Silensec Newsletter

Facebook removes 800 accounts and pages for political spam, disinformation

Facebook removes 800 accounts and pages for political spam, disinformation

Facebook recently removed 559 Pages and 251 accounts that engaged in political spam and disinformation - or "inauthentic activity," as the company refers to this behavior.

The social network said spam is a regular problem on its platform. Bad actors create multiple accounts to post, vote, and promote their own content, which is usually a link to a 3rd-party website.

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Just answering a video call could compromise your WhatsApp account

Just answering a video call could compromise your WhatsApp account

Google Project Zero security researcher found a critical vulnerability in WhatsApp messenger that could have allowed hackers to remotely take full control of your WhatsApp just by video calling you over the messaging app.

The vulnerability is a memory heap overflow issue which is triggered when a user receives a specially crafted malformed RTP packet via a video call request, which results in the corruption error and crashing the WhatsApp mobile app. The bug has since been fixed.

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Chinese spying chips found in servers used by US tech companies

Chinese Spying Chips Found Hidden On Servers Used By US Companies

A report revealed details of a significant supply chain attack which appears to be one of the largest corporate espionage and hardware hacking programs from a nation-state.

According to the report, a tiny surveillance chip has been found hidden in the servers used by nearly 30 American companies, including Apple & Amazon.

The malicious chips, which were not part of the original server motherboards designed by the U.S-based company Super Micro, had been inserted during the manufacturing process in China.

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New Yorkers sue Trump and FEMA to stop Presidential Alert

New Yorkers sue Trump and FEMA to stop Presidential Alert

Three New York residents last week filed a lawsuit in the Southern District Court of New York against President Donald Trump and William Long, administrator of the Federal Emergency Management Agency.

The residents want to halt FEMA's new Presidential Alert messaging system, which enables Trump to deploy alerts of national emergencies.

Presidential Alerts are similar to Amber or other emergency alerts on your phone - you hear a loud noise comes along with vibration.

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FBI warns companies about hackers increasingly abusing RDP connections

FBI warns companies about hackers increasingly abusing RDP connections

In a recent publication issued by the FBI, is a warning to companies about the dangers of leaving RDP (Remote Desktop Protocol) endpoints exposed online. In its alert, the FBI mentions that the number of computers with an RDP connection left accessible on the Internet has gone up since mid and late 2016.

This assertion from the FBI correlates with numbers and trends reported by cybersecurity firms in the past few years.

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New Linux Kernel bug affects Red Hat, CentOS, and debian distributions

New Linux Kernel bug affects Red Hat, CentOS, and debian distributions

Security researchers have published the details and proof-of-concept PoC exploits of an integer overflow vulnerability in the Linux kernel that could allow an unprivileged user to gain superuser access to the targeted system.

The vulnerability, discovered by cloud-based security and compliance solutions provider Qualys, which has been dubbed "Mutagen Astronomy," affects the kernel versions released between July 2007 & July 2017, impacting the Red Hat Enterprise Linux, CentOS, and Debian distributions.

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