Mobile Klinik to offer Limited Lifetime Warranty for CPO devices and up to 61% in savings! 

Posted in Commentary with tags on April 30, 2025 by itnerd

With the ongoing turbulence in the economy, value matters more than ever for Canadian consumers. Mobile Klinik is now making it easier to save without compromising quality. Starting May 1, every Certified Pre-owned (CPO) phone purchased from Mobile Klinik, and activated on TELUS or Koodo, will now include a Limited Lifetime Warranty. 

Disclaimer: “Limited” refers to coverage that is contingent on the device remaining repairable and actively used on the TELUS or Koodo network. The warranty is tied to the device IMEI, not the original purchaser, and does not cover loss, theft, or damage beyond economic repair. If the device cannot be repaired or parts are unavailable, a trade-in top-up credit may apply. Terms and conditions apply

That means buying a CPO Samsung S24 FE for just $379 (vs. $1,100 new)   — a whopping 61% discount with available credits — now includes peace of mind for as long as you keep your plan. That’s $721 in savings and no more “what if it breaks?”

For iPhone users, a CPO iPhone 16 is now $596 (vs. $1,315 new)   — a 42% discount.

Disclaimer: Pricing is based on TELUS new device MSRP vs CPO MK price with applicable activation and sustainability credits. Prices as of April 2025 and subject to change

The cost-of-living crunch is real, and this warranty now makes buying a CPO device not just a smarter purchase, but a safer one.

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Flashpoint Hits 400,000 Milestone with 400K Vulnerability Disclosures

Posted in Commentary with tags on April 30, 2025 by itnerd

 Flashpoint just announced that it has hit 400,000 vulnerability disclosures making it the world’s most comprehensive, timely, and actionable source of independently curated vulnerability intelligence.

The blog is here: https://flashpoint.io/blog/flashpoints-vulndb-milestone-intelligence-innovations/.

The milestone is a testament to Flashpoint’s long-term commitment for providing independently curated vulnerability intelligence without the limitations, delays, and coverage gaps of public programs such as the Common Vulnerabilities and Exposures (CVE) and the National Vulnerability Database (NVD) programs.

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UK Grocery Retailer Co-op Shuts Down IT Systems After Hack Attempt

Posted in Commentary with tags on April 30, 2025 by itnerd

Reports have surfaced that UK supermarket chain Co-op, which owns 2,000 grocery stores, shut down parts of its IT system after discovering an attempted hack only days after fellow retailer Marks & Spencer faced a serious cyber incident. Details about that incident can be found here.

Javvad Malik, lead security awareness advocate at cybersecurity company KnowBe4, commented:

“The recent cybersecurity incident at The Co-op, following closely on the heels of a similar event at Marks & Spencer, underscores the growing cybersecurity challenges facing the retail sector. The Co-op’s swift response in restricting access to certain systems demonstrates a commendable prioritization of cybersecurity.

“This incident highlights the critical role of technology in modern retail operations and its potential vulnerabilities. As retailers increasingly rely on digital systems for everything from inventory management to customer service, they inadvertently expand their attack surface, making them attractive targets for cybercriminals. No single system should be considered to be non business critical. All systems are reliant on one another and when one goes down or is compromised, it can have a knock on effect on others. 

“The fact that other major retailers like Morrisons and WH Smith have faced similar challenges points to a broader trend of escalating cyber threats in the sector. This pattern emphasizes the need for a more proactive and comprehensive approach to cybersecurity across the retail industry. Which is why it’s important that retailers view cybersecurity not only as an IT concern, but as a fundamental part of business. This involves not only investing in technical defenses but also fostering a culture of cybersecurity awareness throughout the organization where everyone plays their role in keeping the organization secure.” 

Kudos to this grocery chain for taking swift action in this case. I would love for them to share their playbook in terms of incident detection and response as I am sure many other organizations could learn from them.

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Charleston County, SC School District notifies 20,000+ people of data breach

Posted in Commentary with tags on April 30, 2025 by itnerd

The Charleston County, SC School District yesterday confirmed it notified 20,653 people about a July 2024 data breach. The district has not publicly disclosed what personal data was compromised, but it is suspected that Social Security numbers and/or other info that could be used for identity fraud were compromised. Ransomware gang RansomHub claimed responsibility for the breach in August 2024.

