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A little more than one A week ago, an employee at a water treatment plant in Oldsmar, Florida noticed the mouse on his screen apparently starting to move on its own. Soon he was clicking through the controls, increasing the supply of lye into the water supply from 100 parts per million to 1,100 ppm, enough to cause serious damage to human tissue. Fortunately, the employee acted quickly to get things back to normal. It’s still unclear who was behind this dramatic hack, and a sober reminder of how so many industrial systems remain at risk despite years of warnings.
Facebook also appears to have ignored warnings about the proliferation of Covid-19 scams on its platform; Researchers this week uncovered several scams they found on the social media network and the Telegram messaging service.
Cyberpunk 2077 developer CD Projekt Red had previously been beaten by players frustrated with the Creeping game bugs and poor gameplay on older consoles. This week, he revealed that ransomware was recently added to his list of issues as a group of hackers claimed to have stolen internal documents as well as the source code of their most popular games. CD Projekt Red has stated that it will not pay the ransom.
Microsoft finally fixed a vulnerability which was first introduced in its Windows Defender antivirus product – renamed Microsoft Defender last year – at least 12 years ago. A barcode scanner application has started offer adware to its millions of users after an update in December. And be sure to read the third part of 2034, the fictional tale of an upcoming war with China.
And there’s more! Every week, we collect all the news that we haven’t covered in depth. Click on the titles to read the full stories. And stay safe there.
Since 2014, if you’ve been looking for a credit card or a stolen identity on the dark web – or until recently uncovered – the Joker’s Stash has been your one stop shop. According to analysis from blockchain analytics firm Elliptic, the operator of Joker’s Stash announced it would go out of business this month after taking what Elliptic sets at over $ 1 billion in cryptocurrency during its run. (It’s unclear if JokerStash, the account that runs the Marketplace, is an individual or a group.)
In October 2018, Bloomberg published “The Big Hack”,, an inflammatory tale of how China implanted tiny microchips on the motherboards of U.S.-based Supermicro to infiltrate dozens of companies, including Apple and Amazon. Everyone involved in this story offered loud denials, and outside security experts were very dubious. This week, Bloomberg returned with a new round of reports, including several types of law enforcement officially speaking about the allegations. But it still wasn’t enough to appease most skeptics.
Facebook insisted – especially COO Sheryl Sandberg – that most of the planning for the Capitol riots took place on platforms other than its own. Court documents refute this claim, Forbes found, with Facebook collecting far more referrals than any other social media site. Actual uses varied, with many suspected rioters using Facebook to broadcast the chaos live, but he clearly played a bigger role in the events than he accepted.
Apple continues its privacy campaign, this time adding a feature to its Safari browser that sends all your traffic through its own proxy servers, effectively hiding your IP address from Google when you’re in safe browsing mode. This should not affect your practical experience or limit the effectiveness of Google’s protection function. It just gives Mountain View a small slice of data about your internet trip.
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