Source: BleepingComputer
https://www.bleepingcomputer.com/news/security/unitedhealth-now-says-190-million-impacted-by-2024-data-breach/
UnitedHealth has revealed that 190 million Americans had their personal and healthcare data stolen in the Change Healthcare ransomware attack, nearly doubling the previously disclosed figure. In October, UnitedHealth reported to the US Department of Health and Human Services Office for Civil Rights that the attack affected 100 million people. However, as first reported by TechCrunch, UnitedHealth confirmed on Friday that the figure has nearly doubled to 190 million.
“Change Healthcare has determined the estimated total number of individuals impacted by the Change Healthcare cyberattack is approximately 190 million,” UnitedHealth Group told TechCrunch.
This stolen data includes patients’ health insurance information, medical records, billing and payment information, and sensitive personal information, such as phone numbers, addresses, and, in some cases, Social Security Numbers and government ID numbers.
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Filed: https://www.bleepingcomputer.com/news/security/
Subject: DeepSeek’s Popular AI App Is Explicitly Sending US Data to China
Source: WIRED
https://www.wired.com/story/deepseek-ai-china-privacy-data/
Amid ongoing fears over TikTok, Chinese generative AI platform DeepSeek says it’s sending heaps of US user data straight to its home country, potentially setting the stage for greater scrutiny.
Advertisers also share information with DeepSeek, its policies say, and this can include “mobile identifiers for advertising, hashed email addresses and phone numbers, and cookie identifiers, which we use to help match you and your actions outside of the service.”
How DeepSeek Uses InformationHuge volumes of data may flow to China from DeepSeek’s international user base, but the company still has power over how it uses the information. DeepSeek’s privacy policy says the company will use data in many typical ways, including keeping its service running, enforcing its terms and conditions, and making improvements.
Crucially, though, the company’s privacy policy suggests that it may harness user prompts in developing new models. The company will “review, improve, and develop the service, including by monitoring interactions and usage across your devices, analyzing how people are using it, and by training and improving our technology,” its policies say.
However, with this surge in popularity comes the attention of threat actors, or as some believe, their corporate rivals.
Today, just as the DeepSeek AI Assistant app overtook ChatGPT as the top downloaded app on the Apple App Store, the company was forced to turn off new registrations after suffering a cyberattack.
“Due to large-scale malicious attacks on DeepSeek’s services, we are temporarily limiting registrations to ensure continued service,” reads a message on the DeepSeek status page.
“Existing users can log in as usual. Thanks for your understanding and support.”
While no details about the attack were shared, it is believed that the company is facing a distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attack against its API and Web Chat platform.
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Source: The Register
https://www.theregister.com/2025/01/27/google_confirms_action_taken_to/
Latest trope is tricky enough to fool even the technical crowd… almost. Google says it’s now hardening defenses against a sophisticated account takeover scam documented by a programmer last week.
The use of g.co is crucial here. The scammer creates a Google Workspace using a g.co subdomain. G.co is a genuine Google subdomain and anyone can create a new Workspace using a g.co subdomain without having to verify that they own it.
A broader issue – Some of the details of Latta’s case align with similar tales of woe, like one told by venerable infosec journalist Brian Krebs in December about a Google account takeover that led to a half-million-dollar crypto raid.
Someone purportedly from Google support called Adam Griffin from the same 650-203-0000 number but this time it was Google Forms that was abused rather than the g.co domain.
The Google Forms trick is a few years old now, but it’s still a convincing tool that will flummox many victims. It abuses a feature of Forms that allows attackers to send fake emails such as account compromise warnings from Google, but from a genuine Google domain that’s more likely to not get picked up as spam.
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Filed: https://www.theregister.com/security/cyber_crime/
Source: Krebs on Security
https://krebsonsecurity.com/2025/01/a-tumultuous-week-for-federal-cybersecurity-efforts/
President Trump last week issued a flurry of executive orders that upended a number of government initiatives focused on improving the nation’s cybersecurity posture. The president fired all advisors from the Department of Homeland Security’s Cyber Safety Review Board, called for the creation of a strategic cryptocurrency reserve, and voided a Biden administration action that sought to reduce the risks that artificial intelligence poses to consumers, workers and national security.On his first full day back in the White House, Trump dismissed all 15 advisory committee members of the Cyber Safety Review Board (CSRB), a nonpartisan government entity established in February 2022 with a mandate to investigate the causes of major cybersecurity events. The CSRB has so far produced three detailed reports, including an analysis of the Log4Shell vulnerability crisis, attacks from the cybercrime group LAPSUS$, and the 2023 Microsoft Exchange Online breach.
