Clicking the calculator doesn’t open a calculator—it opens a login screen.

“Enter Anom ID” and a password, the screen reads. Hidden in the calculator is a concealed messaging app called Anom, which last month we learned was an FBI honeypot. On Anom, criminals believed they could communicate securely, with the app encrypting their messages. They were wrong: an international group of law enforcement agencies including the FBI were monitoring their messages and announced hundreds of arrests last month. International authorities have held press conferences to tout the operation’s success, but have provided few details on how the phones actually functioned.

Motherboard has obtained and analyzed an Anom phone from a source who unknowingly bought one on a classified ads site. On that site, the phone was advertised as just a cheap Android device. But when the person received it, they realized it wasn’t an ordinary phone, and after being contacted by Motherboard, found that it contained the secret Anom app.

If you are using Google Chrome, you may have noticed something strange. When you sign-in to a Google service, like Gmail or Google Drive, you get signed-into the browser automatically as well.

While some users may prefer that, as it ensures that features such as sync or personalization options are enabled, others may dislike it.

Here are a few reasons:

• You may not want Google Account-specific features in Chrome and prefer to stay signed-out because of that.
• You may want to use different accounts for different Google sites.
• For privacy.

The default setting in Chrome signs you into a Google Account in the browser whenever you sign-in on a Google-owned website.

Tip: check out our guide on disabling toast popups in Google Chrome as well.

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Filed: https://www.ghacks.net/category/google-chrome-browsing/

North Korean threat actors behind the ongoing Contagious Interview campaign have been observed dropping a new JavaScript malware called OtterCookie.

Contagious Interview (aka DeceptiveDevelopment) refers to a persistent attack campaign that employs social engineering lures, with the hacking crew often posing as recruiters to trick individuals looking for potential job opportunities into downloading malware under the guise of an interview process.

This involves distributing malware-laced videoconferencing apps or npm packages either hosted on GitHub or the official package registry, paving the way for the deployment of malware such as BeaverTail and InvisibleFerret.

It’s worth noting at this stage that Contagious Interview is assessed to be disparate from Operation Dream Job, another long-running North Korean hacking campaign that also employs similar job-related decoys to trigger the malware infection process.

“North Korea’s illegal cyber activities are not only criminal acts that threaten the safety of the cyber ecosystem, but also pose a serious threat to international peace and security as they are used as funds for North Korea’s nuclear and missile development.”