tracked, with 48% of passwords in individual password vaults being reused. Another 15% rate as compromised, meaning those passwords have shown up in data breaches.

Combined with other security data points, the US and Canada land at a security score of 72.6 out of 100 in Dashlane's report, the lowest of all 14 regions covered in the study. The report, along with the Password Health score that Dashlane's software computes for individual users, emphasizes the longstanding problem of password reuse because that practice leaves its practitioners so vulnerable to getting hacked.Â

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: Attackers are actively exploiting a critical vulnerability in mail servers sold by Zimbra in an attempt to remotely execute malicious commands that install a backdoor, researchers warn. The vulnerability, tracked as CVE-2024-45519, resides in the Zimbra email and collaboration server used by medium and large organizations. When an admin manually changes default settings to enable the postjournal service, attackers can execute commands by sending maliciously formed emails to an address hosted on the server. Zimbra recently patched the vulnerability. All Zimbra users should install it or, at a minimum, ensure that postjournal is disabled.

On Tuesday, Security researcher Ivan Kwiatkowski first reported the in-the-wild attacks, which he described as "mass exploitation." He said the malicious emails were sent by the IP address 79.124.49[.]86 and, when successful, attempted to run a file hosted there using the tool known as curl. Researchers from security firm Proofpoint took to social media later that day to confirm the report. On Wednesday, security researchers provided additional details that suggested the damage from ongoing exploitation was likely to be contained. As already noted, they said, a default setting must be changed, likely lowering the number of servers that are vulnerable. [...]

Proofpoint has explained that some of the malicious emails used multiple email addresses that, when pasted into the CC field, attempted to install a webshell-based backdoor on vulnerable Zimbra servers. The full cc list was wrapped as a single string and encoded using the base64 algorithm. When combined and converted back into plaintext, they created a webshell at the path: /jetty/webapps/zimbraAdmin/public/jsp/zimbraConfig.jsp. Proofpoint went on to say: "Once installed, the webshell listens for inbound connection with a pre-determined JSESSIONID Cookie field; if present, the webshell will then parse the JACTION cookie for base64 commands. The webshell has support for command execution via exec or download and execute a file over a socket connection."

The Verge's Gaby Del Valle reports: New York City Mayor Eric Adams, who was indicted last week on charges including fraud, bribery, and soliciting donations from foreign nationals, told federal investigators he forgot his phone password before handing it over, according to charging documents. That was almost a year ago, and investigators still can't get into the phone, prosecutors said Wednesday.

During a federal court hearing, prosecutor Hagan Scotten said the FBI's inability to get into Adams' phone is a "significant wild card," according to a report from the New York Post. The FBI issued a search warrant for Adams' devices in November 2023. Adams initially handed over two phones but didn't have his personal device on him. The indictment does not mention what type of device Adams uses. When Adams turned in his personal cellphone the following day, charging documents say, he said he had changed the password a day prior -- after learning about the investigation -- and couldn't remember it. Adams told investigators he changed the password "to prevent members of his staff from inadvertently or intentionally deleting the contents of his phone," the indictment alleges. The FBI just needs the right tools. When investigators failed to break into the Trump rally shooter's phone in July, they sent the device to the FBI lab in Quantico, Virginia, where agents used an unreleased tool from the Israeli company Cellebrite to crack it in less than an hour.

Microsoft is bringing some new AI-powered Paint and Photos features to Copilot Plus PCs that could make creatives less reliant on more powerful image editing software. From a report: Generative Fill and Generative Erase -- which appear to be heavily inspired by similar AI tools in Adobe Photoshop -- are being introduced to Paint, allowing users to precisely add or remove objects in their images.

Both tools utilize a size-adjustable brush to "paint" over specific areas of an image to edit. Generative Erase will remove unwanted figures, objects like background clutter, and other distractions, similar to the Magic Eraser feature on Google's Pixel phones. Generative Fill allows Paint users to add new AI-generated assets to an image using a text description and select precisely where they should be placed -- much like the Photoshop tool that shares the same name. These build on the Cocreator tool for Paint announced for Copilot Plus PCs earlier this year that can generate images using a combination of text prompts and reference sketches. The company says the diffusion-based model powering these features has been updated to improve output quality and speed and now includes "built-in moderation" to help prevent it from being abused.

Microsoft has unveiled new features for its Copilot AI assistant, including screen analysis and voice interaction capabilities. Copilot Vision, available to Copilot Pro subscribers, can analyze web content in Microsoft Edge and answer queries about on-screen information. The company said processed data is immediately deleted and not used for model training.

A new Think Deeper function aims to tackle complex problems using advanced reasoning models. Copilot Voice introduces synthetic speech output and voice input in select English-speaking countries. Microsoft also announced personalization features, leveraging user history to tailor Copilot recommendations. This functionality will be limited initially, with the company evaluating options for European Economic Area users due to regulatory considerations.

A Russian criminal gang secretly conducted cyberattacks and espionage operations against NATO allies on the orders of the Kremlin's intelligence services, according to the UK's National Crime Agency. From a report: Evil Corp., which includes a man who gained notoriety for driving a Lamborghini luxury sports car, launched the hacks prior to 2019, the NCA said in statement on Tuesday. The gang has been accused of using malicious software to extort millions of dollars from hundreds of banks and financial institutions in more than 40 countries. In December 2019, the US government sanctioned Evil and accused its alleged leader, Maksim Yakubets, of providing "direct assistance" to the Russian state, including by "acquiring confidential documents." The NCA's statement on Tuesday provides new detail on the work Yakubets and other members allegedly carried out to aid the Kremlin's geopolitical aims. The exact nature of the hacks against the North Atlantic Treaty Organization allies wasn't immediately clear.

Sonos CEO Patrick Spence has unveiled a plan to address the fallout from the company's botched app release in May 2024. The audio equipment maker aims to overhaul its software development practices and rebuild customer trust after the controversial update sparked widespread criticism, The Verge reports.

The company will extend warranties by one year for select products and implement more rigorous testing processes, including an expanded beta program. Sonos has also pledged to introduce major app changes gradually and create an opt-in system for experimental features.

To improve internal accountability, Sonos will appoint a "quality ombudsperson" to escalate concerns and report to leadership. The firm also plans to establish a customer advisory board for pre-launch feedback. Executive bonuses will be tied to app quality improvements and regaining customer confidence.

Thousands of Verizon users across the United States reported having little or no cellphone service on Monday morning in major cities, including in Atlanta, Chicago, Denver, New York and Phoenix. From a report: According to the website Downdetector, which tracks user reports of internet disruptions, more than 104,000 cases of Verizon outages were reported across the country as of 11:20 a.m. Eastern, more than an hour after the first issues were reported.

A map posted on the site showed cities with the most reports. On the site, many users said their cellphones were intermittently displaying SOS mode and that they could not place calls or send or receive text messages. "We're aware of the issue affecting service for some customers," a spokesman for Verizon, Ilya Hemlin, said in a telephone interview at 11:30 a.m. "Our engineers are engaged and we are working quickly to solve the issue," he added.