In a blog post reporting this news, Paul Bischoff, Consumer Privacy Advocate at Comparitech, wrote:

“RansomHub is a prominent cybercriminal gang that runs a ransomware-as-a-service business in which affiliates pay to use the group’s malware and infrastructure to launch their own attacks and collect ransoms. RansomHub started claiming attacks on its data leak site in February 2024. Since then, it’s claimed 136 confirmed ransomware attacks, compromising 6.5 million records. The group claimed another 631 unconfirmed attacks that haven’t been acknowledged by the targeted organizations.”

“In 2024, Comparitech researchers logged 75 confirmed ransomware attacks on US schools and colleges, compromising more than 2.8 million records. The average ransom is $876,000.”

“Ransomware attacks on schools and colleges disrupt day-to-day operations such as taking attendance, submitting grades, phone and email communications, billing, payroll, and assignments. Ransomware attacks are often two-pronged: they lock down systems and steal data. Schools that refuse to pay face extended downtime, lose data, and put students and faculty at increased risk of fraud.”

Other than healthcare, the education sector is low hanging fruit for threat actors. Both sectors need to be focused on so that this wave of ransomware attacks start to head in a more positive direction.

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StarTree Unveils AI-Native Real-Time Analytics and Launches Bring Your Own Kubernetes (BYOK)

Posted in Commentary with tags on April 30, 2025 by itnerd

 StarTree today announced two new powerful AI-native innovations to its real-time data platform for enterprise workloads: Model Context Protocol (MCP) support and vector embedding model hosting. These capabilities enable StarTree to power agent-facing applications, real-time Retrieval-Augmented Generation (RAG), and conversational querying at the speed, freshness, and scale enterprise AI systems demand.

AI is only as powerful as the information architecture behind it. Just as the cloud forced a fundamental redesign of enterprise data systems—AI is now triggering a similarly profound shift. As agentic systems emerge, traditional data architectures—designed for internal users who accept slow queries and stale data—can no longer keep up. Agentic AI demands sub-second query speeds, real-time context awareness, and the ability to support swarms of autonomous agents working in parallel. This marks a fundamental shift in the role of data platforms—from static storage to dynamic engines that can aid agents in completing tasks.

StarTree has long delivered on this promise, powering millions of low-latency queries per second on the freshest data available. But new capabilities were needed to extend this foundation and fully unlock the next generation of AI-native applications. New features launching include:

  • Model Context Protocol (MCP) support: MCP is a standardized way for AI applications to connect with and interact with external data sources and tools. It allows Large Language Models (LLMs) to access real-time insights in StarTree in order to take actions beyond their built-in knowledge. Availability: June 2025
  • Vector Auto Embedding: Simplifies and accelerates the vector embedding generation and ingestion for real-time RAG use cases based on Amazon Bedrock. Availability: Fall 2025

The StarTree platform now supports:

  • Agent-Facing Applications – By supporting the emerging Model Context Protocol (MCP), StarTree allows AI agents to dynamically analyze live, structured enterprise data. With StarTree’s high-concurrency architecture, enterprises can support millions of autonomous agents making micro-decisions in real time—whether optimizing delivery routes, adjusting pricing, or preventing service disruptions.
  • Conversational Querying – MCP simplifies and standardizes the integration between LLMs and databases, making natural language to SQL (NL2SQL) far easier and less brittle to deploy. Enterprises can now empower users to ask questions via voice or text and receive instant answers—like a ride-hailing driver asking, “How much money have I made today?” followed by, “What about this month?” and “Where and when am I making the most money?”—with each question building on the last. This kind of seamless, conversational flow requires not just language understanding, but a data platform that can deliver real-time responses with context.
  • Real-Time RAG – StarTree’s new vector auto embedding enables pluggable vector embedding models to streamline the continuous flow of data from source to embedding creation to ingestion. This simplifies the deployment of Retrieval-Augmented Generation pipelines, making it easier to build and scale AI-driven use cases like financial market monitoring and system observability—without complex, stitched-together workflows.

StarTree Expands Deployment Flexibility with Bring Your Own Kubernetes (BYOK)

StarTree also announced the general availability of Bring Your Own Kubernetes (BYOK), a new deployment option that gives organizations full control over StarTree’s high-performance analytics infrastructure within their own Kubernetes environments, whether in the cloud, on-premises, or in hybrid architectures.

With BYOK, enterprises can maintain full governance and control over their infrastructure while still taking advantage of StarTree’s real-time performance and ease of use. This model is ideal for regulated industries such as financial services and healthcare, where strict data residency, compliance, and security policies often prohibit the use of traditional SaaS models. It also delivers a cost-effective solution for organizations with stable, predictable workloads, offering savings on compute and egress fees.

