Hey there, FixMeFans and StartMeStars! We hope everyone is doing well and staying safe. We’re back with another edition of our weekly roundup where we deliver the most recent comings and goings of the cybersecurity world.
This week we’re coming to you with news about cyberattacks involved in Iranian nuclear facilities, how Boston is making the move to ban government use of facial recognition, and how the popular video app TikTok is being called “Chinese Spyware”.
In recent weeks there have been several incidents occurring at various Iranian nuclear facilities, ranging from small fires, all the way to explosions.
While many would assume that these sorts of incidents are to be expected from working in nuclear facilities, some reports speculate that these are not simply mishaps, but rather cyberattacks launched by the Israeli government.
While these reports have not been explicitly confirmed, it does appear that these incidents were in fact caused by a cyberattack, which targeted Iranian gas compression systems at its nuclear facilities.
You can read more about the situation here.
With rising error rates associated with the technology, Boston has become the latest city to ban government use of facial recognition technology.
According to the Boston Police Department (BPD), the technology has been experiencing wide-scale errors in identifying Asian, dark or female skin, leading to database errors when it comes down to matching potential suspects.
With a federal study indicating that Asian and black people are up to 100 times more likely to be misidentified than white men, it comes as no surprise that the Boston Police Department are opting to move past facial recognition technology in hopes of finding an alternative with a higher success rate.
Curious? You can read up on the decision here.
Over the past few months, the video app TikTok has been steadily increasing in popularity – though it’s definitely been dealing with its fair share of controversy.
Amidst allegations of data mishandling and censorship, not only has India banned the app, but even the Anonymous hacker group has begun to target the app, calling it “malware operated by the Chinese government running a massive spying operation.”
The accusations aren’t without reason, as Anonymous then linked to a post from someone who had “reverse engineered” the app to find any security and privacy abuses, which lead to the claim that the app is simply a data-collection service masquerading as a popular video app.
You can find out more about the situation here.
That’s all for this week’s roundup folks! We hope you’re staying safe with all that’s going on, especially when it comes to your cybersecurity!