Following Cambridge Analytica storm, Mozilla pulls the plug on its Facebook Adverts

The Firefox broswer maker has suspended all advertising activities on Facebook following the the Cambridge Analytica scandal, which has embroiled the popular social networking site. In a blog post announcing the move, Denelle Dixon, Mozilla’s chief business and legal officer, said: We understand that Facebook took steps to limit developer access to friends’ data beginning …

Facebook’s stock price plummets as Cambridge Analytica scandal bites

Facebook’s stock price sunk by more than 7% March 19, following a weekend of Cambridge Analytica backlash against the company, after it was revealed that Trump campaign consultant illicitly harvested the data of up to 50 million Facebook users without their permission. The company has lost $42 billion in value since its close on Friday …

Broadcom’s bid for Qualcomm blocked due to national security fears

Technology Review is reporting that US president Donald Trump ordered Singapore-based chip maker Broadcom to drop its $117 billion bid for US rival Qualcomm, citing security concerns over the deal. According to the blog, the steps highlights growing sensitivity in the US that acquisitions by foreign companies could jeopardize the country’s leadership in key technologies—in …

HP, Lenovo and Dell users to brace for a barrage of Intel’s anti-Spectre attack chip updates

Intel has almost wrapped up revised microcode updates that address unexpected reboots caused by its first attempt at mitigating the Meltdown-Spectre variant 2 attack. The chip-maker’s recently updated microcode revision guidance indicates that most of its platforms from the past decade now have production-ready patches to mitigate the Spectre attack. On January 22, three weeks …

GitHub survives record-breaking DDoS attack that hitchhiked memcached servers

GitHub recently survived the largest-ever recorded distributed denial of service attack in history,  experiencing roughly 10 minutes of disruption during the onslaught, which was amplified using exposed memcached servers — a vector that has seen a significant increase in abuse since last month. A Mar. 1 blog post by the GitHub Engineering team reported that …

Latest Android malware can record voice calls for extortion & blackmailing

IT security researchers have discovered an android malware which aims at stealing personal data from Android devices, recording live calls and surrounding noises in order to blackmail the victim – Dubbed RedDrop by Wandera researchers, the malware was discovered in 53 applications on third-party app stores including calculators, image editors, languages teaching and space exploration apps. All …