Monthly Archives: March 2019

Myspace has lost all content uploaded to the site before 2016. All data has been lost including photos, videos and more than 50 million songs.

Myspace has responded to this incident by blaming a faulty server migration for the mass deletion. This is reported to have occurred over a year ago, which has only recently come to light from user complaints about inaccessible content. Myspace has confirmed the data has been lost permanently and there is no hope of retrieval from backups.

Despite the rivalry with other social media companies, for example, Facebook, Myspace has retained a user base, mainly with musicians building their fanbase. In 2013 Myspace’s relaunch was seen as a failure, as it cleared most of the text content from all profiles, including wall posts. However, music and images were left intact, likely for their music focused users.

Myspace initially claimed the deletion was a temporary error, reassuring users the issue would be fixed. They then stated on a banner on myspace.com: “As a result of a server migration project, any photos, videos, and audio files you uploaded more than three years ago may no longer be available on or from Myspace. We apologise for the inconvenience and suggest that you retain your backup copies. If you would like more information, please contact our data protection officer”.

The mass-deletion has drawn comparisons to other early internet communities which closed down in a similar fashion, such as Geocities, however these companies did manage to give sufficient warning to users.

Some have speculated that the deletion was intentional on the part of Myspace. “I’m deeply sceptical this was an accident,” wrote web expert Andy Baio, “Flagrant incompetence may be bad PR, but it still sounds better than, ‘We can’t be bothered with the effort and cost of migrating and hosting 50 million old MP3s”.

This incident has received a lot of attention and reminds us how precious our data is online. For help or information on running and maintaining basic or complex backup services, please contact us.

Google has announced a new streaming game service named Google Stadia, at the Game Developers Conference, San Francisco. It has been shown that Google Stadi has the potential to run on all web connected devices, including low power ones such as Android phones and Chromecast devices, reported by Ars Technica.

Google will have complete control and ownership, running a selection of games on Google’s centralised servers via Google’s network of low-latency data centers. A new Google-produced controller has been presented, although games are playable on existing USB controllers and mouse-and-keyboards.

The keynote included Google’s pledge that its network infrastructure includes “7,500 edge nodes closer to players to provide better performance.” Stadia’s stacks at Google’s data centers are powered by AMD hardware, the company said, with “10.7 teraflops of power in each instance.”. Stadia will support “4K, 60 frames-per-second performance”. If you don’t have a 4K set to enjoy that gameplay with, Google says its capture button will save and stream your gameplay content at that resolution, should the game in question support it.”

It seems that there will be an option to request more or less infrastructure, but it’s currently unclear if this will cost developers money or impact the true functional ability. At the Game Developers Conference, changeable features through Google’s cloud infrastructure were emphasised. These included the ability to access intense physics systems, place thousands of cameras in various places in a game’s world, and reskin games with a huge variety of machine-generated images.

Sony’s PlayStation Now, Nvidia’s GeForce Now, and other similar services also run games on centralised servers and send the resulting video and audio over the Internet. It appears Google have decided to take advantage of this growing market, and to enter it with their extremely large and powerful and infrastructure. This shows the power of centralised cloud computing as a service rather than relying on running things on a specific device. Although it’s important to note that users will need access to reliable and fast internet connections in order to make best use of this service.

The African Union (AU) headquarters is set within Addis Ababa, the Ethiopian Capital.
In 2006, Beijing pledged $200m to build the headquarters. Completed in 2012, everything was custom-built by the Chinese – including a state-of-the-art computer system. The building has since signified a tie between China and Africa.

In January 2018, it was reported that the AU’s computer system had been compromised by a French newspaper, Le Monde Afrique. It was found that, for five years, the AU had data transferred from their servers to servers in Shanghai. Data was leaked for five hours each day, allegedly for 1,825 days in a row. It was also reported that microphones and listening devices had been discovered in the walls and desks of the building, following a sweep for bugs.

Huawei are the main supplier of information and communication technology systems to the AU headquarters. In a review of the alleged incident, Danielle Cave of the Australian Strategic Policy Institute said “It’s hard to see how – given Huawei’s role in providing equipment and key ICT services to the AU building and specifically to the AU’s data centre – the company could have remained completely unaware of the apparent theft of large amounts of data, every day, for five years.”

