ToTok, a popular Middle Eastern messaging app launched earlier this year, is actually a mass-surveillance tool, according to a report today from the New York Times. Pitched as a secure alternative to services such as WhatsApp and Skype, ToTok found a willing audience in the millions. But it’s said to have been designed to enable tracking conversations, ...

A cryptomining botnet operator is using an image of Taylor Swift to infect computers, embedding the malicious code in the image itself. The botnet, primarily known as MyKings although also known by some security firms as DarkCloud and Smominru, targets Windows-based servers. Those servers are hosting a variety of services, including MySQL, MS-SQL, Telnet, ssh, IPC, ...

An unsecured database with account details relating to 267 million Facebook Inc. users has been found online and has already been shared on a hacking forum. Discovered and publicized today by security researcher Bob Diachenko, the Elasticsearch database included Facebook user IDs, phone numbers, full names and a time stamp. Where the data comes from, however, ...

Artificial intelligence-powered contract management startup Evisort Inc. has raised $15 million in new funding, the company announced today. The Series A round was led by M12, Microsoft Corp.’s venture fund and included Amity Ventures and Serra Ventures. The money will be used to hire more people, expand product offerings, enhance its customer experience and launch a new ...

Nearly 173 million user records stolen from online games maker Zynga Inc. have found their way online. The theft of the data, which includes usernames, email addresses and encrypted passwords, was detailed today by breach monitoring site Have I Been Pwned, which added the data to its database of breached credentials. The hack took place in September, with ...

Honda Motor Co. has been found to exposing customer data on an unsecured Elasticsearch database for the second time this year, though this time around the number of records exposed is in dispute. The exposed database, discovered and publicized today by security researcher Bob Diachenko Dec. 11, is described as including 976 million records of which Diachenko claims ...

Edge data processing startup Teraki GmbH said today it has raised $11 million in new funding to accelerate its move into the automotive electronics market and expand into other sectors that are facing a rise in data demands. The venture capital round was led by Horizons Ventures and included State Auto Labs Fund, Bright Success Capital, Castor Ventures, ...

Facebook Inc. today said it has acquired Spanish cloud gaming company PlayGiga for about €70 million ($78 million) as it looks to expand into the gaming market. Founded in 2013, PlayGiga offers a premium streaming game service that works on both Windows and macOS computers as well as some smart televisions. Customers sign up for a subscription, which ...

Uber Technologies Inc. is expanding its Uber Works temporary labor hire service to Miami, Florida, after launching the service in Chicago in October. The on-demand labor hiring app matches people looking for shift work with companies that need temporary employees. Designed to provide “more clarity” in the temp hiring market, Uber Works allows workers to see all ...

The Lazarus Group, the North Korean-linked hacking group believed to be behind in the spread of the WannaCry ransomware in 2017 and linked to a campaign targeting banks and financial institutions in 2018, is back again. Now it’s targeting Linux systems alongside Windows. The new Lazarus campaign, detailed today by Qihoo 360 Netlab researchers, uses a remote-access Trojan virus dubbed Dacls. First detected in May, ...