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Facebook’s New Cryptocurrency, Firefox Zero Day, Smart TV Malware
This is your Shared Security Weekly Blaze for June 24th 2019 with your host, Tom Eston. In this week’s episode: Facebook announces a new cryptocurrency called Libra, two new zero-day vulnerabilities affecting Firefox, and should you be scanning your smart TV for malware?
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Hi everyone, welcome to the Shared Security Weekly Blaze where we update you on the top 3 cybersecurity and privacy topics from the week. These podcasts are published every Monday and are 15 minutes or less quickly giving you “news that you can use”.
Facebook was in the news this past week with the announcement of its own cryptocurrency called “Libra”. This new cryptocurrency will be available starting in the first half of 2020 and is being promoted as a way to buy things and send money with nearly zero fees. Users of Libra will be able to buy or cash out the cryptocurrency at exchange points, like at your grocery store, and use it by utilizing a wallet application like Facebook’s new Calibra cryptocurrency wallet which will be available in WhatsApp, Messenger and in a standalone app. What’s also interesting is that Facebook won’t totally control Libra but will get a share in governance and oversight with other large companies like Visa and Uber. You see, these companies all gave at least $10 million dollars to finance the new Libra Association which is responsible for promoting the Libra blockchain and working with developers that want to build functionality to support Libra payments. This association will also act as a financial reserve to prevent situations like the wild fluctuation we see in the current value of bitcoin. Calibra, which handles the wallet application, will also take care of user privacy and is said to never use or access your Facebook data with Libra payments and that your identity will never be tied to payments or transactions. As you know, privacy is not the first thing that comes to mind when we think of Facebook. And Facebook does make money by selling ads so this seems (from what we know so far) to be quite the departure for Facebook. So how will Facebook make money off this new form of cryptocurrency? Well from what we know so far, Facebook is seeing this as more of an investment in how business’ will want to sell more ads because more people will be using Calibra to buy and sell things using Facebook.
I’m wondering if people will really start to use Libra to pay for things becoming something like a new “PayPal”. As we’ve discussed on the show before, there are lots of security issues around cryptocurrency and the blockchain. Crypto exchanges are always being hacked and the applications that are being developed, such as ones that power smart contracts and other apps that use the blockchain, have very unique vulnerabilities which are challenging to remediate. So with the money and influence of Facebook, do you think this is what will make cryptocurrency a mainstream and popular form of payment? If, of course, makes it past world financial regulators. Or is it just another way for Facebook to eventually make more money by selling even more ads.
Using Firefox as your preferred web browser? Well Firefox released two critical updates last week to fix a “zero-day” security vulnerability that has been used in targeted attacks against (guess what) cryptocurr
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