Have you heard of FTX? One of the subjects I like to follow is the dark side of crypto. Not Cryptograpy, but crypto currrencies!
Here’s another bit of fallout from the FTX scandal. Temasek is the Singaporean entity responsible for investing state funds. I suppose we could call this a “sovereign wealth fund”. They had invested 0.09% of their funds in FTX. They lost it all.
Now, 0.09% sounds like a rounding error, but in this case it represents $275 million! As a result, the people responsible for that investing debacle have taken a self-imposed pay cut:
Temasek cuts pay of employees behind failed $275mn bet on FTX
Now that’s not earthshaking news. And I assume everyone has heard of FTX. If you haven’t it was hot news a short while ago. Here’s some actual security news:
Travel-Themed Phishing, BEC Campaigns Get Smarter as Summer Season Arrives
Just in time for summer, hackers are shifting some efforts to susceptible summer season travelers. Big if true, the article starts out making this claim:
“A recent survey from McAfee found that nearly a third (30%) of adults have fallen victim or know someone who has fallen victim to an online scam when bargain hunting for travel deals, with a full two-thirds of victims losing up to $1,000.”
This isn’t overall online scams, this is just scams related to travel. The article goes on to say that a common scam is a purported “email from HR” asking you to sign up for time off during the travel season.
Sigh. The article notes that scammers are using ChatGPT to perfect their English. This is allowing them to make deceptive messages that don’t have the obvious spelling mistake, or just strange grammar. Often we rely on our intuition about grammar to begin to suspect that a message is a scam. Not any more. I suppose you could ask ChatGPT if the email is a scam!
Another point they make in the article is this:
“He says the most notable evolution of travel-based scams is the transition from email and Web-based threats to mobile app threats and threats on social media.”
“Mobile app threats” includes SMS threats. We are so accustomed to being in quick conversations by SMS, we need to slow down when getting texts from a travel organization you might hold a ticket or booking with.
There’s a part of the article that says never to connect to public Wi-Fi. I don’t know. I use a VPN, I don’t travel much so airports and planes are not an issue for me. But at the doctor’s office, I’ll connect and check messages. What do you think? I assume most of the world connects to public Wi-Fi when traveling.
Here’s another article from Forbes with a lot of stats about how people use public Wi-Fi. They claim that 40% of people use a VPN on public Wi-Fi. I don’t believe it. Forbes probably has more technically sophisticated users that are more familiar with VPNs.
I think there’s a fair share of people who have at least a vague idea of what a VPN is — but if only a fraction of them use a VPN on public Wi-Fi, that leaves a lot of targets out there.
One other claim they make in the article is that a similar 40% of people have been compromised on a public network — that they know of. This was a survey, I’d rather be able to read server stats.
I’m gonna wrap this up, if anyone finds some server-based stats about VPN use please post them, thanks.
Today’s featured image: “FTX Bankruptcy” by Bybit.com is licensed under CC BY 2.0.