Cyber Security

Here’s How Smart Devices are Eroding Privacy and Security

Published

1 month ago

December 10, 2024

Privacy is generally held as a fundamental right, with citizens often having high expectations regarding the protection of their personal information. Citizens protest when they fear that governments are increasing their involvement in the citizens’ personal lives. However, they don’t consider how much personal and sensitive data they share with any application that they install on their smartphone, or with smart devices in their homes.

Big tech companies and vendors of personal devices such as wearables, smartphones, and voice assistants collect intimate details about their users—often far more than any healthcare provider or government agency. These devices capture data on physical health (like heart rate, sleep patterns, and physical activity), mental well-being (through analysis of speech, facial expressions, and online activity), and personal preferences, including what we search for, buy, or listen to. Voice assistants continuously learn from user interactions, building profiles that can include details about routines, relationships, and even moods, inferred from voice tone and language.

This data extends beyond what any individual doctor could know, compiling a digital “fingerprint” of personal health and behaviour. For instance, wearables record heart rate, stress levels, and steps taken, creating a comprehensive record of the wearer’s physical and mental state. Online Platforms use sophisticated algorithms to understand users’ interests and behaviours better than many friends or family members might, mapping out everything from buying habits to political views.

These companies achieve such depth by aggregating data across devices, apps, and digital environments. The insights generated are not just for providing services but are also used in targeted advertising and can be shared with third parties or government entities under certain conditions, sometimes without users’ explicit knowledge.

Applications must request consent and permission to ask for sensors in your device, and usually, users easily give it. While this data has immense value for improving products and personalizing services, it raises significant privacy concerns because it operates largely without oversight, allowing tech companies to wield unprecedented insight into the intimate details of billions of lives.

In 2018, we learned about the Facebook and Cambridge Analytica scandal. In short, a consulting firm harvested personal data from millions of users without their consent. The data was used to build psychological profiles of users, which were then leveraged to deliver targeted political advertisements. The major concern was data monetization, ad profiling and targeted campaigns.
The discussion has escalated since then, and it is now around homeland security, influence campaigns, and espionage by foreign governments.

Privacy and cultural differences
A current public debate surrounds data collection practices by popular social media and technology companies. Investigations revealed that such apps gather extensive user data, including location, contacts, and behavioural data, raising concerns about data security and potential access by foreign governments. While these companies deny any unlawful access, governments have imposed strict oversight measures to ensure that sensitive user information is not compromised. This has sparked action worldwide, as countries prioritize data security for their citizens.

Smartphone and IoT device manufacturers from various regions are also under scrutiny. Concerns have been raised about the risk of foreign governments accessing user data through backdoors or other surveillance mechanisms. This issue is particularly prominent in countries with different approaches to data privacy, especially in authoritarian regimes that prioritise state control over individual privacy. These practices have led to heightened concerns over the potential misuse of devices for espionage or surveillance.

How Governments are Responding
Privacy Laws in Western countries exemplify this commitment to data privacy by giving individuals control over their data and requiring transparency from companies about data collection and sharing practices. Such frameworks are influenced by cultural values that prioritise individual freedoms and a deep-seated aversion to surveillance, especially in the private domain of one’s home.

This divergence not only shapes local privacy standards but also impacts international relations and the global IoT market. Democracies are increasingly implementing policies to restrict foreign-made devices suspected of being vulnerable to government interference, reinforcing the broader geopolitical contest between open and closed data governance models.

As these cases demonstrate, the threat is not hypothetical. Governments worldwide are actively grappling with the security and privacy implications posed by IoT devices, particularly from vendors with potential ties to state surveillance. In response, several regulatory and legal actions are underway:

Bans and Restrictions on High-Risk Vendors: Select governments have taken action by banning specific foreign-made devices from critical infrastructure, particularly in government buildings and other sensitive areas. This approach, while controversial, is perceived as a necessary step to reduce the risk of espionage.
Data Protection and Privacy Laws: The European GDPR and similar laws around the world are designed to give consumers more control over their data. These regulations require that companies provide clear consent options, disclose data usage, and allow users to manage the data collected by their devices. However, enforcing these laws on foreign companies remains a challenge. Therefore, in Europe, the commission approved last month the new extended Cyber Resilience Act (CRA), which demands manufacturers to comply with both privacy and security requirements in any connected device, if they want to sell them in the European market.
Device Security Standards: Several countries have introduced laws mandating minimum security standards for devices used by government agencies. These laws encourage basic security measures like banning default passwords, thereby reducing the risk of unauthorized access.

