Plus: Vista Equity Partners set to acquire KnowBe4 for $4.2B
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TikTok wanted to spy on certain American citizens, a new report claims. TikTok has denied the claims. More: - A Forbes report claims that ByteDance's Internal Audit and Risk Control department planned on tracking the location of several unnamed U.S. citizens. ByteDance is TikTok's parent company.
- The reports were denied by the company, claiming that the only reason the company targets its users and collects data such as their I.P. address is to serve them personalized ads.
- The Forbes report, however, claims that it possesses information that leads them to believe this is not what the company's intentions were.
- The Internal Audit and Risk Control team runs audits and investigations of TikTok and ByteDance employees for conflicts of interest, misuse of company resources, and leaks of confidential information. The U.S. citizens the company allegedly tried to spy on, however, were not former TikTok employees.
Zoom Out: - TikTok's security protocols have long been a topic of debate for countries and industry researchers. India decided to ban the app in 2020, together with nearly 60 other Chinese apps. The Indian government stated that security concerns were the primary reason for the ban.
- Former president Donald Trump tried to ban the app through an executive order, but the ban was never implemented due to many legal hurdles. A possible acquisition of ByteDance's U.S. operations by Microsoft was also mentioned but never came to fruition.
- President Biden has created a draft agreement with ByteDance that would enable U.S. National Security agencies to determine whether the app poses a threat to the privacy of U.S. citizens by having the company send data to the government and the respective agencies.
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Hackers could gain access to home camera systems due to a new bug tracked by researchers. The flaw is present in Abode's all-in-one camera system. More: - The bug was found by the research team at Cisco.
- The flaw is being tracked as CVE-2022-27805 and has a CVSS rating of 9.8.
- If a threat actor successfully abuses the flaw, they could gain remote access to the device.
- This flaw is more likely to be breached if a threat actor has access to the local network where the target is connected or if they steal the login credentials for the camera system application.
Zoom Out: - Hackers breached thousands of cameras operated by Verkada back in early 2021. The victims included hospitals, companies, schools, prisons, etc.
- Threat actors have also managed to breach Ring cameras by breaking users' login credentials.
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Microsoft has admitted that due to its own mistake, more than 65,000 companies have had their data leaked. The mistake involved the Azure cloud service. More: - Threat actors were able to steal sensitive data such as names, emails, phone numbers, etc.
- The tens of thousands of affected companies are located in 111 countries and have had a combined 2.4TB of data leaked. This data spans five years, from 2017 to 2022.
- Microsoft has stated that some reports of potentially stolen data are exaggerated, but researchers believe that the statistics are correct.
- The tech giant is currently in the process of notifying all of the affected companies about the data leak.
Zoom Out: - Microsoft has been targeted by hackers many times this year. The company's software was famously hacked six times in three days during a hackathon, a trend that followed the company with real threat actors too.
- SQL Servers used by Microsoft were breached by threat actors only a few weeks ago, resulting in possibly grave security consequences due to the sensitive nature of the data stored on the servers.
- The tech company was also breached by the hacker group Lapsus$, resulting in data leaks.
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Vista Equity Partners is set to acquire KnowBe4 for $4.2B. The latter is based in Florida. More: - The deal is structured in all cash and will be completed in H1 2023.
- KnowBe4 offers an anti-phishing platform as well as security training for public and private sector employees.
- The company claims its product is used by more than 52,000 organizations globally.
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Security startup Velotix has raised a $10M funding round. The company is based in Tel Aviv, Israel. More: - Capri Ventures led the funding round for Velotix.
- The company offers a security software product that helps companies monitor those who are compliant with their security rules and those who have access to delicate information in their systems.
- Velotix claims that its proprietary Artificial Intelligence will help enterprises avoid unnecessary risk and maximize their efficiency, all while using the safest security standards today.
- The startup stated that it is going to use the funding for further international expansion and product development.
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- Clearview AI has been fined $19M for breaching French privacy laws. French data protection authority CNIL stated that the company breached GDPR laws by processing customer data unlawfully.
- A new flaw tracked as CVE-2022-22954 could enable hackers to remotely drop several injection tools and launch DDoS attacks against its targets. The flaw abuses the infamous VMware error.
- Wholesale company Metro has been hit by a cyberattack that has shut down its payment systems.
- The FBI has released a new statement that warns companies yet again of increased Iranian threat actor activity. The threat actors are likely to attempt breaches that cause financial loss and reputation damage.
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 |  | Arbër is an Inside writer who also has experience in entrepreneurship. He has experience covering Consumer Tech, Venture Capital, NFTs, Crypto, etc. Arbër holds a Bachelor's degree in Business from XAMK University in Finland. When he is not reading(and writing) business news, he chooses to watch sports or anime...and then read news about sports or anime. |   | | Editor | Aaron Crutchfield is based in the high desert of California. Over the last two decades, he has spent time writing and editing at various local newspapers and defense contractors in California. When he's not working, he can often be found looking at the latest memes with his kids or working on his 1962 and 1972 Fords. | |
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