Skip to main content

E2E Encryption Could Make WhatsApp a Spam Magnet

Facebook's WhatsApp last week
announced it would roll out end-to-end encryption for its users to better protect their privacy, but the move could make the service more attractive to spammers,too.

While encryption can safeguard
information from data thieves, it also can block data protectors from detecting malicious activity on their networks.

"WhatsApp's encryption policy is a win for privacy advocates, but it will not stop the growth of spam on the platform and could make the problem worse," said Simeon Coney, chief strategy officer for
AdaptiveMobile.

"WhatsApp has always had limited spam control in place," he told TechNewsWorld, "and encryption will make detecting spam and malicious links with malware that
much more difficult."

Spam Magnet
Over the last three to four years, mobile carriers have made it harder for spammers to deliver their junk messages,Coney noted. That's prodded them to look for greener pastures.

"We've seen spammers move from
services like SMS, MMS and RCS to
services like WhatsApp," he said.

Not only does it cost spammers less to spew their rubbish on WhatsApp, but it's easier to find targets there.

"WhatsApp is a very friendly service to spammers because it allows them to validate phone numbers to see if they have a WhatsApp account," Coney explained,"so they can upload large number ranges to test who has a WhatsApp account and just send bulk messages to them."

Because end-to-end encryption prevents protection systems from seeing what's in a spam message, they can't guard against
malicious activity like phishing, account hijacking, spam and malware.

"It's simple economics," Coney said. "As certain channels get closed off to these spammers, they're finding other ways to reach their targets. They only make money if they get their messages through and they get a reasonable conversion rate."

Making Sense of Mossack Fonseca
Data
If you're a journalist and someone drops 2.6 TB of hot data in your lap, where do you begin to make sense of it?

For the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists, the answer was Nuix.

Nuix provides services for turning large pots of data into searchable pools of information.

With its software, which the company donated to the ICIJ and the German newspaper Süddeutsche Zeitung, the investigative journalists were able to process, index and analyze the Panama Papers, 11.5 million documents taken from the Panama offices of Mossack Fonseca, an international law firm and a major
player in the offshore asset industry.

Much of the data in the dump was scanned documents, which were turned into searchable information with Nuix's optical character recognition software. Other
Nuix analytical tools helped identify and cross-reference Mossack Fonseca clients throughout the document cache.

1,500 Data Types
Nuix's search technology was developed in 2000 at the request of the Australian government. "They had a huge cache of Lotus Notes emails, and they didn't have a way to tag them, format them and make
them easily searchable," said Keith Lowry,Nuix's senior vice president of threat intelligence and a former chief of staff at the U.S. Department of Defense.

"Over the years, we have been able to absorb a lot more types of information,"he told TechNewsWorld. "It has grown to
the point where we can natively ingest over 1,500 different file types and flatten the data and make it presentable to whomever is analyzing the data."

Although 2.6 TB of data is immense by journalistic standards, it's only a medium-sized data set compared to some Nuix has been enlisted to massage in its e-discovery and regulatory investigative work. "On
any given day, our software is sorting through petabytes of data," Lowry said.

Nuix gave the ICIJ and Süddeutsche
Zeitung technical assistance in processing the data stolen from Mossack Fonseca,but no employees ever handled the data, the company said.

"We didn't participate in the collection of the data," Lowry said. "We just processed it for them."

Source: technewsworld

For more on this, click www.technewsworld.com/story/E2E-Encryption-Could-Make-WhatsApp-a-Spam-Magnet-83370.html
www.josiahdele.blogspot.com

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Windows 10 now on 600 million machines.

Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella told shareholders that Windows 10 has now passed 600 million monthly active users, picking up 100 million since May of this year. This number counts all Windows 10 devices used over a 28-day period. While most of these will be PCs, there are other things in the mix there: a few million Xbox Ones, a few million Windows 10 Mobile phones, and special hardware like the HoloLens and Surface Hub. The exact mix between these categories isn't known, because Microsoft doesn't say. The company's original ambition (and sales pitch to developers) was to have one billion systems running Windows 10 within about three years of the operating system's launch. In July last year, the company acknowledged that it won't hit that target—the original plan called for  50 million or more phone sales a year , which the retreat from the phone market has made impossible. But at the current rate it should still be on track for somewhere in excess of 700 million use...

WZoneLite – A Pretty Cool WooCommerce Amazon Affiliate Plugin .

Everyone wants to make a million dollars by being a blogger. The promise of riches and internet fame is a big draw to doing it for a lot of people, and I’m sorry to say that the reality of being a blogger (even a professional blogger!) is not quite…as financially lucrative as all that. But that’s not to say that it  can’t be –one of the best ways to start your empire is with an Amazon affiliate plugin. For me, the Amazon Associates program has been one of the biggest earners for me over the years. Not only are there CPM ads like Google Adsense (you know, the normal banner ads we all love to hate), but any time someone clicks a link from your site, you get a percentage of  anything  they buy while the token from your site lasts in their browser. If they buy a song, you get a few cents. If they buy a new MacBook Pro and iPhone? You get…a lot more cents. With that in mind, WZoneLite is a  pretty cool WooCommerce Amazon affiliate plugin that syncs everything together s...

Game-changing SEO trends that will dominate 2018.

Changing nature of the rules of the game. As search engines strive to improve the quality of search results, some ranking factors shift shapes, others fall into oblivion, and completely new ones arise out of nowhere. To help you stay ahead of the game in 2018, here’s a list of the most prominent trends that are gaining momentum, with tips on how you can prepare for each. 1. The rise of SERP features Are you assuming a #1 organic ranking is  the  way to get as much traffic as possible? Think again. Increasingly, SERP features (local packs, Knowledge panels, featured snippets and so on) are stealing searchers’ attention and clicks from organic listings. And it’s only fair if you consider the evolution the Google SERP has been through. It has gone all the way from “10 blue links”… … to something that makes you feel like you’re part of a Brazilian carnival. What can you do about it? With the evolution of SERP features, it’s critical that you (a) track your rankings within...