BYOK joins StarTree’s existing deployment options, which include fully managed SaaS and Bring Your Own Cloud (BYOC), giving customers the flexibility to choose the model that best fits their operational and regulatory requirements. Availability: now in private preview

Real-Time Analytics Summit 2025: Coming May 14

StarTree will showcase many of these new innovations during the Real-Time Analytics Summit 2025, a virtual event taking place on May 14. The event will feature speakers from Uber, Netflix, AWS, and more, exploring the future of AI-driven analytics, data infrastructure, and emerging use cases across industries. Attendees will gain valuable insights into how real-time analytics is driving digital transformation across industries, from finance and e-commerce to gaming, cybersecurity, and beyond.

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World Password Day | The most commonly used passwords of 2025 revealed

Posted in Commentary with tags on April 30, 2025 by itnerd

Cybernews researchers analyzed 19B passwords and discovered how people create them: their favorite animals, pop culture terms, celebrities, cities, food, names, swearwords, and more.

Researchers analyzed 19,030,305,929 passwords, of which only 1,143,815,266 (6%) were identified as unique.

Researchers developed custom wordlists covering diverse themes to better understand password composition.

Key findings:

  • Most people use 8–10 character passwords (42%), with eight being the most popular.
  • Almost a third (27%) of the passwords analyzed consist of only lowercase letters and digits.
  • Almost 20% of unique passwords mixed case letters and numbers, but had no special characters.
  • Passwords composed of profane or offensive words might seem rare, but they’re very common in practice.
  • Despite years of being called out, default and “lazy” passwords like “password”, “admin”, and “123456” are still a common pattern.
  • Researchers found “1234” in almost 4% of all passwords – over 727 million passwords use this sequence.
  • 338 million passwords use the “123456” combination.
  • Only 6% of passwords are unique, leaving other users highly vulnerable to dictionary attacks. 
  • Ana is the most popular name, used in almost 1%, or 178.8M passwords.
  • The positive wordlist is dominated by words like love (87M), sun (34M), dream (6.1M), joy (6.9M), and freedom (2M)​.
  • Some of the most frequently used pop culture terms in passwords include Mario (9.6M), Joker (3.1M), Batman (3.9M), Thor (6.2M), and, surprisingly, Elsa (2.9M) from Disney’s “Frozen”.
  • Swear words are also very common in passwords. The top entry, ass (165M).
  • Users often craft their passwords using fuck (16M), shit (6.5M), dick (3.2M), and bitch (3.2M).
  • The most popular city for passwords is Rome (13M), while 9.8M passwords include lion, and 7.8M – fox.
  • Summer (3.8M) is the most popular season, and users prefer Monday (0.8M) the most to protect their accounts.
  • May (28M) appears in lots of passwords but also in many other words used to create passwords.
  • The second most popular month was April (5.2M).
  • Over 36M passwords included tea, 10.7M – apple, 4.9M – rice, 3.6M – orange.
  • Google holds the door for 25.9M accounts, followed by Facebook (18.7M), and Kia (12.7M).
  • Many believe that hackers will be repelled by boss (10M), hunter (6.6M), cook (4.2M) and other professions.
  • Soccer (4M) is a more popular account safeguard than football (3.4M).
  • Carolina (1.9M), Dakota (1.2M), and Texas (1.1M) are the three most popular US states that will not keep hackers away.
  • Almost 24M users believe “god” will make their password secure, and 20M rely on “hell”.

The list of the top 10 most common passwords in 2025 can be found here. 

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Bell expands fraud-fighting efforts with new Suspicious Call Detection feature

Posted in Commentary with tags on April 30, 2025 by itnerd

As part of Bell’s ongoing work to protect customers and fight fraud, Bell is introducing a new feature called Suspicious Call Detection – a free tool that automatically labels potentially fraudulent or spam calls to help customers better screen incoming calls.

Using artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML) analytics, the feature displays labels like “Likely Fraud” or “Possible Spam” on suspicious calls, giving customers more control over which calls they choose to answer. It’s available now across Bell’s mobility brands and plans, including Virgin Plus and Lucky Mobile, and will automatically begin working without any action required from customers. The tool will also get smarter over time as it continues to learn from evolving call patterns and threats.

Suspicious Call Detection builds on Bell’s existing call-blocking technology, which proactively stops known fraudulent calls from ever reaching customers. Since first piloting this technology in 2020 and officially launching it in 2021, Bell has blocked more than 6.6 billion unwanted calls. With this new feature, and they’re going a step further by helping customers recognize suspicious calls that can’t be definitively blocked.