The CSRB was in the midst of an inquiry into cyber intrusions uncovered recently across a broad spectrum of U.S. telecommunications providers at the hands of Chinese state-sponsored hackers. One of the CSRB’s most recognizable names is Chris Krebs (no relation), the former director of the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA). Krebs was fired by President Trump in November 2020 for declaring the presidential contest was the most secure in American history, and for refuting Trump’s false claims of election fraud.
South Dakota Governor Kristi Noem, confirmed by the U.S. Senate last week as the new director of the DHS, criticized CISA at her confirmation hearing, TheRecord reports.
Noem told lawmakers CISA needs to be “much more effective, smaller, more nimble, to really fulfill their mission,” which she said should be focused on hardening federal IT systems and hunting for digital intruders. Noem said the agency’s work on fighting misinformation shows it has “gotten far off mission” and involved “using their resources in ways that was never intended.”
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AI & CRYPTOCURRENCY – Shortly after being sworn in for a second time, Trump voided a Biden executive order that focused on supporting research and development in artificial intelligence. The previous administration’s order on AI was crafted with an eye toward managing the safety and security risks introduced by the technology. But a statement released by the White House said Biden’s approach to AI had hindered development, and that the United States would support AI systems that are “free from ideological bias or engineered social agendas,” to maintain leadership.
Source: Android Headlines
https://www.androidheadlines.com/2025/01/deepseek-security-issues.html
TikTok took a huge scoop of American users’ data and stored it in China. This is why the app was temporarily banned in the States. Well guess what, AI company DeepSeek is also doing the same thing, and this company makes TikTok’s situation seem like a joke. The government warns of a massive DeepSeek security risk.In case you don’t know, DeepSeek is an AI company that exploded onto the scene just a couple of days ago. Its open-source model was able to give OpenAI a run for its money in a way that Google never could. Because of its prowess, even the U.S. government is taking notice.
DeepSeek poses a pretty significant security threat. One can argue whether the U.S. government’s concerns over TikTok are legitimate, but when it comes to DeepSeek, there’s no denying that the company is a privacy nightmare. DeepSeek is a Chinese company, which already has is already raising red flags for officials. Since it’s based in China, they fear that the company is storing its data in its home country. Well, this is true, and it’s rather scary.
This should not stand – The list of the data that DeepSeek takes from users is absolutely ridiculous. It’d be one thing if the company only stored chats or feedback, but the amount of data that the company has been collecting is unheard of. There’s no telling what sort of information other companies like Google or Meta take from their users, but the fact that it’s being sent over to mainland China has ruffled some feathers. This is an ongoing saga, so we don’t know what will happen as the company gains more traction.
Filed: https://www.androidheadlines.com/category/tech-news/artificial-intelligence
Source: Gizmodo
https://gizmodo.com/cvs-is-turning-locked-shelves-into-an-excuse-to-make-you-download-its-app-2000555808
CVS is finally willing to unlock the treasures that they have placed behind lock and key—so long as you’re willing to give the company an additional peak into your personal information. According to a report from the Wall Street Journal, the pharmacy giant is trying out a pilot program that will allow customers to unlock cabinets and shelves via the CVS app.The program is currently being piloted in three stores as an attempt to ease some of the pain points that customers continue to experience in convenience stores that have grown increasingly inconvenient, requiring people to stand around waiting for an overworked staff member can come open up the deodorant lock box for them. If the trial proves successful, the company is planning on rolling the program out to 10-15 stores, with the ultimate goal of full-scale deployment across the country.
You’ll have to be logged into the app and connect to the store’s Wi-Fi, then enable Bluetooth connectivity on your device in order to activate the feature that allows you to unlock the cabinets. Shockingly, this is an improvement in convenience.
