Cybersecurity News: March 2021

While the whole world was summarizing the past year in the state of the pandemic, the cybersecurity world showed an unusual calmness. After the roaring 2020, which was a real trial for the security tools developers, January looked like a normal continuation. But in February a lot of things changed: several big groups of malware distributors were busted, so ransomware distribution became very slack. These events put a lot of influence on the further spreading of all malware. So, it is nothing extraordinary that there were only 3 things from cybersecurity world in March I want to tell you about.

Twitter bitcoin scammer got jailed for 3 years. Fair punishment for a young fraudster?

Almost a year ago, in June 2020, we could speculate a large speculation around Twitter accounts of Bill Gates, Elon Musk, Joseph Biden, Apple, and many others. In one day, all three accounts began posting the following messages:

The bitcoin wallet was specified in a separate tweet. People couldn’t believe that the original accounts of these persons were hacked, so a lot of users trusted those messages and sent their bitcoins. In fact, all those posts were published by a 17-y.o. Graham Ivan Clark and two others. He got access to the account of Twitter employees through the phishing, and then posted the fraudulent messages using the Internal Twitter tools.

Graham Ivan Clark, Mason Sheppard and Nima Fazeli were captured soon after the short investigation. Before the fraudsters were uncovered, all Internal Twitter tools functions for posting as a verified account were disabled. Clark reportedly acted as a “chief” for this scheme, commanding the Sheppard and Fazeli. The total money stolen through this scheme is about $117,000 (in BTC equivalent).

Young fraudster was imprisoned at the moment of fraud uncovering, so he had already spent almost 8 months before getting a final sentence – 3 years in prison. Same terms were sentenced for his accomplices, however, they were house arrested for the whole term of investigation instead of being imprisoned.

New data collecting scandal with Google

Google was been blamed in stealing the users’ data, again. Now, the lawsuit is filed for data collecting in Chrome Incognito mode. The co states that only ISP is able to track the information you browse while being in Incognito mode. However, as the investigation showed, the tech giant was still able to get the details about your searches and opened pages.

“We strongly dispute these claims and we will defend ourselves vigorously against them. Incognito mode in Chrome gives you the choice to browse the internet without your activity being saved to your browser or device. As we clearly state each time you open a new incognito tab, websites might be able to collect information about your browsing activity during your session.”
—Google spokesperson Jose Castaneda in his interview to Bloomberg.

Google tried to throw out the case, appealing to the note displayed every time you open the Incognito tab in Chrome ( “…activity might still be visible to: websites you visit, your employer or school, your internet search provider”). Nonetheless, such a claim was not enough for the US District Judge to explain why the information is collected by Google, not only by the list of mentioned instances. The total amount of money the lawsuit seeks is about $5 billion.