TikTok is bringing one of the features that’s been available since last year, content filtering, to Family Pairing. Ever since the feature was released back in July 2022, the content filtering tool that allows TikTok users to filter out videos with words or hashtags was among the most popular features among the app’s users.Today, TikTok announced that parents will now finally be able to take advantage of content filtering tool since it will be added to Family Pairing. But this is not just a traditional port, as TikTok says it has partnered with experts to be able to adapt the content filtering tool to Family Pairing.
It was very important for TikTok to strike “a balance between enabling families to choose the best experience for their needs while also ensuring we respect young people’s rights to participate in the online world.” On that note, the feature has been implemented in a way that allows teens to view by default the keywords their parents have added.
These keywords will be represented in the app as a personalized layer on top of the Content Levels system, which is meant to prevent content with more mature or complex themes from reaching audiences between ages 13-17.
The new content filtering feature is available to TikTok parents via the Family Pairing starting today, but make sure to update the app to the latest version.
The global operation not only paved the way for authorities to seize €900 million but also resulted in arresting 6,558 people worldwide.
In July 2020, Europol, with the assistance of other law enforcement agencies, took down EncroChat, the infamous European encrypted communication provider. Now, the agency has shared more details on the successful operation.
Europol announced on Tuesday that the operation has resulted in a staggering 6,558 arrests worldwide and the seizure of €900 million in illicit criminal proceeds.
Following the closure of EncroChat, French and Dutch authorities initiated a joint investigation that intercepted and analyzed over 115 million conversations carried out by approximately 60,000 users on the platform. Now, almost three years later, the valuable information obtained from this extensive digital correspondence has yielded remarkable results.
The operation has led to the arrest of 6,558 suspects, including 197 high-value targets, dealing a significant blow to organized crime networks. Convicted criminals involved in these illicit activities are facing a total of 7,134 years of imprisonment.
Furthermore, authorities have successfully confiscated €739.7 million in cash, while freezing an additional €154.1 million in assets and bank accounts linked to criminal enterprises.
The impact of this operation goes beyond financial repercussions. Law enforcement agencies have managed to seize a staggering amount of illicit substances, including 30.5 million pills of chemical drugs, 103.5 tonnes of cocaine, 163.4 tonnes of cannabis, and 3.3 tonnes of heroin. Additionally, the operation resulted in the seizure of 971 vehicles, 83 boats, and 40 planes, which were being used to facilitate criminal activities.
According to Europol’s press release, authorities have also taken possession of 271 estates or homes used by criminals as hideouts or operational bases. Furthermore, the operation led to the confiscation of 923 weapons, including firearms, along with 21,750 rounds of ammunition and 68 explosives, significantly reducing the potential threat posed by these criminal organizations.
EncroChat, the encrypted phone network that was dismantled, had become a haven for organized crime groups involved in drug trafficking, money laundering, extortion, and even acts of violence, including murders.
Europol previously stated that user activity on the platform was particularly concentrated in countries known as source and destination points for the cocaine and cannabis trade, as well as in prominent money laundering hubs.
The mobile devices provided by EncroChat were marketed as offering “perfect anonymity” to users, with features like automatic message deletion and remote erasure options. The phones were sold for approximately €1,000 each on the international market, with subscription plans offering worldwide coverage for €1,500 over six months, complete with 24/7 customer support.
Unbeknownst to the users, French and Dutch law enforcement agencies infiltrated the platform in early 2020, gaining invaluable insights into criminal groups and their modus operandi. The company’s servers, located in France, were subsequently taken down, effectively dismantling the criminal infrastructure.
This successful operation against EncroChat follows the dismantling of another encrypted communication service, Sky ECC, in March 2021. Furthermore, in June 2021, officials from the United States and Australia disclosed their involvement in running a covert encrypted chat service called ANoM (also known as AN0M) for nearly three years.
This operation intercepted 27 million messages exchanged between criminal gang members across the globe, further undermining the activities of these networks.
Press Conference on Encrochat
The crackdown on encrypted communication services demonstrates the determination of law enforcement agencies to disrupt criminal enterprises and safeguard communities from the damaging effects of organized crime. Europol, in collaboration with international partners, remains committed to tackling cybercriminals and ensuring a safer future for all.
A fresh ongoing campaign spreads the Android banking Trojan known as Anatsa. New institutions in the United States, the United Kingdom, and German-speaking countries were hit by this wave of Anatsa malware.
Threat actors intend to steal credentials by authorizing customers in mobile banking applications and then engage in Device-Takeover Fraud (DTO) to begin fraudulent transactions.
