Facebook releases tool to “clear” personal data it’s collected about you
23 towns in Texas hit with cryptolocker ransomware
There’s now a YubiKey with Lightning & USB-C in the one unit
Hamas and other terrorist groups using Bitcoin to solicit donations
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Promised by Zuck in May 2018, Facebook's finally launched a tool to clear your Facebook data. Sounds good right? Well, it doesn't actually "clear" all the data Facebook has on you. It simply disconnects it from your profile rather than actually deleting it from Facebook's servers. Bit of a dick move, but at least you'll be able to visit a single place where you can see all the data Facebook hoarded about you over the years, including the data it gathers from "off Facebook activity" (i.e: which companies have sent data on you to Facebook). It's launching in Ireland, Spain and South Korea first, then the rest of the world "over the coming months".
Someone's obviously not familiar with the phrase "don't mess with Texas", as 23 towns in the US state have been hit with a coordinated ransomware attack from a single entity. The Texas Department of Information Resources (DIR) isn't stating which towns or departments they are, but they've been offline since Friday according to DIR. These 23 towns join the other 22 towns hit by ransomware attacks on government departments running important city infrastructure on outdated IT systems. Local governments are such juicy targets for hackers, I'm surprised it isn't happening more often to be honest.
Good news for those of you suffering Apple induced Stockholm Syndrome - Yubico has a hardware two-factor authentication device with USB-C and Lightning connectors. It's called the YubiKey 5Ci and is small enough to go on a keyring. It means you can plug this thing into your iPhone and use it to log in to any iOS app that supports it. Not many support it now (1Password, Bitwarden and Lastpass are about it), but I'm sure the Google apps will support it soon. If you use the Brave browser instead of Safari, you can log in to websites that support hardware 2FA as well.
Hamas is apparently using Bitcoin to get donations from supporters. The article is very light on technical details but it's still kinda interesting (I personally like the images). Bitcoin can be made very difficult to trace, and there are alternative cryptocurrencies aimed at privacy (zCash/Monero) but the hard part would be getting cash for your Bitcoin. I don't know how they do that without getting busted. I love the line, "The Qassam Brigades did not reply to several requests for comment", yeah, no shit dude, as if they're gonna reply back to the NYT and explain how to launder money they use to fund their "activities".
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