Anyway, shout out to CVS for successfully creating an information loop that results in customers willingly participating in additional surveillance. They created a fake problem (mass retail theft) to lock up their products, inconveniencing customers, just to create a solution to that made-up problem that requires those same customers to hand over their information so their behaviors can be tracked and monetized. Nice little operation they’ve got going over there.
Source: Bleeping Computer
https://www.bleepingcomputer.com/news/microsoft/microsoft-tests-edge-scareware-blocker-to-block-tech-support-scams/
Microsoft has started testing a new “scareware blocker” feature for the Edge web browser on Windows PCs, which uses machine learning (ML) to detect tech support scams.Scareware scams (also known as tech support scams) have been a pervasive threat for years. The scammers use aggressive landing pages to persuade potential victims that their devices have been compromised with malware and then try to gain remote access to targets’ systems by pressuring them to call a fake tech support number.
Defender SmartScreen, which also protects Edge users from scams, activates after an abusive site is detected and added to its index of malicious web pages to safeguard users globally within minutes.
However, Microsoft’s new AI-powered Edge scareware blocker (introduced at the 2024 Ignite conference in November and now available in preview for users in the stable channel) offers extra protection by detecting signs of scareware scams in real-time using a local machine learning model.
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Source: Nextgov/FCW
https://www.nextgov.com/digital-government/2025/01/opms-new-email-system-sparks-questions-about-cyber-compliance/402555/
Until very recently, the Office of Personnel Management lacked the capability to send mass emails to all federal employees, a person familiar said, fueling concerns that the agency bypassed procurement rules.The Office of Personnel Management’s recent mass verification email to all civilian federal employees is raising concerns that the Trump administration circumvented longstanding procurement and cybersecurity laws to install an email system used to communicate widely with employees across the government.
On Friday, an email landing in employees’ inboxes from the address [email protected] told recipients that it was a “test of a new distribution and response list” and asked them to reply “YES” to it. Many workers noted on a federal employee Reddit forum that they suspected it was a phishing email and reported it to their IT departments. A second test email went out on Saturday, according to email metadata obtained by Nextgov/FCW.
But just days before President Donald Trump’s inauguration, OPM did not have the capability to send a mass email of that scale, according to a person familiar with the matter. To send mass emails, the agency had used govDelivery, a cloud communications service provided by public sector IT company Granicus, a different person familiar said.
The govDelivery contract had restrictions on the volume of emails available to send without incurring added costs, and the agency would not have been able to reach 2.3 million people, the approximate number of all civilian federal employees, the second person added. Both people were granted anonymity to be candid about the sensitive nature of OPM’s email policies.
A lawsuit filed by unnamed federal employees in Washington, D.C. on Monday alleges that OPM violated the E-Government Act of 2002 by failing to conduct and publish required Privacy Impact Assessments before deploying the new email arrangement to collect the responses from government employees.
The Monday suit also argues that government employees “will face a reasonably foreseeable risk that their [personally identifiable information] will be unlawfully obtained from these unknown systems,” and seeks to halt the system’s use until OPM complies with privacy requirements.
During the Biden administration, OPM had explored capabilities to send individual emails to all employees in the federal government, but it was ultimately not deemed feasible because it would have cost upwards of hundreds of thousands of dollars to deploy, said Jack Miller, a former agency communications director.
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See also: https://fedscoop.com/opm-email-federal-workforce-lawsuit-server-privacy-security/
Source: The Hill
https://thehill.com/policy/technology/5114694-artists-copyright-ai-assistance-agency/?utm_source=flipboard&utm_medium=activitypub
Artists can copyright work they create using tools powered by artificial intelligence, as long as sufficient human creativity is involved, according to a new report from the U.S. Copyright Office.The report, published Wednesday, sought to address questions of copyrightability for work created by AI or with the help of AI-powered tools, amid an uptick in copyright applications for AI-generated work.
The Copyright Office said it makes decisions on a case-by-case basis but clarified that it will approach such questions by examining the degree of human input and creativity in each work.
However, work generated entirely by an AI system would not be granted copyright protection. For example, works created by a chatbot or AI system in response to someone’s prompt “at this stage are unlikely to satisfy those requirements.”
