Data Privacy

Every third (37.8 per cent) of PC banking malware attacks targeted corporate users in 2021, representing a growth of almost 14 per cent since 2018, a new report showed on Monday. While 2021 saw an expansion in threats to financial organisations on a global scale, there was a continuation of the downward trend of PC and mobile malware previously seen in 2020.

The data breach at graphics chip maker Nvidia has reportedly exposed emails and hashes belonging to at least 71,000 employees. The 'Have I Been Pwned' website suggests that the hack includes a massive 71,000 employee emails and hashes that may have allowed the hackers to crack their passwords.

Nvidia did not specify exactly what was stolen from its computer systems. But according to PCMag, a group called LAPSUS$ is claiming responsibility for the attack. It said it obtained 1TB of data, including schematics and driver source code.

Researchers from Universities of Lancaster and Bath analysed smartphone data from 780 people. They fed 4,680 days of app usage data into statistical models. Each of these days was paired with one of the 780 users, such that the models learnt people's daily app use patterns. The researchers then tested whether models could identify an individual when provided with only a single day of smartphone activity that was anonymous and not yet paired with a user.

"We are always looking for ways to offer privacy within our family of products and, after a successful rollout in English in November, we are combining one of our users' favorite Firefox Add-ons, Multi-Account Containers, with Mozilla VPN, our fast and easy-to-use VPN service, to offer a unique, privacy solution that is only available in Firefox," the company said. Firefox's Multi-Account Containers would allow users to separate different parts of their online activities.

"The new record number of data compromises is 23 percent over the previous all-time high (1,506) set in 2017. The number of data events that involved sensitive information increased slightly compared to 2020 (83 percent vs. 80 percent). However, it remained well below the previous high of 95 percent set in 2017," according to its 'Annual Data Breach Report'.

The micro-blogging platform already covers explicit instances of abusive behaviour under its policies, the expansion of the policy will allow the platform to take action on media that is shared without any explicit abusive content, provided it's posted without the consent of the person depicted. "Sharing personal media, such as images or videos, can potentially violate a person's privacy, and may lead to emotional or physical harm," Twitter said in a blog post late on Tuesday.

According to Cloud-enabled security solutions provider Barracuda, companies with staff working predominantly from home had a significantly higher network security breach rate as compared to companies with staff working predominantly in the office.

The Indian organisations ranked the top three negative consequences of an attack as lost IP, critical infrastructure damage/disruption, and cost of outside consultants and experts, according to global cybersecurity leader Trend Micro. "Once agai,n we've found plenty to keep CISOs awake at night, from operational and infrastructure risks to data protection, threat activity and human-shaped challenges," said Vijendra Katiyar.

The company also said that it continues to invest in industry-leading security practices as privacy and security are of the utmost importance to Clubhouse. "There are a series of bots generating billions of random phone numbers," the company's spokesperson told IANS. "In the event that one of these random numbers happens to exist on our platform due to mathematical coincidence, Clubhouse's API returns no user identifiable information," it added.