The attackers are distributing the malware through the Play Store, the official app store for Android, and it has already been installed over 30,000 times, claim researchers at ThreatFabric who have been monitoring the criminal activities.
“The focus of the ongoing campaign is banks from US, UK, and DACH, while the target list of the malware contains almost 600 financial applications from all over the world”, researchers said.
Capabilities of Anatsa Mobile Banking Trojan
Anatsa’s activities have been observed by ThreatFabric ever since it was founded in 2020. Over the years, the actor’s areas of interest have undergone several modifications, and target lists have been updated often.
Recently, this campaign has been observed to have an obvious shift towards targeting German-speaking banking institutions in the DACH area. The areas where the distribution droppers are released reflect this focus.
Reports mention that 3 additional German banking apps were added to Anatsa’s overlay target list with the launch of the new dropper. Likewise, compared to August 2022 of last year, there were over 90 new targeted applications.
The players for Anatsa added targets from South Korea, Germany, Spain, Finland, and Singapore. Even if the droppers are not spread in all of these nations, it is clear that those areas are among the targets.
The trojan was installed over 300,000 times during a prior Anatsa campaign on Google Play in November 2021 by posing as PDF scanners, QR code scanners, Adobe Illustrator apps, and fitness tracker apps.
New Malvertising Operation
After a six-month break from spreading malware, threat actors started a new malvertising operation in March 2023, encouraging potential victims to download Anatsa dropper apps from Google Play.
The malicious apps still fall under the “office/productivity” category and disguise themselves as office suites, PDF viewers, and editing apps.
When Google received reports about the malicious app and removed it from the store, the attackers promptly reappeared by uploading a new dropper under a different pretense.
The apps in all five cases of the revealed malware droppers were initially submitted to Google Play in the clean form before being updated with malicious code, perhaps to get around Google’s rigorous code review procedure.
“Once the device is infected, Anatsa can collect sensitive information (credentials, credit card details, balance, and payment information) via overlay attacks and keylogging”, researchers said.
It has been observed that it is particularly difficult for banks’ anti-fraud systems to identify it as transactions are started from the same device that the targeted customers frequently use.
Finally, according to recent reports, Google Play removed the developers and deleted all of the discovered dangerous apps.
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Let’s face it, we all hate scam callers. These days, most of us don’t answer the phone unless we know who it is. Well, a group of cybersecurity experts in Australia have taken this to a whole new level. They are developing a chatbot that can impersonate a human and sit on the scam call, to waste the scammers time. Essentially giving the scammers a taste of their own medicine.
They are creating this chatbot system as a “honeypot” that will lure scammers into a 40-minute-long conversation, that will ultimately amount to nothing. Sound familiar? That’s basically what scammers do. The name of this Chatbot is Apate, and it’s still got a long way to go.
This is being done by researchers at Macquarie University in Sydney, and professor Dali Kaafar said that “our model ties them up, wastes their time, and reduces the number of successful scams. We can disrupt their business model and make it much harder for them to make money.”
The goal is to make the Chatbot smart enough to trick a scammer
The goal here is to trick these scammers into staying on the phone for a 40-minute conversation with the bot. Currently, the bot is only averaging about 5 minutes before the scammer hangs up. However, Kaafar has noted that “we found the bots react pretty nicely to some tricky situations that we were not expecting to get away with, with scammers asking for information that we didn’t train the bots for – but the bots are adapting and coming up with very believable responses.”
Could this be the future way to deal with scam calls? Probably not. As Kaafar mentions, it’s only a matter of time before the scam callers adopt AI to make it easier to get through these bots and call screeners like what Google has built into the Pixel. But for now, it is pretty fun to see the scammers getting scammed and their time wasted.
Recent reports point out a cryptojacking attack that Microsoft has uncovered on some devices. Some of the devices that are prone to getting this attack are Linux-based and IoT devices. The attack is quite common within the crypto industry, and it pulls computer users against their will.
According to the reports, Microsoft has been able to spot this type of attack after some analysis. The report goes on to point out that Linux-based and IoT systems are a special target for the bad actors launching these attacks. This might seem odd considering that Microsoft doesn’t own the Linux OS or any of the IoT systems this attack is focusing on.
So why is Microsoft paying attention to an attack that isn’t affecting their systems? What exactly is this cryptojacking attack, and how does it impact systems? These might be a few questions on your mind regarding this topic and this article will answer them.