“The use of a machine as a tool does not negate copyright protection, but the resulting work is copyrightable only if it contains sufficient human-authored expressive elements,” the report read.
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Source: Android Headlines
https://www.androidheadlines.com/2025/01/the-psychology-behind-online-gaming-why-digital-worlds-captivate-us.html
Conclusion
The psychology behind online gaming reveals a complex interplay of factors that make these digital worlds incredibly captivating. From the immediate gratification of rewards to the deep sense of social connectivity, achievement, control, and personal expression, online games offer a multifaceted experience that appeals to fundamental human needs and desires.
Understanding these psychological principles not only explains the allure of online gaming but also offers insights into its potential benefits and pitfalls. As this form of entertainment continues to evolve, its psychological impact on players will undoubtedly remain a topic of keen interest.
Source: Android Headlines
https://www.androidheadlines.com/2025/01/google-play-protect-to-revoke-permissions-for-harmful-apps.html
Google is doing everything it can to make Android OS more secure for its users. In the past few months, Google Play Protect has been updated with new features to protect users from scammers. Guess what? Google is at it again. This time, it is updating Google Play Protect to automatically revoke app permissions for potentially harmful apps.
Google Play Protect will automatically revoke app permissions for harmful Android apps
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Source: BleepingComputer
https://www.bleepingcomputer.com/news/security/backdoor-found-in-two-healthcare-patient-monitors-linked-to-ip-in-china/
The US Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) is warning that Contec CMS8000 devices, a widely used healthcare patient monitoring device, include a backdoor that quietly sends patient data to a remote IP address and downloads and executes files on the device.Contec is a China-based company that specializes in healthcare technology, offering a range of medical devices including patient monitoring systems, diagnostic equipment, and laboratory instruments.
CISA learned of the malicious behavior from an external researcher who disclosed the vulnerability to the agency. When CISA tested three Contec CMS8000 firmware packages, the researchers discovered anomalous network traffic to a hard-coded external IP address, which is not associated with the company but rather a university.
This led to the discovery of a backdoor in the company’s firmware that would quietly download and execute files on the device, allowing for remote execution and the complete takeover of the patient monitors. It was also discovered that the device would quietly send patient data to the same hard-coded address when devices were started.
While CISA did not name the university and redacted the IP address, BleepingComputer has learned that it is associated with a Chinese university. Furthermore, the IP address is also hard-coded in software for other medical equipment, including a pregnancy patient monitor from another healthcare manufacturer in China
Currently, there is no available patch for devices that removes the backdoor, and CISA recommends that all healthcare organizations disconnect these devices from the network if possible.
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Source: ZDNet
https://www.bespacific.com/how-to-clear-the-cache-on-your-tv-and-why-you-shouldnt-wait-to-do-it/
Copyright © 2024 beSpacific, All rights reserved.
Source: The Guardian
https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2025/jan/31/whatsapp-israel-spyware
Messaging app said it had ‘high confidence’ some users were targeted and ‘possibly compromised’ by Paragon Solutions spywareNearly 100 journalists and other members of civil society using WhatsApp, the popular messaging app owned by Meta, were targeted by spyware owned by Paragon Solutions, an Israeli maker of hacking software, the company alleged on Friday.
The journalists and other civil society members were being alerted of a possible breach of their devices, with WhatsApp telling the Guardian it had “high confidence” that the 90 users in question had been targeted and “possibly compromised”.
Paragon has a US office in Chantilly, Virginia. The company has faced recent scrutiny after Wired magazine in October reported that it had entered into a $2m contract with the US Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s homeland security investigations division.
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Source: Android Headlines
https://www.androidheadlines.com/2025/01/managing-google-data.html
Just about every online service out there stores a TON of your personal data, but Google probably has the most data on you. This company knows more about you than you do at this point, and it can be a pain in the neck tracking down specific data on you. Thankfully, Google has a new support page for you to properly manage your data. How does this new Google support page let you manage your data?
The key word here is organization. This page allows you to view and edit your information across different Google services, and it shows you a clean and straightforward interface. When you go to the new support page, you’ll see items populating three distinct sections. These sections are Manage your personal information in your Google Account, Edit your information & control what others can find about you, and Find & manage your profiles.