Don’t Install TikTok On Your Phone, It’s A Spyware

Don’t Install TikTok On Your Phone, It’s A Spyware: Reddit CEO

TikTok, one of the most popular video-sharing platform, has welcomed a lot of criticism all around the world. Now, Reddit CEO and co-founder Steve Huffman said that the app is “fundamentally parasitic”. Huffman pointed out TikTok’s practice of fingerprinting to track devices as a major security issue in the Social 2020 venture capital conference.

As reported by TechCrunch, Steve Huffman said that maybe he has to regret what he is going to say but he doesn’t know what Tiktok is up to. He added that Tiktok is fundamentally parasitic as it always keeps a check on its users via the fingerprinting technology used by the app.

He concluded his statement by saying that he will never install an app like that on his smartphone. Huffman also said that he actively warns people to avoid installing TikTok as it is a spyware. Steve Huffman’s comments were mostly controversial throughout the conference.

What Is Fingerprinting?

Fingerprinting is the process of tracking a website or app to determine the visiting users, user agents and for tracking users’ browsing activities within and across sessions. Companies can collect information using fingerprinting for the purpose of profiling and thus it poses a risk to the privacy of users.

TikTok’s Take

However, ByteDance, the parent company of TikTok, has said that it uses the fingerprinting technology to track malicious or inappropriate behavior of the browser. As per the research performed by Matthias Eberl, the app was working smoothly even after disabling the fingerprinting scripts.

Not only Steve Huffman, but many tech executives in the industry are worried due to the practices of TikTok. Sheryl Sandberg, Facebook COO also raised her concern and said that TikTok is growing at a very fast pace with the help of fingerprinting and has a huge database.

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WiFi 6 is Out And It is Way Faster than the Predecessor

WiFi 6 is Out And It is Way Faster than the Predecessor

The new generation of Wi-Fi has been introduced by The Wi-Fi Alliance, an International organization to oversee Wi-Fi standards has officially started certification program. It will boost the internet speed from 3.5 Gbps to 9.6 Gbps.

Wi-Fi would be helpful in crowded places, nowadays one person has multiple devices and sometimes dozens of devices get connected to one router and take down the internet speed. Kevin Robinson, marketing leader for the Wi-Fi Alliance says, “The home scenario today looks like the dense deployment of yesterday”. According to the numbers given by the company, it will increase the speed to 9.6 Gbps from 3.5 Gbps. But since we would not get this much bigger connection at home, what really matters that the improvisation in hardware will help us to get more speed than we usually do.

The manufacturing companies already have the technology in their latest devices but from now on they will be able to advertise it after getting certification from The Wi-Fi Alliance. The new Wi-Fi 6 has many changes in the hardware and some new tools so old devices would not be able to get this.

New router supporting Wi-Fi 6 are already available in the market by TP-Link. It will come in a pack of two and will be expensive with the cost of $349.99. To get the fast speed, you will need both router and mobile or any other device supporting Wi-Fi 6.

In the announcement by The Wi-Fi Alliance, it says that Samsung Galaxy Note 10 will be the first device in the market with Wi-Fi 6 certification by their organization. Apple is also a member of The Wi-Fi Alliance organization but apparently it has not certified any of its devices with the Alliance for years. The new iPhone 11 series also supports the Wi-Fi 6 and if it is not certified, it has raised many attention that would it work perfectly without any flaw.

This is the first Alliance has named the Wi-Fi technology a version number, before this they used to name it differently like 802.11ac. This time it was supposed to be named 802.11ac but instead they named it Wi-Fi 6.

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Jazz Becomes First Pakistani Telecom Operator To Provide WhatsApp Self-Care Services

Jazz Becomes First Pakistani Telecom Operator To Provide WhatsApp Self-Care Services

In an industry first move, Jazz, Pakistan’s leading digital communications company, has started offering its post-paid subscribers a self-care service window on WhatsApp, the world’s most-used messenger app.

Under this partnership, WhatsApp will act as a self-service portal for Jazz users where either the customer can send a message to the Jazz WhatsApp number or vice versa.

Jazz postpaid customers can send “Hi” to 0300-3008000 to connect with Jazz WhatsApp channel. On connecting to the channel, customers will be able to pay their bills, get last generated invoice and view their billing information along with support FAQs. All conversations during this time will be completely free of charge.

Talking about this industry first move, Sadia Khuram, Chief Customer Experience Officer (CCEO) at Jazz said,

"In keeping with evolving habits of our customers in the digital space, Jazz is committed to providing friction-free and effortless services to its customers, and is proud to announce the launch of WhatsApp as a social support channel for its valued customers".

In the first phase of the launch, this channel will provide self-service options to its postpaid customers, who will now be able to get their billing information, pull invoices & make payments using a simple menu. Going forward, the ambition is to grow this into a full-fledged conversational channel and extend it to pre-paid customers as well.

She continued,

"As customers increasingly inhabit the world of WhatsApp and their preference is moving from ‘traditional call center care’ to ‘social care’ models, Jazz will continue to be responsive to its customers’ needs for easy, fast and convenient care channels".

“We are happy to help Jazz enhance their customer experience by enabling their post-paid users an improved interaction with the operator through their preferred chat app. We aim to create innovative solutions that continuously enhance services our clients and partners provide and are thrilled that Jazz recognized this as an opportunity to upgrade their customer care and prove their position as a market leader in Pakistan,” said Dino Ibrahimović, Managing Director Infobip MENA.

With 1.5 billion global users, WhatsApp is the most used messaging app in the world with its popularity growing day by day in Pakistan, where it is the top instant messaging app. This partnership with Jazz is via WhatsApp’s local partner Infobip, which operates one of the world’s leading proprietary messaging and communications platforms, designed to connect mobile network operators with enterprises.

