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WhatsApp’s NSO Group Lawsuit, This Week in Data Breaches, Office 365 Voicemail Phishing
You’re listening to the Shared Security Podcast, exploring the trust you put in people, apps, and technology…with your host, Tom Eston.
In episode 93 for November 4th 2019: The WhatsApp NSO group lawsuit plus details on Facebook’s preventive health tool, this week’s data breach news, and how attackers are using a voicemail to phish Microsoft Office 365 users.
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Welcome to the Shared Security Weekly Blaze Podcast where we update you on this week’s most important cybersecurity and privacy news. These podcasts are published every Monday and are 15 minutes or less quickly giving you “news that you can use”.
Will Cathcart, the head of WhatsApp which is a Facebook company, wrote an opt-ed for the Washington Post stating that WhatsApp has filed a complaint in US federal court against the infamous Israeli company, the NSO Group. You may remember that several months ago a serious vulnerability was found in WhatsApp in which malicious code was delivered via a seemingly innocent video call compromising the app and device. Through WhatsApp’s own investigation, in partnership with activist group Citizen Lab, they detailed how NSO Group servers, Internet-hosted services and certain WhatsApp accounts were traced back to the NSO Group during their investigation of the attacks. In addition, it was discovered that at least 100 human-rights defenders and journalists were targeted using this NSO spyware, most likely a form of Pegasus ,which is known as the spyware of choice for nation states to target specific individuals. Of course, the NSO Group as expected, has denied any involvement in the attack. Check out our show notes for the link to the full federal complaint to read the details for yourself.
In other Facebook news, Facebook announced that they are developing new partnerships and programs to support people that want to connect with resources to support their health. One of those resources is something called the “Preventive Health Tool” available in the US. This new tool will allow Facebook users to find doctors, set appointment reminders to schedule tests, note them as completed, and much more. Facebook says that their reason for doing this is to spread more awareness about preventive care for things like cancer screenings. Now I’m sure the first thing you’re thinking is, will Facebook now have access to my health care data? Well Facebook says quote “Preventive Health allows you to set reminders for your future checkups and mark them as done, but it doesn’t provide us, or the health organizations we’re working with, access to your actual test results. Personal information about your activity in Preventive Health is not shared with third parties, such as health organizations or insurance companies, so it can’t be used for purposes like insurance eligibility” end quote. Now your next question is probably about how many more heath care related ads will I start seeing on Facebook if I use this to
Published on 6 years, 1 month ago