Huawei responded to this by stating “If there was a data leak from computers at the AU’s headquarters in Addis that went on for an extended period of time, these data leaks did not originate in technology supplied by Huawei to the AU. What Huawei supplied for the AU project included data centre facilities, but those facilities did not have any storage or data transfer functions.”

Despite Huawei being the main supplier to the AU headquarters, there is no conclusion and no evidence regarding the involvement of Huawei with the leak of data at AU.

It has been reported that Citrix has had their internal network breached by international criminals, according to Ars Technica. Citrix is a large virtualization software provider used by many enterprise companies around the world. They are currently investigating these allegations, from a report by the FBI.

Citrix have responded to this incident, saying they have taken necessary action to contain this “We commenced a forensic investigation; engaged a leading cyber security firm to assist; took actions to secure our internal network; and continue to cooperate with the FBI,”

Citrix works with multinationals across the world, including Fortune 500 companies, and alongside government and military organizations. Allegedly, hackers have accessed and downloaded business documents. However, the specific documents that may have been accessed are currently unknown.

After this incident, shares in Citrix fell three percent to $99.77, according to the Financial Times. Citrix continues to investigate these allegations but has reported international hackers likely used a technique that exploits weak passwords, a tactic called “password spraying”. This is a technique in which the adversary will try a single commonly used password (such as “123456”) against many accounts. If unsuccessful, a second password will be tried, and so on until accounts are accessed.

We advise, for maximum security, to use strong passwords, including capital letters and numbers, and to regularly update your passwords. We also recommend using Two Factor Authentication wherever it’s available. This method requires both a password and further validation from another source (e.g. text or app).

Amazon has recently stopped selling the Dash buttons they launched back in 2015.

The Dash buttons were designed to make re-ordering products easier. Working via WiFi, users could put the button on a product in the home and simply press to automatically order more when it was running low. This could be used on a washing machine, for washing detergent, for example. You could also purchase a ‘blank’ dash button and use IOT methods to attach this to your own custom order request.

Despite the Dash buttons being undeniably clever in terms of technology and arguably low cost for the convenience (£4.99 which was deducted from the first order) more recently the buttons have not succeeded well. In January, a court in Germany ruled that the buttons were illegal because they did not let customers see the current price of products when they ordered. Amazon have said in response that product subscriptions and automatic reordering had since grown in popularity, and therefore the buttons are becoming unnecessary.

Amazon have now decided to stop selling the Dash buttons. Amazon have reported that advances such as, digital Dash buttons in their app and shopping via voice-controlled speakers (eg Amazon’s Alexa), has superseded the physical buttons.

It’s likely that this discontinuation is also due to concerns over current general concerns around security of our online accounts and services – i.e. the buttons can be pressed by anyone, not just the account holder. Furthermore, there is the current debate regarding transparency of processes with large internet giants such as Amazon – not being able to see the details of a transaction raises the possibility of the vendor/service provider being able to alter the details without user consent.

It is not unusual to read that companies “care” about the data privacy and protection of individuals. But how much of that is actually true?

It is often reported that users are subjected to data hacks, and increasingly these attacks are done by credential stuffing. There is a trend where larger companies seem to prefer to pay a fine over putting better preventative and security measures in place.

This has been highlighted by OkCupid, a free online dating site, which recently had users complain their accounts were hacked. OkCupid’s response to this was to defend against allegations with statements including: “all websites constantly experience account takeover attempts”, “there’s no story here,” and “no further comment”.

Target, a large US retailer, paid $18.5 million for a data breach that released details on 41 million customer credit cards. Anthem, the largest US health insurance company, paid $115 million in fines a data breach put 79 million insurance holders’ data at risk. Both companies had revenues of over $70 billion in these years. In addition, Equifax, a global consumer credit reporting agency, which had the biggest breach of the year in 2017, led to a lot of talk but no real action no real action.

Other companies have improved their response to such attacks by, for example, rolling out two-factor authentication and have taken the time to improve account security. There are still further measures that companies could put in place. This can range from something as simple as informing users of contacts details in cases of security flaws to employing people or systems to tighten security and find vulnerabilities.

For security consultancy and support, please contact us. We are also an ESET Partner – this award winning internet security solution is the only protection we recommend and is trusted by over 100 million users worldwide – contact us for current offers.