British cybersecurity officials are warning that hacking groups linked to Russia and Iran are duping people into clicking malicious links by impersonating journalists and experts. From a report: The hackers, who have similar goals but are said to be working separately, have sought to steal emails from people working in academia, defense, the media and government, as well as from activists and non-governmental organizations, according to an advisory released on Thursday by the UK’s National Cyber Security Centre. “These campaigns by threat actors based in Russia and Iran continue to ruthlessly pursue their targets in an attempt to steal online credentials and compromise potentially sensitive systems,” said Paul Chichester, the center’s director of operations. “We strongly encourage organizations and individuals to remain vigilant to potential approaches and follow the mitigation advice in the advisory to protect themselves online.”

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Source: Slashdot – Russian, Iranian Hackers Pose as Journalists in Emails, UK Says

An anonymous reader quotes a report from TechCrunch: If you recently made a purchase from an overseas online store selling knockoff clothes and goods, there’s a chance your credit card number and personal information were exposed. Since January 6, a database containing hundreds of thousands of unencrypted credit card numbers and corresponding cardholders’ information was spilling onto the open web. At the time it was pulled offline on Tuesday, the database had about 330,000 credit card numbers, cardholder names, and full billing addresses — and rising in real-time as customers placed new orders. The data contained all the information that a criminal would need to make fraudulent transactions and purchases using a cardholder’s information.

The credit card numbers belong to customers who made purchases through a network of near-identical online stores claiming to sell designer goods and apparel. But the stores had the same security problem in common: Any time a customer made a purchase, their credit card data and billing information was saved in a database, which was left exposed to the internet without a password. Anyone who knew the IP address of the database could access reams of unencrypted financial data. Anurag Sen, a good-faith security researcher, found the exposed credit card records and asked TechCrunch for help in reporting it to its owner. Sen has a respectable track record of scanning the internet looking for exposed servers and inadvertently published data, and reporting it to companies to get their systems secured.

But in this case, Sen wasn’t the first person to discover the spilling data. According to a ransom note left behind on the exposed database, someone else had found the spilling data and, instead of trying to identify the owner and responsibly reporting the spill, the unnamed person instead claimed to have taken a copy of the entire database’s contents of credit card data and would return it in exchange for a small sum of cryptocurrency. A review of the data by TechCrunch shows most of the credit card numbers are owned by cardholders in the United States. […] Internet records showed that the database was operated by a customer of Tencent, whose cloud services were used to host the database. TechCrunch contacted Tencent about its customer’s database leaking credit card information, and the company responded quickly. The customer’s database went offline a short time later. Many of the stores leaking customers’ information claim to operate out of Hong Kong and were set up in the past few weeks. Some of the websites include: spraygroundusa.com, ihuahebuy.com, igoodlinks.com, ibuysbuy.com, lichengshop.com, hzoushop.com, goldlyshop.com, haohangshop.com, twinklebubble.store, and spendidbuy.com.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Source: Slashdot – A Network of Knockoff Apparel Stores Exposed 330,000 Customer Credit Cards

State Sen. Wendy Rogers (R-AZ) has introduced a set of bills aimed at making bitcoin legal tender in Arizona and allowing state agencies to accept bitcoin. Bitcoin Magazine reports: The proposed legislation (PDF) aims to recognize bitcoin as a legal form of currency in Arizona, allowing it to be used to pay for debts, taxes and other financial obligations. This would mean that all transactions that are currently done in U.S. dollars could potentially be done with bitcoin, and individuals and businesses would have the option to use bitcoin as they see fit. Specifically mentioning bitcoin alone, the legal tender bill defines bitcoin as, “the decentralized, peer-to-peer digital currency in which a record of transactions is maintained on the Bitcoin blockchain and new units of currency are generated by the computational solution of mathematical problems and that operates independently of a central bank.”

The acceptance bill is more broad, saying that, “A state agency may enter into an agreement with a cryptocurrency issuer to provide a method to accept cryptocurrency as a payment method of fines, civil penalties or other penalties, rent, rates, taxes, fees, charges, revenue, financial obligations and special assessments to pay any amount due to that agency or this state.” The report notes that Sen. Rogers introduced the same amendment in January 2022, but it “died by the second reading.”

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Source: Slashdot – Arizona Senator Introduces Bill To Make Bitcoin Legal Tender In the State

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Motherboard, written by Katie Way: MILF Manor is a reality TV show made to be dissected on the internet. Everything, from its ripped-from-30-Rock title to the Oedipal set-up of mothers and their sons thrown into the same “dating pool,” is so patently outrageous that it boomerangs back into normalcy — of course these mothers need to participate in a blindfolded contest to identify their sons by their abs alone. But MILF Manor’s most understated quirk is the one that sticks out to me: There’s no tanned, vaguely handsome man with veneers and a dress shirt directing the festivities. Instead, contestants receive alerts and directions via text, on iPhones in magenta cases that seem to be provided by the producers. Like more and more reality TV competition shows, there’s no actual host.

By my estimation, Netflix’s The Circle kicked the trend off in 2020. Its contestants, who compete to create the most lovable social media presence in physical isolation, receive prompts and challenges from a big-screen TV in their living quarters. Pressure Cooker, a more recent offering from the streaming giant, is a cooking competition show where the host is replaced by a kitchen ticket printer: Competitions receive challenge instructions and the results of game-ending votes in the same way chefs take orders from their diners. The Button, a YouTube speed dating series by the production company Cut, goes a step further with the introduction of a large talking button that cracks jokes and prompts daters to ask each other cringe-worthy questions until one of them presses it, ending the date and sending in another option.

Why axe the role of host when it’s been a staple of the formula for so long? It could be a sign of the recession. Reality TV competition shows are famously among the cheapest television to produce, but if I’ve learned anything about business, it’s that executives have never met a corner they’re not dying to cut. It could also be that the role of reality TV host is not attracting the same iconic cultural figures it once was, when the subgenre exploded in popularity in the early 2000s. […] At the core, though, I believe there’s something more insidious at play: Robots are once again stealing jobs from red-blooded human workers. Only this time, instead of factory linemen or fast food cashiers, these laborers are C-List comedians and guys who are incredibly symmetrical but not quite hot. (Again, Jeff Probst, I am not talking about you!) Sure, I know machine intelligence doesn’t experience emotion — yet! — and I know that all of these robo-hosts are likely operated by producers — for now! But isn’t toying with people in a high-stress, high-stakes situation, the exact job description of a reality competition host, the absolute dream gig for a robot? Seems a little too perfect. “Experts already predict that AI and machine learning could replace people working as couriers, investment analysts, and customer service representatives,” concludes Way. “Adding reality competition show hosts to that list means the creep into our cultural landscape has already started, which is a distinctly scary thought, in my book. Our flesh is weak, our MILFs are fragile, and we are so, so vulnerable to the clinical calculations of our machine overlords — uh, I mean, hosts.”

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Source: Slashdot – Even Reality TV Hosts Are Being Replaced By Robots