Recently, two of the former employees of Snapchat have disclosed that the company’s user data was abused by employees a few years ago. The past employees of the multimedia messaging app say that the company allows its staff to spy on the information of its users such as phone numbers, email addresses, location info and saved snaps.
Why the access to user information is provided to Snapchat employees and how well the info is handled afterward is not yet known.
However, the company states that it offers controlled access to its employees for development purposes and the story published in the MotherBoard is completely false.
Coming to the second news which is trending now on Google and related to Cybersecurity, a research conducted by a security analyst named Filippo Cavallarin states that a bug in MacOs is allowing hackers to bypass the Gatekeeper Security functionality in the Apple’s operating system and is permitting them to install malware without a permission request.
Technically speaking, the Gatekeeper tool verifies the apps downloaded onto the MacOs and prevents them from running the app without the permission of the user. As network shares don’t come into the checking radar of Gatekeeper, any hacker can target a victim with a maliciously crafted ZIP file which could then lead the hacker into a hacker-owned site tricking them to download a virus masqueraded document folder.
Cavallarin said that the issue was brought to the notice of Apple Inc in Feb this year. But a fix to it hasn’t been released yet.
The Dutch Intelligence Service (MIVD) has issued a cyber threat alert last week stating that spying campaigns launched by China and Russia were posing as a great threat to the country’s national infrastructure.
Netherlands says that Chinese military intelligence was showing a lot of interest in spying on its traditional areas of interest and Russia was also supporting it to a great extent. The Dutch have also issued a warning that country’s like Iran, North Korea, Pakistan, and Syria were also posing as cyber threats to the nation’s critical infrastructure- especially after the recent European elections 2019.
