BREAKING NEWS
Value of Bitcoin Now Higher Than $4000
![Cryptocurrency has been the buzzword recently, but exactly how safe it is ?](https://d23vnjd1yg7tth.cloudfront.net/wp-content/uploads/2017/08/value-of-Bitcoin.jpg)
via Getty ImagesThe value of bitcoin, easily the most well-known of the cryptocurrencies, peaked at a high of $4225.40 on Saturday 12 August 2017.
The price dropped a little over the weekend, and is currently hovering just over $4100, according to reports from Coindesk.
The value of Bitcoin has been climbing throughout 2017, and has quadrupled in value since the start of the year, with the value almost doubling in August. Until now, Bitcoin had never managed to surpass the $3000 mark.
Bitcoin has been in rough waters during this month as a result of a fork, with the Bitcoin Cash spin-off emerging to challenge Bitcoin in a move that could have seen the value plummeting.
Despite tension amongst investors, Bitcoin demonstrated its resilience and only increased in value, whilst the competing fork Bitcoin Cash is currently floating far below it’s peak price.
Projections from Goldman Sachs estimate that the value of Bitcoin will top out just below $5000, and may well plummet to half that value immediately after.
This analysis is based on the ‘Elliot Wave’ principle, a trend in financial statistics that predicts; after five consecutive surges in price due to market impulses a product will enter a ‘corrective’ phase and it’s value and growth will normalize.
However, unlike most currencies, the total circulation of Bitcoin is fixed at 21 million digital Bitcoins. This suggests that as larger institutions and more people accept cryptocurrencies as an aspect of daily life, they will become far more in demand than could ever hope to be supplied. This will skyrocket the value of Bitcoin.
Many groups are already showing significant interest in securing vast quantities of Bitcoin, perhaps hoping to cash out at the perfect opportunity or those who need to hide their activities from increasingly pervasive state and corporate surveillance.
BREAKING NEWS
UK Fines Facebook over Cambridge Analytica Scandal
![UK-Fines-Facebook-over-Cambridge-Analytica-Scandal](https://d23vnjd1yg7tth.cloudfront.net/wp-content/uploads/2018/10/UK-Fines-Facebook-over-Cambridge-Analytica-Scandal.jpg)
UK Fines Facebook over Cambridge Analytica Scandal. The UK has hit Facebook a fine of $645,000 for the Cambridge Analytica Scandal. It was revealed earlier this year that they had harvested the personal data of millions of profiles without the user’s consent and used it for political purposes. It is estimated that 87 million users were affected.
The fine has been enforced by the UK’s Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) and was calculated using a pre-GDPR formula for data breach fines. Using the UK’s old Data Protection Act to fine Facebook, rather than GDPR they can only give a maximum penalty of £500,000, which is equal to what the social media giant earns every 18 minutes.
GDPR rules dictate a maximum fine of 4% of annual global turnover, which would be $1.6 billion. Unfortunately the the GDPR regulation wasn’t in place when the Cambridge Analytica story broke, coming into force in May 2018.
The UK investigation concluded that Facebook’s APIs had been allowing developers access to users information without them providing proper consent, for a long period of time between 2007 and 2014. Once they realized this loophole existed and patched it up, they did nothing to investigate the data compromised or ensure it was deleted.
[FACEBOOK] should have known better and it should have done better… We considered these contraventions to be so serious we imposed the maximum penalty under the previous legislation. The fine would inevitably have been significantly higher under the GDPR
Information Commissioner Elizabeth Denham said in a statement
Facebook has said they are reviewing the ICO’s findings and stated they “respectfully disagree” with some of the report, but admit they should have done more to protect users data. They also added that they found no evidence that British users profile information was shared with Cambridge Analytica.