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WhatsApp Flaw Could Allow 'Potential Attackers' to Spy On Encrypted Group Chats

WhatsApp Flaw Could Allow 'Potential Attackers' to Spy On Encrypted Group Chats

A more dramatic revelation of 2018—an outsider can secretly eavesdrop on your private end-to-end encrypted group chats on WhatsApp and Signal messaging apps.

Considering protection against three types of attackers—malicious user, network attacker, and malicious server—an end-to-end encryption protocol plays a vital role in securing instant messaging services.

The primary purpose of having end-to-end encryption is to stop trusting the intermediate servers in such a way that no one, not even the company or the server that transmits the data, can decrypt your messages or abuse its centralized position to manipulate the service.

In order words—assuming the worst-case scenario—a corrupt company employee should not be able to eavesdrop on the end-to-end encrypted communication by any mean.

However, so far even the popular end-to-end encrypted messaging services, like WhatsApp, Threema and Signal, have not entirely achieved zero-knowledge system.

Researchers from Ruhr-Universität Bochum (RUB) in Germany found that anyone who controls WhatsApp/Signal servers can covertly add new members to any private group, allowing them to spy on group conversations, even without the permission of the administrator.

As described by the researchers, in the pairwise communication (when only two users communicate with each other) server plays a limited role, but in case of multi-user chats (group chat where encrypted messages are broadcasted to many users), the role of servers increases to manage the entire process.

That's where the issue resides, i.e. trusting the company's servers to manage group members (who eventually have full access to the group conversation) and their actions.

As explained in the newly published RUB paper, titled "More is Less: On the End-to-End Security of Group Chats in Signal, WhatsApp, and Threema," since both Signal and WhatsApp fail to properly authenticate that who is adding a new member to the group, it is possible for an unauthorized person—not a group administrator or even a member of the group—to add someone to the group chat.

What's more? If you are wondering that adding a new member to the group will show a visual notification to other members, it is not the case.

According to the researchers, a compromised admin or rogue employee with access to the server could manipulate (or block) the group management messages that are supposed to alert group members of a new member.

"The described weaknesses enable attacker A, who controls the WhatsApp server or can break the transport layer security, to take full control over a group. Entering the group, however, leaves traces since this operation is listed in the graphical user interface. The WhatsApp server can therefore use the fact that it can stealthily reorder and drop messages in the group," the paper reads. 

"Thereby it can cache sent messages to the group, read their content first and decide in which order they are delivered to the members. Additionally, the WhatsApp server can forward these messages to the members individually such that a subtly chosen combination of messages can help it to cover the traces."

WhatsApp has acknowledged the issue, but argued that if any new member is added to a group, let's say by anyone, other group members will get notified for sure.

"We've looked at this issue carefully. Existing members are notified when new people are added to a WhatsApp group. We built WhatsApp so group messages cannot be sent to a hidden user," a WhatsApp spokesperson told Wired. 

"The privacy and security of our users is incredibly important to WhatsApp. It's why we collect very little information and all messages sent on WhatsApp are end-to-end encrypted."

But if you are not part of a group with very selected members, I'm sure many of you would relatively ignore such notifications easily.
Researchers also advised companies to fix the issue just by adding an authentication mechanism to make sure that the "signed" group management messages come from the group administrator only.
However, this attack is not easy (exception—services under legal pressure) to execute, so users should not be worried about it.

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WPA3 The New Wi-Fi Security Protocol To Be Launched In 2018

WPA3 The New Wi-Fi Security Protocol To Be Launched In 2018

Remember the Krack Wi-Fi vulnerability from October last year that has put all internet users to a dismay? Well, the good news is that it’s very possible we won’t have to go through that risky situation again.

Just a few days ago, during the annual CES event (one of the biggest technology and innovation shows), the Wi-Fi Alliance has announced the launch of a new wireless security protocol—Wi-Fi Protected Access WPA3 this year.

WPA3 will replace the current WPA2—the security protocol that all Wi-Fi networks have been using for over 15 years.

Why is WPA2 considered vulnerable?

The main insecurity issue of WPA2 is given by the “unencrypted” open Wi-Fi networks that makes it incredibly easy for anyone who uses the same network to access other devices.

Secondly, one of the WPA2 protocols is that the same password is used by clients and business owners when joining a Wi-Fi network (for instance the clients of a coffee shop and the owner of the coffee shop).

Due to these vulnerabilities, hackers can intercept Wi-Fi traffic and steal online data quite effortlessly.

In what way is WPA3 going to be safer?

• Improved user privacy

WPA3 will increase users’ privacy when they connect to open Wi-Fi networks (such as those in cafes, restaurants, etc.) by introducing individualized data encryption.

• Higher security standard

The future Wi-Fi security protocol will introduce a 192-bit security suite for increased protection; the 192-bitis a security requirement used by governments and big industrial organization.

• Protection on IoT devices

Wi-Fi Alliance, which is composed of 15 major tech companies (including Apple, Cisco, Dell, Intel, Microsoft, Qualcomm and more) stated that WPA3 will also offer smoother security for IoT devices.

• New handshake protocol

WPA3 standard will use a new handshake protocol, which will be far less vulnerable to dictionary attacks (the method hackers use of exhausting all possible password possibilities).

Transition from WPA2 to WPA3 could take a while

WPA3 won’t come into force until in a few months. Meanwhile, Wi-Fi Alliance said it will continue to optimize WPA2 since it was the target of severe attacks.

Regardless of WPA2 or WPA3, you should always secure your Wi-Fi network with the help of a VPN, simply to supplement the protection of your data.

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