The privacy breach incidents highlight the urgent need for stronger regulations and better consumer awareness of potential security threats. This story is not just about one family or a single breach; it’s a broader narrative of how the “smart” devices in our homes could, in the wrong hands, compromise our privacy and security. As governments, regulatory bodies, and consumers begin to navigate this new reality, collaboration and vigilance will be key to preserving the sanctity of our private spaces.

Cyber Security

Sophos MDR Protects 26,000 Customers Globally with Latest Innovations

Published

9 hours ago

January 23, 2025

Chris Fernando

Sophos has announced that its Sophos Managed Detection and Response (MDR) service has reached a major milestone, now protecting more than 26,000 organizations globally, growing its customer base by 37% in 2024. This achievement highlights the increasing demand for Sophos’ proactive, expert-led security solutions, which help organizations of all sizes stay protected 24/7 against increasingly sophisticated cyber threats, including the most advanced ransomware, business email compromise (BEC) and phishing attacks.

Sophos MDR offers a comprehensive suite of capabilities that go beyond standard threat containment to include full-scale incident response, such as root cause analysis, the removal of malicious tools or artefacts used by attackers, and investigations across customers’ environments to ensure adversaries are fully ejected to prevent another attack. What further differentiates Sophos is that these incident response services are included with Sophos MDR on an unlimited basis, meaning customers are not additionally charged and there is no limit on the number of incident response hours. Sophos MDR Complete also includes a breach protection warranty covering up to $1 million in incident response expenses. Sophos provides flexibility for how customers can work with the MDR analysts, including the ability to pre-authorize them to contain an active threat.

Sophos has made significant investments into its MDR offering with increased analyst capacity, AI-assisted workflows, new features and expanded integrations to help deliver the best possible outcomes through improved protection, detection and investigation of threats. Sophos has added the following new features:

Proof of Value: New Sophos MDR service insights to explain the MDR team’s actions including highlighting the human hours spent threat hunting and creating and tuning detections. High-value dashboard enhancements include details of MITRE ATT&CK tactics uncovered in proactive threat hunts conducted by Sophos’ MDR team, MDR analyst coverage, case investigation summaries and an account health check status.
Enhanced Security for Microsoft Customers: New Sophos-proprietary detections for Microsoft Office 365 identify threats including business email compromise and adversary in the middle account takeover attacks, independent of the customer’s Microsoft license level.
Expanded Compatibility with Third Parties: This expanded ecosystem of turnkey integrations with third-party cybersecurity and IT tools includes a new Backup and Recovery integration category.
Proactive Vulnerability Mitigation: Sophos Managed Risk powered by Tenable provides attack surface vulnerability management as a new managed service option for Sophos MDR customers.
Efficiency and Automation: Sophos MDR has added AI-powered workflows to streamline operational processes and drive better security outcomes for our customers. This innovation delivers a reduced mean time to respond (MTTR) through more efficient triage, while also ensuring that all legitimate threats are rapidly investigated. This enables analysts to concentrate on other tasks such as threat hunting, account health monitoring and detection engineering.

“Attackers are continuously advancing their tactics to outmanoeuvre traditional security defences,” said Rob Harrison, senior vice president of product management at Sophos. “Our customers rely on Sophos MDR to help their organizations tackle today’s threats 24/7 with full-scale incident response to remove active adversaries and conduct root cause analysis to identify the underlying issues that led to an incident. We’re consistently evolving our solutions with new offerings and integrations, just like attackers are constantly evolving their tactics, so customers can disrupt threats before they escalate into destructive attacks.”

Cyber Security

Group-IB Joins Cybercrime Atlas at WEF to Combat Global Cybercrime

Published

2 days ago

January 21, 2025

Edward Frank

Group-IB has announced today that it has joined the Cybercrime Atlas—an initiative hosted at the World Economic Forum—to contribute to the research of the evolving landscape of cybercrime, support the disruption of cybercriminal infrastructure and operations, and to enhance collaborations between local and international stakeholders to enhance cybersecurity globally.

