Heena Sharma Blog

The discovery that hackers could snoop on WhatsApp should alert users of supposedly secure messaging apps to an uncomfortable truth: “End-to-end encryption” sounds nice — but if anyone can get into your phone’s operating system, they will be able to read your messages without having to decrypt them. According to a report in the Financial Times on Tuesday, the spyware that exploited the vulnerability was Pegasus, made by the Israeli company NSO. The malware could access a phone’s camera and microphone, open messages, capture what appears on a user’s screen, and log keystrokes — rendering encryption pointless. It works on all operating systems, including Apple’s iOS, Google’s Android, and Microsoft’s rarely used mobile version of Windows. The cybersecurity community has known about it for years, and activists have been raising hell about its use against dissidents and journalists in dozens of countries — although NSO itself says it doesn’t sell Pegasus to unsavory regimes and t...

About 100 million users of Quora were affected by unauthorized access to one of its systems by a "malicious third party," the knowledge-sharing website said on Monday. Account information, including name, email address, encrypted password and data imported from linked networks when authorized by users may have been compromised, it said. The company said it is logging out all Quora users who may have been affected to prevent further damage. "We are in the process of notifying users whose data has been compromised," Quora CEO Adam D'Angelo said in a blog post. The breach, discovered on Friday, did not affect question and answers that are written anonymously, the company said, adding that it has also notified law enforcement officials. "We have retained a leading digital forensics and security firm to assist us," it said. Read More Business Standard

To avoid falling for cybercriminals' fraudulent schemes and losing personal data, it is suggested that users should not spread questionable links among their friends Current Affairs News : While legitimate apps like Tokenfire and Swagbucks buy card codes from vendors, to then give them to clients as a reward for certain activities, criminals have apparently recognised the popularity of such websites and have decided to deceive users using a simple algorithm. "The success of these new fraud schemes is based on criminals exploiting the drive of users to get something for free," Lyubov Nikolenko of Kaspersky Lab said in a statement this week. "However, at best they will spend hours of personal time doing worthless tasks, and at worst lose money without receiving anything in return. So, if you want to get your hands on a free gift card, try to earn it on legal and trustworthy sites," Nikolenko added. When on the fake site, the user is asked to...