Quick delve into the cryptojacking attacks that Microsoft just uncovered
You might be wondering what cryptojacking is and what role it plays within the crypto industry. Well, cryptojacking is simply the act of taking over a computer and using it to mine cryptocurrencies. This mining process takes place without the users’ will, as the attackers break into the system using brute force.
Once an attacker is in the system, they then use it to mine cryptocurrency and get profit. The attacks are a combination of custom and open-source tools to attack Linux-based and IoT systems. These tools are used to hack into and take over a system for the sole purpose of mining cryptocurrencies.
Microsoft notes that this attack is affecting Linux-based and IoT devices, but still recognizes it as a threat. Despite it finding a niche with these systems, there might be a chance of it finding its way to Windows devices. Linux might be a prime choice for attackers since they can easily deploy a crypto mining distro.
This distro is unique to Linux and specializes in the mining of cryptocurrencies. Although this software is not on Windows devices, attackers might find a way to deploy it along with their attacks. For this reason, there is a need to be on guard against these cryptojacking attacks.
Users of Windows devices might need to up their security game to stay safe. Microsoft will also need to tighten their security to ensure that users stay safe. More information on this cryptojacking scam will be made available in the coming weeks.
Meet seems to be the focus of Google’s engineers, as the app received quite a few new features in the last couple of months. In fact, Google Meet seems to be getting new updates on a weekly basis, sometimes even more often than that.
This week’s update brings a couple of new features meant to enhance user experience. The most important change is the addition of a new quick action menu to allow Google Meet users to access popular features in the app.
You just need to hover the mouse on top of your own video feed, and you’ll be able to access a range of features like video effects (immersive backgrounds or fun filters), as well as a reframing option that will further improve your visibility.
In addition, Google Meet users can turn off the video feed from other participants using the same quick action on their video. This makes a huge difference when you want to focus your meeting view on the presenter or hide certain participants.
It’s important to mention though that this particular quick action feature is only available for Google Meet on the web. According to Google, the rollout has already started on June 26 and should take up to 3 days.
The new quick action menu is available to all Google Workspace customers, while the reframing feature is only available to Google Workspace Business Standard, Business Plus, Enterprise Starter, Enterprise Essentials, Enterprise Standard, Enterprise Plus, Education Plus, the Teaching and Learning upgrade, Workspace Individual customers, as well as Google One subscribers with 2TB or more storage space.
Zyxel has been one of the world’s leading networking products manufacturing companies and one of the top companies in the telecommunications industry.
The company has customers worldwide, including the United States, the United Kingdom, France, and India.
Zyxel NAS (Network-Attached Storage) devices were recently discovered with a pre-authentication command injection vulnerability that can allow a remote attacker to execute operating system commands by sending malicious HTTP requests.
CVE-2023-27992: Pre-authentication Command Injection Vulnerability in Zyxel NAS Products
This vulnerability exists in some of the products inside the Zyxel NAS firmware that can allow an unauthenticated attacker to execute OS commands through crafted HTTP requests.
Two Security researchers named Andrej Zaujec from NCSC-FI and Maxim Suslov discovered this command injection vulnerability. The vulnerability receives a CVSS Score of 9.8 (Critical).
Affected Products
Users of Zyxel NAS products are advised to update to the latest software version to prevent attackers from exploiting this vulnerability.
Zyxel, a subsidiary of Unizyx Holding corporation, has an overall revenue of 32 billion Taiwanese Dollars as of 2021 and has employees of more than 650+ worldwide. The company specializes in 5G/4G NR, DSL, modems, VoIP telephones, and other telecommunication products.
The company was established in 1989 and has made several breakthroughs by introducing World’s 1st ADSL2+ gateway (2004), palm-sized portable firewall (2005), Analog/Digital.
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Best Buy has a pretty good deal right now on, what is undoubtedly, the best Android tablet on the market right now – the Galaxy Tab S8 Ultra. It’s currently on sale for $999. That’s saving you $100 off of its regular price.
If you need a bit more storage, the 256GB is on sale for $1,079, and the 512GB is on sale for $1,249. That’s $120 and $150 off respectively. Make sure to get enough storage, as there is no expandable storage here.
Why you should buy the Samsung Galaxy Tab S8 Ultra
The Samsung Galaxy Tab S8 Ultra is a powerful and versatile tablet that offers a great balance of performance, productivity, and entertainment. It has a large 14.6-inch AMOLED display, a powerful Snapdragon 8 Gen 1 processor, and up to 16GB of RAM. It also comes with the S Pen stylus, which makes it great for taking notes, drawing, and editing photos.
