Hackers breach cameras at banks, jails, Tesla and more

SAN FRANCISCO, United States - A US hacker collective on Tuesday claimed to have tapped into footage from 150,000 security cameras at banks, jails, schools, carmaker Tesla and other sites to expose "the surveillance state."

Images captured from hacked surveillance video were posted on Twitter with an #OperationPanopticon hashtag.

"What if we just absolutely ended surveillance capitalism in two days?" a purported member of a group called APT-69420 Arson Cats asked amid a string of tweeted images.

"This is the tip of the tip of the tip of the iceberg."

The hacker group claimed to have ferreted out credentials of a high level administrator account at Silicon Valley firm Verkada, which runs a platform operating security systems online.

"We have disabled all internal administrator accounts to prevent any unauthorized access," a Verkada spokesperson said in response to an AFP inquiry.

"Our internal security team and external security firm are investigating the scale and scope of this issue, and we have notified law enforcement."

Verkada added that it has notified companies that rely on its platform.

Surveillance camera imagery posted on Twitter included a jail cell block and a man wearing a fake beard dancing in a bank storage room.

The Verkada breach shows the risk of outsourcing security surveillance to companies in the internet cloud, according to Rick Holland, chief information security officer at Digital Shadows, a risk protection firm.

"Verkada positions itself as a 'more secure, scalable' alternative to on-premises network video recorders," Holland said.

"You don't always get more secure when you outsource your security to a third party."

He said he expected the breach to trigger investigations by privacy regulators in the US and Europe.

Agence France-Presse

Facebook out to loosen Apple's grip on App Store: report

SAN FRANCISCO, United States - Facebook is readying a lawsuit aimed at loosening Apple's grip on the App Store that serves as an exclusive gateway onto iPhones, a tech news outlet reported on Thursday.

The leading social network is preparing an anti-trust civil suit accusing Apple of abusing its control of the App Store by requiring outside developers to abide by rules not applied to its own software, The Information reported.

"As we have said repeatedly, we believe Apple is behaving anti-competitively by using their control of the App Store to benefit their bottom line at the expense of app developers and small businesses," Facebook told AFP, declining to confirm or deny the report.

Apple did not reply to a request for comment.

The dispute between the tech giants centers on changes in the latest version of Apple's iOS operating software, which include a tracking transparency feature that Facebook claims will cripple its ability to serve up targeted ads.

Facebook chief executive Mark Zuckerberg said during a conference call with investors on Wednesday that Apple was becoming one of his company's biggest competitors.

"Apple has every incentive to use their dominant platform position to interfere with how our apps and other apps work, which they regularly do to preference their own," Zuckerberg said.

"Apple may say that they're doing this to help people but the moves clearly track their competitive interests."

Facebook is not alone among those complaining about how Apple rules the App Store, where it collects 30 percent of sales or subscription fees third-party offerings.

Some developers say Apple takes too big a bite of the revenue and maintains rigid policies that may hamstring services competing with those of the iPhone maker. Fortnite-maker Epic Games has taken Apple to court over the practice.

Apple has argued its App Store delivers billions to independent developers, and that its practices are reasonable compared with other digital marketplaces.

Agence France-Presse

Amazon, Apple stay away from new French initiative to set principles for Big Tech

PARIS - US tech giants Amazon and Apple have not signed up to a new French initiative to get global tech companies to publicly commit to principles including paying their fair share of taxes, government officials said on Monday.

French President Emmanuel Macron has sought for the past three years to cajole tech giants into collaborating with governments on a series of global challenges such as fighting hate speech online, preserving privacy or contributing to state coffers.

Amid a public outcry about technology groups' good fortunes during the coronavirus pandemic this year, Macron's advisers said on Monday that the president had asked tech companies to sign up to a new initiative called "Tech for Good Call" underlining principles for the post-COVID world.

The French government released a list of 75 executives of tech companies that had signed up to the initiative so far, including Google CEO Sundar Pichai, Facebook's Mark Zuckerberg and Microsoft President Brad Smith. Apple and Amazon were notably absent from the list.

Apple declined to comment, but French officials said talks with the group were ongoing and they could still join the initiative, details of which will be published officially by Tuesday. A representative for Amazon, which French officials said had declined to join the initiative, did not return a request for comment.

"The goal is also to... observe objectively those who decide to play ball and align their interest with individuals and societies and those who stay out of this joint movement," a presidential adviser told a press briefing.

Leading tech executives such as Facebook's Zuckerberg attended the so-called "Tech for Good" summit hosted by the French president at the Elysee Palace in 2018, which gave birth to working groups on issues that have become sources of tension between governments and "Big Tech".

The new initiative is not legally binding, but French officials said Macron will use it as a tool to influence upcoming negotiations at global forums on regulating Big Tech.

The US and European governments have clashed over the issue of taxing Big Tech during talks at the OECD.

Signatories to the "Tech for Good Call" commit to "contribute fairly to the taxes in countries where (they) operate"; prevent the dissemination of "child sexual abuse material, terrorist or extreme violence online contents"; and "support the ecological transition", among other things.

(Reporting by Michel Rose; additional reporting by Mathieu Rosemain; Editing by Susan Fenton)

Agence France-Presse

Facebook listened to users' conversations: report

SAN FRANCISCO -- Facebook has paid hundreds of contractors to listen to and transcribe snippets of users' conversations, US media reported on Tuesday, amid heightened scrutiny of the social network's data collection practices.

Facebook acknowledged the transcriptions, which were first reported by Bloomberg, telling the news agency in a statement that they were made with users' permission, but that the practice has nonetheless been stopped.

"Much like Apple and Google, we paused human review of audio more than a week ago," the company said.

Facebook did not respond to a request for comment from AFP.

The contractors were testing the ability of the social network's artificial intelligence to interpret messages, and the only users affected were those on Facebook Messenger app who had opted to have their voice chats transcribed.

Bloomberg said the contractors working on the project were "rattled" by listening to private audio whose origin wasn't disclosed and which sometimes contained vulgar content.

The contractors also weren't told the reason why they were doing the transcribing, the news agency reported.

Amazon, Apple and Google -- all companies offering voice assistants -- have previously acknowledged collecting conversations for the purpose of improving their products.

Apple and Google have in recent weeks said they've halted the practice, while Amazon gives users the option of blocking the collection of their voice by Alexa, the artificial intelligence driving their Echo voice assistant.

Facebook, which just settled a record $5 billion fine with the US Federal Trade Commission for misusing users' private data, has given differing responses to reports that it uses audio recordings to better target ads or make its pages more attractive.

"You're talking about this conspiracy theory that gets passed around that we listen to what's going on on your microphone and use that for ads," Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg said in US Senate testimony last year.

"We don't do that," he said.

But the company later told lawmakers in writing that it does actually collect conversations if users have specifically allowed it to do so and are using certain audio features.

The company didn't specify what it did with the audio afterwards.

source: news.abs-cbn.com