After the security firm Mandiant had its X account compromised earlier this month, the US Securities and Exchange Commission dealt with a similar intrusion this week.
Attackers wrested control of the agency's account for more than half an hour and posted false information during that time about a highly anticipated SEC regulatory decision on a Bitcoin financial product.
The incident was concerning, given that it indicated a lack of adequate security protections on the SEC's account, but also because attackers may have intended to manipulate markets, and their fake post led to fluctuations in the price of Bitcoin.
If you want to avoid these shenanigans on your own X account, we've got tips for locking everything down as much as possible.
Thousands of emergency planning documents from US schools, like safety procedures for active shooter emergencies, were exposed on the internet for weeks in a trove of more than 4 million records from the education software provider Raptor.
The company, which has now made the database inaccessible, says its software is used by more than 5,300 US school districts and 60,000 schools around the world.
Each week, we round up the security and privacy news we didn't break or cover in depth ourselves.
Online auction site eBay has been ordered to pay a $3 million criminal penalty for harassment of a Massachusetts couple who were critical of the company in their newsletter and news website, according to the US Attorney's Office of Massachusetts.
The charge filed against the company followed the convictions of seven eBay employees and contractors in 2021 and 2022, who in August 2019 harassed and stalked David and Ina Steiner, who ran the ecommerce publication EcommerceBytes.
Executives at eBay did not like the critical coverage that eBay was getting.
Prosecutors successfully argued that this included sending a fetal pig, a bloody pig mask, a funeral wreath, and live cockroaches to their home; publicly and privately threatening the couple online through Twitter accounts they created; and traveling to their home to install a GPS tracker on their vehicle and surveil them.
The US Department of Justice charged eBay with stalking, witness tampering, and obstruction of justice, and the company will also undergo corporate compliance monitoring.
A statement of facts, within a deferred prosecution agreement between prosecutors and eBay, lays out a litany of abusive and stalking behavior.
These include plotting how to disrupt a police investigation and destroying evidence.
This Cyber News was published on www.wired.com. Publication date: Sat, 13 Jan 2024 14:43:05 +0000