With the grey skies returning and England due to face Germany in a major tournament, things feel all a bit déjà vu don’t they? The same can be said in the world of tech, with cyber breaches hitting the front pages once again. Get yourself up to speed with your latest edition of tech news.
A big deadline in the fight to beat back those annoying robocalls is coming June 30. As of that date, every major voice provider in the US, including phone companies AT&T, Verizon and T-Mobile and cable provider Comcast, will have to implement a technology called Stir/Shaken.
US consumers have received just under 22 billion robocalls in the first five months of the year, on pace to hit over 52 billion robocalls for the year, according to YouMail, a company specializing in blocking robocalls.
An end to these annoying and costly calls could be on the horizon thanks to the implementation of Stir/Shaken, which will require voice providers to verify where calls are coming from. The way it works is that Stir/Shaken technology ensures that calls traveling through phone networks have their caller ID "signed" as legitimate by originating carriers and validated by other carriers before the calls reach you. In short, the technology authenticates a phone call's origin and makes certain the information on the Caller ID matches.
Major phone companies, such as AT&T, Verizon and T-Mobile, as well as cable provider Comcast, have said they're implementing Stir/Shaken. Multiple carriers asked for an extension, but the FCC denied those petitions in March. No news yet on whether the UK will implement a similar practice, but watch this space.
Ring has come under fire for a number of security breaches, with hackers able to access systems remotely. In 2019 an investigation by tech website Gizmodo found it could pinpoint the locations of tens of thousands of Ring users using data from posts on the Neighbors app. In January last year, four Ring employees were sacked for accessing customer video feeds in a manner that “exceeded what was necessary for their job functions”.
Ring says protecting customers’ privacy, security and control over their devices and personal information is paramount to them. In 2020, they launched an in-app dashboard that allows users to change privacy and security settings. They have also introduced a second layer of verification to help prevent unauthorised users gaining access to a Ring account, and will soon be rolling out end-to-end encryption to UK customers. Ring says that none of its employees have unrestricted access to customer data and all personal information is treated as highly confidential
But Chris Gilliard, an expert in privacy and surveillance, as well as a professor of English at Macomb Community College, near Detroit, sees a sinister corporate plan. “A thing like Ring belongs on the entire spectrum of Amazon’s move towards surveillance and control – not only of workers, but also of consumers, and of space in general,” he says. “The intent is to create a massive web of surveillance in an attempt to try to shape the way people live their lives. It’s an attempt to replace a real sense of community with a notion of community that’s mediated by Amazon.”.
Binance, the world's biggest cryptocurrency exchange, has been banned by the UK's financial regulator. The Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) has ruled that the firm cannot conduct any "regulated activity" in the UK. It also issued a consumer warning about Binance.com, advising people to be wary of adverts promising high returns on cryptoasset investments.
Binance said the FCA notice would have no "direct impact" on the services it provides from its website Binance.com. Binance's existing crypto exchange is not UK-based so despite the FCA ruling, there will be no impact on UK residents who use the website to purchase and sell cryptocurrencies.
The FCA does not regulate cryptocurrencies, but requires exchanges to register with them. Binance has not registered with the FCA and therefore is not allowed to operate an exchange in the UK. The FCA move comes amid pushback from regulators around the world against cryptocurrency platforms.
All five secondary schools on the island of Anglesey have been hit by a cyber-attack. The council said the attack began on Wednesday.
Officials said affected systems had been disabled to "contain the incident", but warned some personal data could have been compromised, including emails. The authority's chief executive Annwen Morgan said schools were likely to see disruptions.
Ms Morgan said: "We discovered the cyber-attack on Wednesday and moved quickly to bring in a team of specialised cyber-technology consultants to investigate. The National Cyber Security Centre will also be providing us with support to resolve matters.
"There is likely to be some disruption at the schools over the coming weeks as systems may need to be restored and others remain offline."
Microsoft said Friday that hackers breached a computer used by one of its customer service agents and stole account data they then used to launch "highly targeted" attacks on customers. The company identified the hacking group as Nobelium, the same one behind last year's major SolarWinds breach.
Microsoft has secured the computer, which the hackers infected with information-stealing software, and notified the "small number" of affected customers, it said in a Friday post on its Security Response Center site.
Microsoft warned the impacted customers to exercise caution regarding communications with billing contacts and suggested changing related passwords and usernames, Reuters reported. The company also urged customers to be sure to use multi-factor authentication to protect against hacks. Microsoft's investigation of the breach is ongoing, and it hasn't yet found that any customers were successfully compromised.
