We have gathered the most important cybersecurity news of the week.
- Apple and Spotify have landed in Russia, opening their local offices.
- Google released an updated version of Chrome with fixes for vulnerabilities.
- The FBI acknowledged acquiring Pegasus spyware, but said it never used it in investigations.
The FBI confirmed the purchase of Pegasus spyware
The U.S. FBI confirmed that it purchased Pegasus spyware from the Israeli company NSO Group. The Guardian reports.
The agency said it had acquired a ‘limited license’ to access the product ‘only for testing and evaluation’ and never used it in investigations.
Earlier reports indicated that Pegasus was used for surveillance of human rights defenders, journalists and politicians around the world through hacking of iPhone and Android devices.
A disruption hit several Runet services
On Friday, 4 February, Rostelecom users reported problems accessing the Internet. Later, VKontakte reported outages, suspended trading at the SPB Exchange. Problems also affected MTS, Instagram, WhatsApp and other services.
Outages were recorded by the Downdetector service. After some time, VKontakte’s service was restored.
Pavel Durov again criticises WhatsApp security
Telegram founder Pavel Durov commented on Forbes article, which reported that Boldend, a startup, was developing tools to hack WhatsApp.
Since WhatsApp’s creation, there has hardly been a moment when it was secure: every few months researchers discover a new security flaw in the app,
wrote Durov.
Google unveils updated Chrome
The Google team released an updated Chrome 98. It fixes 27 vulnerabilities.
Eight of these were rated as high severity by the developers.
Apple and Spotify open offices in Russia under the ‘landing’ law
Apple Distribution International has met all the requirements of the so-called ‘landing’ law, according to Roskomnadzor’s list.
Apple opened an office in Russia, created a form for submitting appeals and a personal account on the Roskomnadzor site.
Another company that opened an office and registered an account on the agency’s page was Spotify.
Google, Meta, Telegram, Zoom, Viber and other services listed by Roskomnadzor have not yet established offices in Russia.
This week, Deputy Chairman of the State Duma committee on information policy, information technology and communications Anton Gorelkin expressed his view that the largest NFT marketplaces should also fall under the ‘landing’ law.
Sberbank tests potential cut-off from Microsoft and Oracle
Sberbank conducted technological drills in which it simulated disconnecting its infrastructure from reliance on foreign software vendors, including Microsoft, Nvidia, VMware, SAP, Oracle and Intel. The source is Kommersant.
Earlier, Russia often speaks about a possible disconnection from the global Internet. Authorities say the safeguards under the sovereign Runet law are meant to protect against this.
Telegram pays 11 million rubles in fines for failing to delete prohibited content in Russia
Telegram paid fines totaling 11 million rubles for failing to delete prohibited content in Russia, Interfax reports.
In December, the company also settled a debt on penalties of 15 million rubles.
As noted, Russian courts regularly fine various services for failing to remove prohibited content. Since February 1 of last year, amendments to Russia’s legislation governing the dissemination of information on social networks have taken effect.
Also on ForkLog:
- Hackers drained more than $319 million from the Wormhole cross-chain bridge pool .
- OpenSea reimbursed affected users with over $1.9 million due to a vulnerability.
- More than 90,000 BTC moved from Bitfinex’s stolen funds.
- Hackers stole NFT tokens from an NFT holder worth $2.7 million.
What to read this weekend?
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