The Cybercrime Atlas, hosted at the World Economic Forum’s Centre for Cybersecurity, leverages open-source research to generate actionable insights into the cybercriminal ecosystem. Its community comprises organizations pivotal in identifying and dismantling cybercriminal activities. This collaborative initiative seeks to build a global, action-focused repository of cybercrime intelligence, promoting cooperation among investigators, law enforcement, financial institutions, and businesses at both national and international levels. Group-IB’s analysts have already begun contributing to Cybercrime Mapping, and Cybercrime Investigation Working Groups.

“Joining the Cybercrime Atlas initiative is not just an opportunity – it’s a responsibility. In a world where cyber threats transcend borders, collaboration is our most powerful defence. By uniting with the Cybercrime Atlas community and other key stakeholders, we connect expertise and critical intelligence, creating a united front that can disrupt criminal networks and make the digital world a safer place for everyone,” said Dmitry Volkov, CEO, Group-IB.

“The Cybercrime Atlas is a collaborative research initiative by leading companies and experts, facilitated by the World Economic Forum, to map the cybercrime landscape. The insights generated are promoting opportunities for greater cooperation between the private sector and law enforcement to address cybercrime,” said Tal Goldstein, Head of Strategy and Policy, World Economic Forum’s Centre for Cybersecurity.

Cyber Security

ESET Research Discovers UEFI Secure Boot Bypass Vulnerability

Published

3 days ago

January 20, 2025

Chris Fernando

ESET researchers have discovered a vulnerability, affecting the majority of UEFI-based systems, that allows actors to bypass UEFI Secure Boot. This vulnerability, assigned CVE-2024-7344, was found in a UEFI application signed by Microsoft’s “Microsoft Corporation UEFI CA 2011” third-party UEFI certificate. The exploitation of this vulnerability can lead to the execution of untrusted code during system boot, enabling potential attackers to easily deploy malicious UEFI bootkits (such as Bootkitty or BlackLotus) even on systems with UEFI Secure Boot enabled, regardless of the operating system installed.

ESET reported the findings to the CERT Coordination Center (CERT/CC) in June 2024, which successfully contacted the affected vendors. The issue has now been fixed in affected products, and the old, vulnerable binaries were revoked by Microsoft in the January 14, 2025, Patch Tuesday update.

The affected UEFI application is part of several real-time system recovery software suites developed by Howyar Technologies Inc., Greenware Technologies, Radix Technologies Ltd., SANFONG Inc., Wasay Software Technology Inc., Computer Education System Inc., and Signal Computer GmbH.

“The number of UEFI vulnerabilities discovered in recent years and the failures in patching them or revoking vulnerable binaries within a reasonable time window shows that even such an essential feature as UEFI Secure Boot should not be considered an impenetrable barrier,” says ESET researcher Martin Smolár, who discovered the vulnerability. “However, what concerns us the most concerning the vulnerability is not the time it took to fix and revoke the binary, which was quite good compared to similar cases, but the fact that this isn’t the first time that such an unsafe signed UEFI binary has been discovered. This raises questions of how common the use of such unsafe techniques is among third-party UEFI software vendors, and how many other similar obscure, but signed, bootloaders there might be out there.”

Exploitation of this vulnerability is not limited to systems with the affected recovery software installed, as attackers can bring their copy of the vulnerable binary to any UEFI system with the Microsoft third-party UEFI certificate enrolled. Also, elevated privileges are required to deploy the vulnerable and malicious files to the EFI system partition (local administrator on Windows; root on Linux). The vulnerability is caused by the use of a custom PE loader instead of using the standard and secure UEFI functions LoadImage and StartImage. All UEFI systems with Microsoft third-party UEFI signing enabled are affected (Windows 11 Secured-core PCs should have this option disabled by default).

The vulnerability can be mitigated by applying the latest UEFI revocations from Microsoft. Windows systems should be updated automatically. Microsoft’s advisory for the CVE-2024-7344 vulnerability can be found here. For Linux systems, updates should be available through the Linux Vendor Firmware Service.