News of the Cyber World

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5 Google Maps, Apple Maps and Waze tips and tricks you need to try

There are more private options. DuckDuckGo’s navigation service uses the framework of Apple Maps without all the tracking. Tap or click here to see how it works.

1. Travel incognito 

When you navigate somewhere using Google Maps, location info is saved to your profile. If you want to go somewhere without seeing it pop up on your recent places, turn on Incognito mode.

How to turn on Incognito mode on iPhone or Android:

Open Google Maps, then tap your profile picture in the top right corner.

Tap Turn on Incognito mode.

If you use Waze, your username and more may appear on a publicly available map. Friends can also see your name and photo. To stop that, you can go invisible:

Tap My Waze > Settings > Privacy.

Turn on Go invisible.

2. Use voice commands

3. Find cheaper fuel

Open the Waze app.

Tap the Where to? search bar and then tap the Gas stations icon.

Your device will start looking around for the closest stations, with prices for each one.

Open Waze, then tap My Waze.

Tap the settings icon at the top-left corner, then Gas stations.

Select Price in the Sort stations by section.

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UK firm takes on Apple iPhone 14 and Elon Musk with satellite phone

If there is no wi-fi or mobile network signal, the idea is the Bullitt phone will automatically link to one of two global satellite networks.

There is speculation that Apple's forthcoming iPhone 14 could have emergency satellite connectivity.

Mr Musk is also working on a satellite phone service with T-Mobile.

However, last month he said plans were hampered by "regulatory approval" of satellite launches and added that the service would be unlikely to become available before the end of 2023.

Bullitt's service is due to launch in February 2023 and will initially enable users to send and receive text messages only.

The recipient will receive the message in the form of an SMS and can reply if they download Bullitt's app. It is free to use for them - but the Bullitt phone owner will have to pay a monthly subscription for the service.
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Mr Musk says that currently phones using his platform could have to wait up to 30 minutes to connect with a satellite. However, Mr Wharton said he believed that thanks to deals with two global satellite networks - which he declined to name - the wait would not be more than a few seconds.

The handset requires a bespoke chipset that has been developed over the last 18 months with an Asian manufacturer, he said. The battery drain would be minimised by the phone only seeking satellites in the absence of other signals, he added.

Google says it cut off Russian disinformation sites from its vast ad display network

The move comes after a software developer tweeted screenshots of ads from major Western companies placed through Google’s display advertisement service alongside headlines spreading disinformation about the war.

The Twitter thread — posted on Aug. 24 by Braedon Vickers, a Singapore-based software engineer who builds tools to detect digital advertising trends — enraged disinformation experts, digital advertising watchdogs and U.S. senators who condemned Google for continuing to profit off of ads placed on Russian websites.
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Senate Intelligence Committee Chairman Mark Warner, D-Va., told CyberScoop in a statement that “all companies have a responsibility to ensure that they are not helping to fund or even inadvertently support Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine. … It’s extremely disappointing to see an American company continue to financially support websites pushing Putin’s propaganda.”
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Vickers said Google often appears to “demonetize” ads it places by removing them from specific problematic articles as opposed to cutting off whole sites.
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Disinformation activists and digital advertising experts questioned why a company as powerful and well-resourced as Google continues to struggle to manage a problem that an individual software engineer detected and posted on Twitter.
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The full list of brands Adalytics found on sanctioned Russian sites in April included Adidas, Citibank, CVS, Facebook and Google itself, among many others, according to Adalytics CEO Krzysztof Franaszek.

Health care IT workers report increased cyberattacks affecting patient care

Nearly 90% of information technology professionals working in health care said their facilities suffered a cyberattack in the past year, according to a report out Thursday from the research organization Ponemon Institute.

Many of them said the attacks, which averaged 43 at various types of health care organizations including hospitals and insurance providers, increasingly affected patient care.
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Fifty-three percent of the respondents said their organization had experienced at least one ransomware incident over the past two years, while a third said they’d suffered between two and five. Nine percent of respondents said their organizations suffered six to 10 incidents.
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Of the entities that reported having been hit by ransomware in the new survey, 67% reported a disruption in patient care, such as delays in procedures and tests, an increase in patients transferred or diverted to other facilities or longer lengths of stay.

