Tag Archive for: uploaded

500 Chrome extensions secretly uploaded private data from millions of users

500 Chrome extensions secretly uploaded private data from millions of users

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More than 500 browser extensions downloaded millions of times from Google’s Chrome Web Store surreptitiously uploaded private browsing data to attacker-controlled servers, researchers said on Thursday.

The extensions were part of a long-running malvertising and ad-fraud scheme that was discovered by independent researcher Jamila Kaya. She and researchers from Cisco-owned Duo Security eventually identified 71 Chrome Web Store extensions that had more than 1.7 million installations. After the researchers privately reported their findings to Google, the company identified more than 430 additional extensions. Google has since removed all known extensions.

“In the case reported here, the Chrome extension creators had specifically made extensions that obfuscated the underlying advertising functionality from users,” Kaya and Duo Security Jacob Rickerd wrote in a report. “This was done in order to connect the browser clients to a command and control architecture, exfiltrate private browsing data without the users’ knowledge, expose the user to risk of exploit through advertising streams, and attempt to evade the Chrome Web Store’s fraud detection mechanisms.”

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Biz & IT – Ars Technica

Ever app users uploaded billions of photos, unaware they were being used to build a facial recognition system

Users have shared the private photos stored in their email and social networks with Ever – not realising that they were being used to feed a facial recognition system.

Graham Cluley

MySpace has lost all the music users uploaded between 2003 and 2015

MySpace has lost all the music users uploaded between 2003 to 2015

You cannot trust the likes of Myspace to look after your data securely. Use internet services to archive your content if you wish, but you’d be wise to have your own backup too.

Graham Cluley

Thousands of scientific papers uploaded to the Pirate Bay (Janko Roettgers/GigaOM)

Janko Roettgers / GigaOM:
Thousands of scientific papers uploaded to the Pirate Bay  —  A user called Greg Maxwell just uploaded a torrent with 18,592 scientific publications to the Pirate Bay, in what appears to be a protest directed both at the recent indictment of programmer Aaron Swartz for data theft as well as the scientific publishing model in general.

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