Cambridge University academic Aleksandr Kogan developed an online personality test as a Facebook app called \u201cYourDigitalLife\u201d.<\/p>\n
The app allowed Cambridge Analytica to collect data on Facebook users who took the test.<\/p>\n
Facebook confirmed that 80 million users were affected, including 96,121 people in South Africa.<\/p>\n
Bloomberg reported that China had developed a chip<\/strong><\/a>\u00a0it implanted on Supermicro motherboards used in Amazon, Apple, and US Department of Defence servers.<\/p>\n Security experts have questioned the accuracy of the report, and Supermicro stated that an independent test found no malicious hardware in its motherboards.<\/p>\n Apple, Amazon, and Supermicro denied the story.<\/p>\n Google Project Zero researcher Jann Horn identified three types of attacks on CPUs which other researchers classified into two types of attacks – Meltdown and Spectre.<\/p>\n At the start of December, researchers released information on a new variation of the Spectre vulnerability which they said was easier to exploit. It was called\u00a0SplitSpectre.<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n While the Facebook\/Cambridge Analytica scandal dominated headlines for months, there were several other significant data leaks in 2018:<\/p>\n Financial services provider Liberty informed clients in June that it had been hit by hackers who were demanding payment for their \u201cservices.\u201d<\/p>\n Subsequent reports revealed that the attackers were demanding millions under the threat that they would release sensitive client data unless they were paid.<\/p>\n Liberty later confirmed that an email server had been compromised<\/strong><\/a> and that the attackers were trying to extort the company.<\/p>\n For nearly two years, messaging app Signal beat censors<\/strong><\/a> in Egypt, Qatar, and the UAE through a technique known as domain fronting.<\/p>\n Telegram has used a similar approach to ensure its app remains accessible in Russia, despite the regulator\u2019s shotgun approach<\/strong><\/a> to block it.<\/p>\n Google and Amazon said they never intended for domain fronting to be possible on their platforms.<\/p>\n South African developer Lionel Chetty discovered a security flaw in Pizza Hut\u2019s website which allowed users to view the information of clients who used it to place an order.<\/p>\n The flaw allowed an attacker to get a list of order numbers, then retrieve the information relating to that order \u2013 such as the client\u2019s name, delivery address, and contact information.<\/p>\n Researchers at the US Naval War College and Tel Aviv University found evidence to suggest that China Telecom is using Border Gateway Protocol (BGP) to hijack Internet traffic and route it through computers under its control.<\/p>\n The BGP hijacking conducted by China Telecom involved traffic to a \u201clarge Anglo-American bank headquarters\u201d in Italy from the United States, as well as traffic from Canada to Korean government sites.<\/p>\n The computer security world started the year off at a sprint when researchers disclosed details about processor-level vulnerabilities.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":15,"featured_media":89863,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_sma_x_autopost_status":"idle","_sma_x_autopost_error":"","_sma_x_post_id":"","_sma_facebook_post_id":"","_sma_instagram_post_id":"","_sma_threads_post_id":"","_sma_x_attempts":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[27],"tags":[35,18524],"class_list":["post-290202","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-security","tag-headline","tag-information-security-infosec"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/290202"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/15"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=290202"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/290202\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":290402,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/290202\/revisions\/290402"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/89863"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=290202"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=290202"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=290202"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"Facebook](\"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/07\/Facebook-Logo.jpg\"){kind=logo}
<\/a><\/p>\n
\nAllegations that China infiltrated Supermicro<\/a><\/h3>\n
![\"microchip](\"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/10\/microchip-in-hand.jpg\")
<\/a><\/p>\n
\nSpectre and Meltdown<\/a><\/h3>\n
![\"Meltdown](\"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/01\/Meltdown-and-spectre.jpg\")
<\/a><\/p>\n
\nMore data leaks<\/h3>\n
\n
\nLiberty hacked and extorted<\/a><\/h3>\n
![\"Malicious](\"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/04\/Malicious-email-hack.jpg\")
<\/a><\/p>\n
\nAmazon and Google crack down on domain fronting<\/a><\/h3>\n
![\"Censorship](\"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/04\/Censorship-lips-sealed-zip.jpg\")
<\/a><\/p>\n
\nSouth African developer finds Pizza Hut security flaw<\/a><\/h3>\n
![\"Pizza\"](\"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/05\/Pizza.jpg\")
<\/a><\/p>\n
\nChina reportedly hijacking Internet traffic<\/a><\/h3>\n
![\"Africa](\"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/01\/Africa-internet-connectivity.jpg\")
<\/a><\/p>\n
\nNow read: Biggest South African tech stories of 2018<\/a><\/h3>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"