BREAKING NEWS
Libssh Security Flaw leaves thousands of servers vulnerable to hijacking
![Libssh Security Flaw leaves thousands of servers vulnerable to hijacking](https://d23vnjd1yg7tth.cloudfront.net/wp-content/uploads/2018/10/Libssh-Security-Flaw-leaves-thousands-of-servers-vulnerable-to-hijacking.jpg)
Libssh Security Flaw leaves thousands of servers vulnerable to hijacking. A security flaw in libssh leaves thousands, and potentially more, servers vulnerable to an attack. Libssh is a multiplatform C library which allows users to remotely execute programs, transfer files, manage public keys and use a secure and transparent tunnel.
The security flaw, discovered by Peter Winter-Smith from NCC Group, allows a hacker to bypass the authentication process on the servers and gain access to the system without having to enter a password.
An attacker can do this by sending the SSH server “SSH2_MSG_USERAUTH_SUCCESS” message instead of the “SSH2_MSG_USERAUTH_REQUEST” message that a server usually expects and which libssh uses as a sign that an authentication procedure needs to initiate.
The libssh system will treat this message to mean the authentication has already taken place and allow the attacker access to the server. The flaw (CVE-2018-10933) was released in January 2014 in release 0.6.0.
It’s estimated that the vulnerability currently affects at least 3000 servers, however this is based on a small search and the scale of the problem is not yet known. There were concerns that the popular version control site for developers to work collaboratively on projects, GitHub, was affected but they have released a statement denying this. Github claims the way they use libssh means they are not vulnerable to this exploit.
“We use a custom version of libssh; SSH2_MSG_USERAUTH_SUCCESS with the libssh server is not relied upon for pubkey-based auth, which is what we use the library for,”
a GitHub security official said on twitter
While we use libssh, we can confirm that https://t.co/0iKPk21RVu and GitHub Enterprise are unaffected by CVE-2018-10933 due to how we use the library.
— GitHub Security (@GitHubSecurity) October 16, 2018
The security flaw is only on the server side, meaning users who have a libssh based SSH client installed on their computer will be safe from potential attackers looking to exploit this vulnerability.
While there are currently no public exploits available for the vulnerability, they are easy to put together so these are likely to pop up online in the coming days and weeks.
The team at libssh released versions 0.8.4 and 0.7.6 yesterday to handle this bug.
BREAKING NEWS
Ad Clicker Disguised as a Google Photos App has been Hosted on Microsoft Store.
![Ad Clicker Disguised as a Google Photos App has been Hosted on Microsoft Store](https://d23vnjd1yg7tth.cloudfront.net/wp-content/uploads/2018/10/Ad-Clicker-Disguised-as-a-Google-Photos-App-has-been-Hosted-on-Microsoft-Store.jpg)
Ad Clicker Disguised as a Google Photos App has been Hosted on Microsoft Store.
A malicious app called “Album by Google Photos” was found to be hosted on the Microsoft store. The app was pretending to be part of Google Photos, but was in fact an ad clicker that generates hidden adverts within the Windows 10 Operating System.
The ad clicker app seemed credible to users because of its name, and also the fact it claimed to be created by Google LLC, Google’s actual Microsoft store account is Google Inc, but it looks unsuspecting to users. Microsoft came under some criticism for not realising the app was actually malicious software since the user reviews did highlight that the app was fake, with plenty of 1* reviews. One review states “ My paid Anti-malware solution detected several attempts to download malware by this app. Watch out”. The App was first released on the Microsoft store in May.
What did the application do?
The “Album by Google Photos” app is a Progressive Web Application (PWA), which acts as the front end for Google Photos and includes a legitimate login screen. Hidden in the app bundle is also an ad clicker which runs in the background and generates income for the app developers.
The app connects to ad URLS, and the ads were very similar to what users would see from typical adware, including tech support scams, random chrome extensions, fake flash and java installs and general low-quality sites.
Microsoft haven’t commented how this app managed to pass the Microsoft review process before ending up on the store. This is somewhat concerning since it could mean other malicious apps of a similar nature have flown under the radar and are still infecting user’s computers. We are waiting for Microsoft to comment on the issue.
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