security News of 04/02/20

An EU Coalition Of Techies Is Backing A ‘Privacy-Preserving’ Standard For COVID-19 Contacts Tracing

A European coalition of techies and scientists drawn from at least eight countries, and led by Germany’s Fraunhofer Heinrich Hertz Institute for telecoms (HHI), is working on contacts-tracing proximity technology for COVID-19 that’s ...

A Former Chaos Engineer Offers 5 Tips For Handling Online Disasters Remotely

Kolton Andrus Contributor Share on Twitter Kolton is co-founder and CEO of Gremlin , the chaos engineering company helping the world build a more reliable internet. I recently had a scheduled ...

Daily Crunch: Zoom Faces Security Scrutiny

Researchers reveal a number of security issues with videoconferencing app Zoom, investors warn Indian startups of tough times ahead and Uber Eats expands its grocery options internationally. Here’s your Daily Crunch for April 1, 2020. 1. ...

Ex-NSA Hacker Drops New Zero-Day Doom For Zoom

Zoom’s troubled year just got worse . Now that a large portion of the world is working from home to ride out the coronavirus pandemic , Zoom’s popularity has rocketed, but also has led to an increased focus on the company’s ...

Marriott Says 5.2 Million Guest Records Were Stolen In Another Data Breach

Marriott has confirmed a second data breach in three years — this time involving the personal information on 5.2 million guests. The hotel giant said Tuesday it discovered the breach of an unspecified property system at a franchise hotel in late ...

Maybe We Shouldn’T Use Zoom After All

Now that we’re all stuck at home thanks to the coronavirus pandemic , video calls have gone from a novelty to a necessity. Zoom, the popular videoconferencing service, seems to be doing better than most and has quickly become one of, if not the ...

No Proof Of A Houseparty Breach, But Its Privacy Policy Is Still Gatecrashing Your Data

Houseparty has been a smashing success with people staying home during the coronavirus pandemic who still want to connect with friends. The group video chat app, interspersed with games and other bells and whistles, raises it above the more ...

Palo Alto Networks To Acquire CloudGenix For $420m

Palo Alto Networks announced today that it has an agreement in place to acquire CloudGenix for $420 million. CloudGenix delivers a software-defined wide area network (SD-WAN) that helps customers stay secure by setting policies to enforce ...

Xage Adds Full-Stack Data Protection To Blockchain Security Platform

Xage , a startup that has been taking an unusual path to secure legacy companies like oil and gas and utilities with help from the blockchain, announced a new data protection service today. Xage CEO Duncan Greatwood, says that up until this ...

Axonius Nabs $58m For Its Cybersecurity-Focused Network Asset Management Platform

As companies get to grips with a wider (and, lately, more enforced) model of remote working, a startup that provides a platform to help track and manage all the devices that are accessing networked services — an essential component of ...

Security Lapse Exposed Republican Voter Firm’S Internal App Code

A voter contact and canvassing company, used exclusively by Republican political campaigns, mistakenly left an unprotected copy of its app’s code on its website for anyone to find. The company, Campaign Sidekick, helps Republican campaigns ...

Saudi Spies Tracked Phones Using Flaws The FCC Failed To Fix For Years

Lawmakers and security experts have long warned of security flaws in the underbelly of the world’s cell networks. Now a whistleblower says the Saudi government is exploiting those flaws to track its citizens across the U.S. as part of a ...

Divesting From One Facial Recognition Startup, Microsoft Ends Outside Investments In The Tech

Microsoft is pulling out of an investment in an Israeli facial recognition technology developer as part of a broader policy shift to halt any minority investments in facial recognition startups, the company announced late last week . The ...

Social Bluebook Was Hacked, Exposing 217,000 Influencers’ Accounts

A social media platform used to match advertisers with thousands of influencers has been hacked. Social Bluebook, a Los Angeles-based company, allows advertisers to pay social media “influencers” for posts that promote their products and ...

A Norwegian School Quit Zoom After A Naked Man ‘Guessed’ The Meeting Link

A school in Norway has stopped using Zoom, the popular video conferencing service, after a naked man apparently “guessed” the link to a video lesson. According to Norwegian state broadcaster NRK , the man exposed himself in front of ...

Cyber Insurer Chubb Had Data Stolen In Maze Ransomware Attack

Chubb, a major cybersecurity insurance provider for businesses hit by data breaches, has itself become a target of a data breach. The insurance giant told TechCrunch it was investigating a “security incident” involving the unauthorized ...

Medical And Military Contractor Kimchuk Hit By Data-Stealing Ransomware

Kimchuk, a medical and military electronics maker, has been hit by data-stealing ransomware, TechCrunch has learned. The Danbury, Conn.-based manufacturer, which builds electronics for medical equipment, telecoms systems and energy grids, also makes ...

DataGuard, Which Provides GDPR And Privacy Compliance-As-A-Service, Raises $20m

Watchdogs have started to raise the issue that new working practices and online activity necessitated by the spread of the coronavirus pandemic are creating new sets of privacy, security and data protection challenges. Today a startup is announcing a ...

Helm.Ai Raises $13m On Its Unsupervised Learning Approach To Driverless Car AI

Four years ago, mathematician Vlad Voroninski saw an opportunity to remove some of the bottlenecks in the development of autonomous vehicle technology thanks to breakthroughs in deep learning. Now, Helm.ai, the startup he co-founded in 2016 with ...

Twitter Pulls The Federalist’S Dangerous ‘Pox’ Coronavirus Tweet

A tweet by conservative online magazine The Federalist, which suggested people should deliberately infect themselves with the coronavirus strain COVID-19, has been pulled after it “violated” Twitter’s rules. The infringing ...