Frequent readers of this blog will know that Apple has had some security related issues with the Chinese recently. That may have just increased if this report from Bloomberg is to be believed:
China’s government excluded Apple Inc.iPads and MacBook laptops from the list of products that can be bought with public money because of security concerns, according to government officials familiar with the matter.
Ten Apple products — including the iPad, iPad Mini, MacBook Air and MacBook Pro — were omitted from a final government procurement list distributed in July, according to officials who read it and asked not to be identified because the information isn’t public. The models were on a June version of the list drafted by the National Development and Reform Commission andMinistry of Finance, the officials said.
Now to be fair, Apple is the latest tech company to be banned from selling in China as they join, Symantec and Microsoft among others. Still, seeing as Apple is really trying to break into that market, this isn’t good for them.
I fully expect Apple to respond to this in some way. When they do, you’ll see it here.
Russian Cybergang Stole 1.2 BILLION Passwords
Posted in Commentary with tags hack, Russia, Security on August 6, 2014 by itnerdYou read that title right. A group of researchers are claiming that a Russian cybergang has stolen a staggering 1.2 billion passwords from a variety of websites:
The US firm Hold Security said the gang which it dubbed “CyberVor” collected confidential user names and passwords were stolen from some 420,000 websites, ranging from household names to small Internet sites.
“As long as your data is somewhere on the World Wide Web, you may be affected by this breach,” Hold said in a statement on its website.
“Your data has not necessarily been stolen from you directly. It could have been stolen from the service or goods providers to whom you entrust your personal information, from your employers, even from your friends and family.”
The security firm, which specializes in research on large data breaches, said the cybergang acquired databases of stolen credentials from fellow hackers on the black market, and then installed malware that allowed them to gain access to many websites and social media accounts.
“To the best of our knowledge, they mostly focused on stealing credentials, eventually ending up with the largest cache of stolen personal information, totaling over 1.2 billion unique sets of e-mails and passwords,” the researchers said.
Now, if this is true, this is truly frightening. A credit card can be easily canceled. But personal credentials like an email address, Social Security number or password can be used for identity theft. Because people tend to use the same passwords for different sites, criminals test stolen credentials on websites where valuable information can be gleaned. Thus this can quickly become very very bad for anyone affected.
My advice? If you’re paranoid, change your passwords now. This article can help you with that. I personally am waiting to see who was affected and what those sites are doing to inform affected users.
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