Researchers Daniele Antonioli, Nils Ole Tippenhauer and Kasper Rasmussen discovered the flaw and demonstrated a practical Key Negotiation Of Bluetooth (KNOB) attack taking advantage of it. They also shared their discovery with the Bluetooth Special Interest Group (Bluetooth SIG), the CERT Coordination Center, and members of the International Consortium for Advancement of Cybersecurity on the Internet (ICASI), which include Intel, Microsoft, Cisco, Juniper and IBM. Most of these have already implemented the fixes required to prevent exploitation of the flaw.
Apple has updated its WebKit policy, increasing the company’s focus on privacy. The new WebKit Tracking Prevention Policy now states that any circumvention of its anti-tracking feature is treated in the same way, and as seriously, as security issues. The aim is to prevent web tracking completely because “these practices are harmful to users because they infringe on a user’s privacy without giving users the ability to identify, understand, consent to, or control them”. Apple says it wants “to see a healthy web ecosystem, with privacy by design”.
The mobile platform is ubiquitous — enabling users to make online transactions, run their everyday lives, or even use it in the workplace. It’s no surprise that fraudsters and cybercriminals would want to cash in on it. Delivering adware, for example, enables them to monetize affected devices while attempting to be innocuous. And while they may be viewed as a nuisance at best, mobile ad fraud– and adware-related incidents became so rampant last year that it cost businesses hefty financial losses.
On Call With the gateway to the weekend upon us, it is time to crack open the On Call files once again to enjoy a tale from one of those brave engineers at the front line of the tech world. Today’s story is from a reader we’ll call “Sven” and, for a change, is almost an anti-on call since it concerns what can happen when the all-important company mobile is turned off.