Nearly a quarter of the entities that reported having been hit by ransomware reported an increased mortality rate, but it’s unclear what role ransomware played in the increased mortality rate.
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In September 2021, an Alabama woman sued a local hospital claiming that a ransomware attack on the hospital contributed to her baby’s death.

Sprawling, multi-year Iranian cyberespionage and surveillance group
exposed in new report

Parts of this activity have been documented and analyzed publicly over the years by various governments and private information security firms, such as Microsoft’s analysis of an Iranian U.S. election interference operation in 2019 linked to a group it tracks as Phosphorus, or a 2021 analysis from Proofpoint detailing an Iranian effort it tracked as TA453 that targeted senior medical professionals in the U.S. and Israel.
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Wednesday’s research pulls the various operations together under one organizational umbrella that Mandiant is referring to as APT 42. The group is characterized by targeted spear phishing campaigns and surveillance operations. The outfit also spends considerable time building rapport with victims in order to facilitate successful attacks, the researchers said, that can include delivering malware used to track location, recording phone conversations, accessing video and images and extracting entire SMS text inboxes.
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Iran has also been engaged in a persistent cyber tit-for-tat with Israel dating back to at least last summer that has reportedly included efforts to lure Israeli targets to fake events in an effort to kidnap and harm them.
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APT 42 targeting patterns focus largely on the Middle East region, the researchers said, but what distinguishes APT 42 activity is the targeting of “organizations and individuals deemed opponents or enemies of the regime, specifically gaining access to their personal accounts and mobile devices. The group has consistently targeted Western think tanks, researchers, journalists, current Western government officials, former Iranian government officials, and the Iranian diaspora abroad.”

APT 42 also supports broader Iranian intelligence needs, the analysis concludes, such as targeting the pharmeceutical sector at the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic in March 2020, and pursuing domestic and foreign-based opposition groups prior to recent Iranian presidential elections.

U.S. sanctions Iranian Ministry of Intelligence in response to Albanian cyberattack

The Treasury Department announced sanctions on Friday against Iran’s Ministry of Intelligence and Security and its Minister of Intelligence in response to “cyber-enabled activities against the United States and its allies.”

The announcement comes two days after the Albanian Prime Minister Edi Rama formally blamed the Iranian government for the attack and took the unprecedented step of severing diplomatic relations with Iran based on the cyberattack, giving Iranian personnel 24 hours to leave the country.

Rama’s statement was quickly followed by statements from the U.S. and British governments condemning the cyberattacks. The U.S. had pledged to take further actions against Iran.
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The attacks on Albania occurred after a string of attacks on Iran, which the Iranian government associated with the Mujahedin-e Khalq (MEK), an opposition group the Iranian government considers terrorists.

The group claiming responsibility for the July attacks on Albania claimed to be targeting Albania for hosting the “terrorists of Durres,” a reference to the MEK refugees who live in a camp in Durres, a county in Albania. MEK was set to host a conference July 23 and 24 before it was cancelled due to threats of violence.
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They are largely focused on classic espionage targets such as governments and dissidents, and they have been found targeting upstream sources of intelligence like telecommunications firms and companies with potentially valuable PII. Furthermore, they have a history of targeting the MeK, the group at the center of the Albanian incident.
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DEV-0861 had been actively exfiltrating emails from various organizations in multiple countries, Microsoft said, including Israeli targets between June 2021 and May 2022.

Additionally, the logo of “Homeland Justice,” the front group established to distribute the stolen Albanian materials through a website and a Telegram channel, mocked the logo of Predatory Sparrow, a hacking group Iran associates with Israel that has carried out a series of sophisticated attacks on Iranian targets dating back to mid-2021.
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Cloudflare CEO Matthew Prince defended the company’s decision not to drop the site in an Aug. 31 blog post as part of a philosophical belief in providing services for material that may be objectionable. Four days later the company relented and dropped Kiwi Farms, citing the potential for violence.

 So for Cloudfare it's OK to block Kiwi Farms but not to prevent Iranian hackers from publishing materials online. What a hypocrite you are, Mr. Prince!  Aren't those Iranian agents dangerous as well?