Bell has created a dedicated support page for customers with more information on how the feature works: Bell.ca/calldetection

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The CCTS Mid-Year Report Is Out

Posted in Commentary with tags on April 30, 2025 by itnerd

The Commission for Complaints for Telecom-television Services (CCTS) released its Mid-Year Report today, highlighting its continuing high rate of successfully resolving complaints received from Canadian phone, TV and internet customers, despite seeing a 12% year-over-year increase in the number of complaints.

Surprisingly, TELUS accounts for the highest number of CCTS complaints, with 19.7% of all CCTS complaints during the reporting period. Rogers accounts for 18.7% of all complaints accepted, followed by Bell at 16.7%. Shaw Communications, acquired by Rogers in April 2023, is one of the five most complained-about providers for the first time in the last five years with 9.6% of complaints received, driven by an increase in complaints about set-top box rental equipment and contract issues. Fido rounds out the top five at 6.8% of complaints.

The most common billing issues are incorrect charges on monthly bills, not receiving promised credits or refunds, and unexpected increases to monthly bills for phone, TV and internet services.

Canadians complained most often about their wireless service, representing 50% of all issues raised during the reporting period. Internet service accounts for 26% of all issues. TV issues represent 15% of all issues raised. During the reporting period, TV issues increased by 49%.

Canadians should take some time to read this report as it will highlight the issues that your telco has so that you can make decisions about which telco they should be be with.

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Ticket Reseller Exposed Over 500,000 Customer Records

Posted in Commentary with tags on April 30, 2025 by itnerd

VPNmentor just published a report about a data breach discovered by cybersecurity researcher Jeremiah Fowler, who uncovered over 520,000 exposed records contained in 200 GB of data belonging to TicketToCash customers, a tickets resale platform.

The exposed information includes concert and event tickets containing PII such as names, email addresses, physical addresses, partial credit card numbers and some more. If this kind of data falls on the wrong hands it could be used for phishing, identity theft, or even ticket duplication and resale.

You can find the full report here: https://www.vpnmentor.com/news/report-tickettocash-breach/

UPDATE: Erich Kron, security awareness advocate at KnowBe4, commented:

“The good news, if there is good news with over half a million people’s data being exposed, is that this was not discovered because it had been leaked on the dark web or by cybercriminals. We are fortunate this was discovered by an ethical security researcher and not a bad actor. It is still possible that a copy of this data has been stolen with nobody knowing, so it is still important that potential victims treat this situation as if the information was stolen, and that they be on alert for social engineering attacks and potential identity theft.

“TicketToCash should immediately start reviewing access logs and trying to determine if the exposed data was indeed stolen, or just at risk. They should also review and update their policies and procedures related to data security and credential management, to avoid issues like this in the future.”

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Appdome Tackles Mobile Bots Head On

Posted in Commentary with tags on April 30, 2025 by itnerd

Appdome today announced at RSAC 2025 that its AI-Native MobileBOT™ Defense solution now offers the most comprehensive mobile bot defense profile on the market. Capable of evaluating 400+ attack vectors in Android & iOS apps, OSs, devices, user interfaces and networks, Appdome’s new MobileBOT™ defense profile allows network security teams to not only stop brute force bot and credential stuffing attacks but also stop hyper targeted, spear phishing, account takeover (ATO), KYC fraud, on-device fraud (ODF), and deepfake threats in real time across account creation, login, password reset, payment and other critical API endpoints.

AI Has Changed Bot Defense Forever
Modern bot attacks aren’t contained to brute force bot and credential stuffing attacks launched from bot farms, automated scripts and similar attack vectors. Today, bot attacks can also include hyper-targeted ATO attacks that use AI-generated deepfake images, face cloning, liveness spoofing, and mobile Trojans to bypass biometric checks of specific users. These attacks can also be combined with client-side malware to intercept OTPs, complete Captcha challenges, hijack sessions, and exploit sensitive app flows like login, payment, and password reset. Some bot attacks weaponize the mobile app itself—evading traditional anti-bot defenses and putting user trust, compliance, and revenue at risk.