Here are some of the reasons why you should buy the Samsung Galaxy Tab S8 Ultra:
Large and immersive display: The 14.6-inch AMOLED display is the perfect size for watching movies, browsing the web, or working on projects. The display is also very bright and colorful, making it great for all types of content.
Powerful performance: The Snapdragon 8 Gen 1 processor is one of the fastest mobile processors on the market, making the Galaxy Tab S8 Ultra a great choice for demanding tasks like gaming, video editing, and multitasking.
S Pen stylus: The S Pen stylus is a great addition to the Galaxy Tab S8 Ultra. It makes it easy to take notes, draw, and edit photos. The S Pen also has a new low-latency mode that makes it feel more natural to use.
Long battery life: The Galaxy Tab S8 Ultra has a long-lasting battery that can easily last for a full day on a single charge. This means that you can use the tablet all day without having to worry about running out of power.
Multitasking capabilities: The Galaxy Tab S8 Ultra is great for multitasking. You can easily run multiple apps at the same time, and the tablet’s large display makes it easy to see everything at once.
If you’re looking for a powerful and versatile tablet that offers a great balance of performance, productivity, and entertainment, then the Samsung Galaxy Tab S8 Ultra is a great choice. It’s packed with features that make it perfect for work, play, and everything in between.
Right now, we’re at the dawn of a new era in technology: The Age of AI. We expect AI technology to overtake human beings in many occupations over the next couple of years. In fact, an AI could stand between you and your next occupation. According to a survey, many companies say that they’ll conduct AI interviews by next year.
How many companies are going to use AI interviews?
The figure might surprise you. Resume Builder conducted a survey on several companies. Of the companies reviewed, 10% of them already use AI to interview candidates. However, 43% stated that they plan on using AI interviews by next year. That’s a substantial number. In all honesty, we don’t know how many companies were surveyed and we don’t know what types of companies.
However, it shows that companies are embracing this new AI age. If that scares you, there’s some good news. Of the companies interviewed, 80% said that there’s a chance that AI interviewers could screen out qualified candidates. That’s not a far-off assumption, as AI still isn’t perfect.
While almost half of the companies said that they’d use AI to interview candidates, 85% of companies said that they won’t use AI to choose the candidate without any human input. That’s good news because AI is not ready to be let off the leash just yet. It’s inevitable that companies will use AI in the hiring process, but at least most of them will try to have human input.
AI is definitely spreading
The news is dotted with headlines about more people using AI to supplement their school and work lives. A survey found that 55% of students admitted to using AI to write essays. Also, several lawyers got in trouble for using ChatGPT in their field. One surprising fact is that several developers admit to using AI to help with their coding.
It’s clear that we’re in for a major shift as people realize AI’s potential. This won’t come without some major casualties. People will lose their jobs and others will have trouble finding work. There are tools that can write blog posts in a snap; why hire a writer? There are tools that can generate images; why hire an artist?
The future of AI is uncertain. Are we going to be living out the Terminator series in a few years? Not likely. However, we might be on the cusp of a major revolution in the job market. We’ll just have to wait and see how this turns out.
Instagram introduced Reels in 2020, and since then, this feature’s popularity has grown, reaching over 2.35 billion monthly active users. Now, Instagram is rolling out a new feature for its users in the US.
As reported by TechCrunch, Adam Mosseri, CEO of Instagram, announced on his broadcast channel that the company will allow users to download Reels to their camera roll. The process is simple: just tap the share button and select the download option.
It’s important to note that only Reels from public accounts can be downloaded, and even if you have a public account, you can choose to turn off the Reel download option.
Mosseri did not mention whether the downloaded Reels would have watermarks, but based on the picture he uploaded, it is safe to assume that downloaded Reels will indeed bear watermarks, much like they do right now.
Image Credit– Adam Mosseri/Instagram
Currently, every Instagram user can download and share their own Reels on different platforms. However, with this new feature, users will also be able to share other people’s Reels on platforms like TikTok, for example.
TikTok has had this feature for years, and videos with the TikTok logo are now prevalent on various social platforms, contributing to the Chinese video-sharing app’s increasing popularity.
It’s worth noting that although videos with TikTok’s logo are no longer promoted by Instagram’s algorithms, their number on the platform remains substantial. With this new update, there is a chance for Instagram’s logo to appear frequently on its rival platforms as well.
While it is likely that this feature will eventually be available for users worldwide, the exact timeline for its global release remains unknown. We will have to wait and see when that happens.
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