The Cyber News Rundown brings you the latest happenings in cyber news weekly. Who am I? I’m Connor Madsen, a Webroot Threat Research Analyst, and a guy with a passion for all things security. Any more questions? Just ask.
Malware Lurking in Game of Thrones Torrents
Viewers hoping to catch an illegal copy of the season 7 premier of Game of Thrones, released last Sunday evening, stumbled across something much more dangerous than White Walkers. The most pirated TV show in the last 5 years, Game of Thrones torrents often come with an extra side of malware, and have even released a Cerber ransomware variant onto unsuspecting viewers. While some lucky pirates have escaped with clean torrents, others haven’t been so fortunate. Use caution in all your internet activities, whatever they may be.
Twitter Porn Bot Shutdown
In the last few weeks, researchers have been attempting to bring down a Twitter botnet that took over 86,000 bot accounts to send out a relentless stream of porn ads to Twitter users across the globe. The botnet itself began by creating systematically generated Twitter accounts to send out a malicious URL payload to victims, which would then redirect them to a variety of porn sites controlled by the same network.
Adoption Data Leaked in Newcastle
Recently, officials of the Newcastle City Council have been attempting to resolve a data breach in which a spreadsheet of over 2,700 adopted children’s information was exposed through an online invitation for adoptive parents. The email was only sent to 77 individuals, who’ve all received contact regarding the leak. The council is still working to contact people whose data may have been affected. While this was yet another case of human error, the council are implementing new security measures in the hopes of decreasing the chances of another such breach in the future.
GhostCtrl Android Malware Taking Over Devices
A new variant of the OmniRAT malware, GhostCtrl, has been showing up on Android devices and it has a variety of capabilities. Able to spy, collect and steal data, and launch a ransomware attack, GhostCtrl also acts as a backdoor that enables hackers to gain further device control. Unfortunately for many users, researchers have already discovered three separate version of the malware, which is easy enough to avoid by keeping devices up to date and avoiding questionable apps.
Smart Toys Still Leave Security Concerns
Technology marches ever forward, bringing even the most innocent-seeming items with it: the toys we give our children. Unfortunately, many of these toys lack even simplest security measures, even as they gather a broad range of data from the users. Some forms of data collected by the toys are transferred back to the manufacturer and stored on servers for benign purposes, but these transfers often lack basic data encryption. Several government agencies have issued warnings for parents to do their homework extensively before purchasing a smart toy.