AI-Native Bot Defense is the Future
Appdome’s AI-Native MobileBOT™ Defense redefines mobile bot protection by providing multi-layered defense built for Android & iOS environments. While legacy bot defense SDKs aren’t protected in the app, use vulnerable cookies or JWTs to identify apps, and monitor only a few basic threat indicators such as emulators and jailbreak/root, Appdome’s MobileBOT™ Defense provides application-level rate limiting to eliminate the risk of weaponized and zombie applications, immutable application fingerprinting using secured client certificates to stop brute force attacks, and provides deep session risk, evaluating up to 400 configurable attack vectors in a single bot defense profile. With Appdome MobileBOT™ Defense, network security teams can stop brute force attacks and scan the mobile environment for any sign of deepfakes, social engineering scams, voice cloning, trojan attacks, vishing, remote access trojans (RATs), mobile device takeovers, and more before allowing a connection.

Tailored Profiles Stop Targeted ATO Attacks
Using a single MobileBOT™ Defense Profile, mobile brands and enterprises can evaluate up to 400+ attack vectors before allowing connections to any API, endpoint, or host. More importantly, network security teams can create separate defense profiles to address the specific threats applicable to each API. For example, network security professionals can evaluate different threats in each bot defense profile for:

  • Sign Up & Onboarding APIs – Detect the presence of fake users and devices signing up to your service including fake taps, clicks, swipes, gestures as well as fake location and devices.
  • Sign In & Password Reset APIs – Detect the presence of spyware such as keyloggers, overlay attacks, and activity monitoring, as well as ATO risk from deepfakes, ATS Malware and more.
  • Payment APIs – Detect the presence of data harvesting and trojan malware, MiTM attacks, session hijacks, OS compromises, vishing, social engineering scams and more.

Layered Defense to Stop All Mobile Bot Attacks
Appdome’s MobileBOT™ Defense solution is the only anti-bot solution purpose built for mobile applications, mobile environments and mobile businesses. Every feature of MobileBOT Defense is designed to address the unique computing environment, threat vectors and operating requirements of the mobile channel. Here are just some of the key elements of MobileBOT Defense by Appdome:

  • App-Level Rate Limiting – Leverages the compute on the mobile device to throttle API requests coming from “noisy,” malware controlled or zombie mobile apps.
  • Application Fingerprinting – MTLS Pre-Check authenticates the real app during the TLS handshake, allowing network security teams to deny API requests from bot farms, bot scripts and fake applications.
  • Extended Bot Defense Profiles – Evaluate session risk across up to 400+ separate threat vectors in mobile devices, OS, applications, user interface and networks to stop targeted ATOs, KYC Fraud and On-Device Fraud on a per API basis.
  • Pin to Host – Uses Appdome’s secure certificate pinning to validate the authenticity of servers your application is connecting to per API.
  • Dynamic API Updates – Remotely update protected hosts and endpoints without a new app release.
  • Zero-Trust and Dynamic Threat Evaluation – Allows network security professionals to control when threat evaluations are performed.
  • Hardened Implementation in Apps – Delivers tamper-proof anti-bot implementation in Android & iOS apps, free of spoofing, interception and compromise.
  • All Mobile App Compatibility – Works seamlessly with any Android or iOS app.
  • No-SDK, No Server Delivery – Eliminates integration work and infrastructure overhead, accelerating deployment and eliminating engineering work.
  • All Web Application Firewall Compatibility – Compatible with all industry standard WAFs; no change outs required.

With the MobileBOT release, Appdome now offers full flexibility for mixing and matching where and how to enforce mobile app protections. Mobile businesses can enforce these protections at the client app level, network layer, or a combination of both. Whether stopping brute force bots or user-level targeted fraud, Appdome’s layered defense model ensures optimal protection and performance.

Appdome’s MobileBOT Defense requires no SDKs, no servers, and no changes to existing WAF infrastructure, bypassing the limitations, complexity and cost of traditional anti-bot products. By working with any WAF, businesses can preserve and extend their WAF investments and, with client-side rate limiting, can dramatically lower data processing costs.

Appdome is demonstrating the AI-Native MobileBOT Defense solution and the full Appdome AI-Native Platform at RSAC in San Francisco April 28th  to May 1st at booth South-0948.

Appdome also will be discussing the importance of mobile bot defense and a mobile bot solution jointly developed with Fastly at RSAC at the Fastly booth located at South-1255. Daniel Bechtel, Appdome director of enablement engineering, will co-present with Fastly on Monday at 6 pm, Tuesday at 3:30 pm, Wednesday at 10:30 am and Thursday at 10 am.

To learn more about AI-powered bot protection for mobile apps, you can request a personalized demo at https://www.appdome.com/mobile-antibot-detection-defense/ .

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