security News of 01/27/20

Should You Reconsider Using WhatsApp After The Jeff Bezos Hack? Probably Not

Amid reports that Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos’s phone was allegedly hacked by Saudi Arabia — with the direct involvement of Crown Prince Mohammad Bin Salman via the popular chat app WhatsApp — some users may be wondering: Can I be hacked ...

An Adult Sexting Site Exposed Thousands Of Models’ Passports And Driver’S Licenses

A popular sexting website has exposed thousands of photo IDs belonging to models and sex workers who earn commissions from the site. SextPanther, an Arizona-based adult site, stored more than 11,000 identity documents on an exposed Amazon Web ...

Should Tech Giants Slam The Encryption Door On The Government?

Reuters reported yesterday, citing six sources familiar with the matter, that the FBI pressured Apple into dropping a feature that would allow users to encrypt iPhone backups stored in Apple’s cloud. The decision to abandon plans to ...

Daily Crunch: Saudis Probably Hacked Bezos’ Phone

The Daily Crunch is TechCrunch’s roundup of our biggest and most important stories. If you’d like to get this delivered to your inbox every day at around 9am Pacific, you can subscribe here . 1. UN calls for investigation after Saudis ...

UN Calls For Investigation After Saudis Linked To Bezos Phone Hack

United Nations experts are calling for an investigation after a forensic report said Saudi officials “most likely” used a mobile hacking tool built by the NSO Group to hack into the Amazon founder Jeff Bezos’ phone. Remarks ...

Octarine Releases Open Source Security Scanning Tools For Kubernetes

 Octarine , a startup that helps automate security of Kubernetes workloads, released an open source scanning tool today. The tool, which is called Kube -scan , is designed to help developers understand the level of security risk in their Kubernetes ...

Thundra Announces $4m Series A To Secure And Troubleshoot Serverless Workloads

Thundra , an early stage serverless tooling startup, announced a $4 million Series A today led by Battery Ventures. The company spun out from OpsGenie after it was sold to Atlassian for $295 million in 2018. York IE, Scale X Ventures and ...

UK Watchdog Sets Out “Age Appropriate” Design Code For Online Services To Keep Kids’ Privacy Safe

The UK’s data protection watchdog has today published a set of design standards for Internet services which are intended to help protect the privacy of children online. The Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) has been working on the ...

Intezer Raises $15m For Its DNA-Style ‘Genetic’ Approach To Identifying And Tracking Malware Code

As the total cost of cybercrime reaches into trillions of dollars  and continues to rise, an Israeli firm called Intezer  — which has built a way to analyse, identify and eradicate malware by way of an ordering system similar to what’s ...

Snyk Snags $150m Investment As Its Valuation Surpasses $1b

Snyk , the company that wants to help developers secure their code as part of the development process, announced a $150 million investment today. The company indicated the investment brings its valuation to over $1 billion (although it did not share ...

Israel’S Cybersecurity Startup Scene Spawned New Entrants In 2019

Yoav Leitersdorf Contributor Share on Twitter Yoav Leitersdorf is the Silicon Valley-based Managing Partner at YL Ventures, where he accelerates cybersecurity startups in the U.S. market. ...

TechCrunch’S Top 10 Investigative Reports From 2019

Facebook spying on teens, Twitter accounts hijacked by terrorists, and sexual abuse imagery found on Bing and Giphy were amongst the ugly truths revealed by TechCrunch’s investigating reporting in 2019. The tech industry needs more watchdogs ...

Microsoft Says It Will Fix An Internet Explorer Security Bug Under Active Attack

Microsoft has confirmed a security flaw affecting Internet Explorer is currently being used by hackers, but that it has no immediate plans to fix. In a late-evening tweet, US-CERT, the division of Homeland Security tasked with reporting on major ...

Privacy Experts Slam UK’S “Disastrous” Failure To Tackle Unlawful Adtech

The UK’s data protection regulator has been slammed by privacy experts for once again failing to take enforcement action over systematic breaches of the law linked to behaviorally targeted ads — despite warning last summer that the adtech ...

Cyral Announces $11m Series A To Help Protect Data In Cloud

Cyral , an early stage startup that helps protect data stored in cloud repositories, announced an $11 million Series A today. The company also revealed a previous undisclosed $4.1 million angel investment, making the total $15.1 million. The Series ...

The US Government Should Stop Demanding Tech Companies Compromise On Encryption

In a tweet late Tuesday, President Trump  criticized Apple for refusing “to unlock phones used by killers, drug dealers and other violent criminal elements.” Trump was specifically referring to a locked iPhone that belonged to a Saudi ...

Buttigieg’S CISO Resigns, Leaving No Known Cybersecurity Chiefs Among The 2020 Candidates

Presidential candidate Pete Buttigieg has lost his campaign’s chief information security officer, who cited “differences” with the campaign over its security practices. Mick Baccio, who served under the former South Bend ...

Google Finally Brings Its Security Key Feature To IPhones

More than half a year after Google said Android phones could be used as a security key, the feature is coming to iPhones. Google said it’ll bring the feature to iPhones in an effort to give at-risk users, like journalist and politicians, ...

Cloudflare Is Giving Away Its Security Tools To US Political Campaigns

Network security giant Cloudflare said it will provide its free security tools and services to U.S. political campaigns, as part of its efforts to secure upcoming elections against cyberattacks and election interference. The company said its new ...

The Crypto Rich Find Security In Anchorage

Not the city, the $57 million-funded cryptocurrency custodian startup. When someone wants to keep tens or hundreds of millions of dollars in Bitcoin, Ethereum, or other coins safe, they put them in Anchorage’s vault. And now they can trade ...