by admin | May 25, 2021 | Markets, Technology
San Francisco : A new cryptocurrency-mining bot, named “Digmine”, that was first observed in South Korea, is spreading fast through Facebook Messenger across the world, Tokyo-headquartered cybersecurity major Trend Micro has warned.
After South Korea, it has since spread in Vietnam, Azerbaijan, Ukraine, the Philippines, Thailand and Venezuela. It is likely to reach other countries soon, given the way it propagates.
Facebook Messenger works across different platforms but “Digmine” only affects the Messenger’s desktop or web browser (Chrome) version. If the file is opened on other platforms, the malware will not work as intended, Trend Micro said in a blogpost.
“Digmine” is coded in AutoIt and sent to would-be victims posing as a video file but is actually an AutoIt executable script.
If the user’s Facebook account is set to log in automatically, “Digmine” will manipulate Facebook Messenger in order to send a link to the file to the account’s friends.
The abuse of Facebook is limited to propagation for now, but it wouldn’t be implausible for attackers to hijack the Facebook account itself down the line. This functionality’s code is pushed from the command-and-control (C&C) server, which means it can be updated.
A known modus operandi of cryptocurrency-mining botnets and particularly for “Digmine” (which mines Monero), is to stay in the victim’s system for as long as possible. It also wants to infect as many machines as possible, as this translates to an increased hashrate and potentially more cybercriminal income, the blogpost stated.
The malware will also perform other routines such as installing a registry autostart mechanism as well as system infection marker. It will search and launch Chrome then load a malicious browser extension that it retrieves from the C&C server.
If Chrome is already running, the malware will terminate and relaunch Chrome to ensure the extension is loaded. While extensions can only be loaded and hosted from the Chrome Web Store, the attackers bypassed this by launching Chrome via command line.
—IANS
by admin | May 25, 2021 | Branding, Corporate Jobs, Employment, Markets, Networking, Online Marketing, Private Jobs, Social Media, Technology
New York : Several big companies are posting recruitment ads on Facebook which are only visible to a certain age group and selectively exclude older workers from seeing those job postings, an investigation has revealed.
The joint investigation by US-based non-profit organisation ProPublica and The New York Times found companies like Verizon, Amazon, Goldman Sachs, Target and Facebook place recruitment ads limited to particular age groups.
“The ability of advertisers to deliver their message to the precise audience most likely to respond is the cornerstone of Facebook’s business model. But using the system to expose job opportunities only to certain age groups has raised concerns about fairness to older workers,” the report said on Wednesday.
“It’s blatantly unlawful,” Debra Katz, a Washington-based employment lawyer said.
The US Federal Age Discrimination in Employment Act prohibits bias against people 40 or older in hiring or employment.
“We completely reject the allegation that these advertisements are discriminatory,” Rob Goldman, a Facebook Vice President, told ProPublica.
Some companies defended their targeting as a part of a broader recruitment strategy that reached candidates of all ages.
“We recently audited our recruiting ads on Facebook and discovered some had targeting that was inconsistent with our approach of searching for any candidate over the age of 18. We have corrected those ads,” said Nina Lindsey, a spokeswoman for Amazon.
Facebook this year launched a section of its platform devoted to job ads.
“Facebook allows advertisers to select their audience, and then Facebook finds the chosen users with the extensive data it collects about its members,” the report added.
After courting controversy for enabling Russia-controlled accounts to buy ads before the 2016 US presidential election, it also came to light that the social network also enabled advertisers to reach “Jew haters”.
Facebook enabled advertisers to direct their pitches to the news feeds of almost 2,300 people who expressed interest in the topics of “Jew hater”, “How to burn jews”, or “History of why jews ruin the world”, an earlier ProPublica investigation had revealed.
After ProPublica, a recipient of the 2017 Pulitzer Prize for public service, contacted the social media giant, it removed the anti-Semitic categories.
Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg — also of Jewish origin – later apologised, saying the company is now strengthening its ad policies.
“The fact that hateful terms were even offered as options was totally inappropriate and a fail on our part. We removed them and when that was not totally effective, we disabled that targeting section in our ad systems,” Sandberg wrote in a blog post.
“If someone self-identified as a ‘Jew-hater’ or said they studied how to burn Jews in their profile, those terms showed up as potential targeting options for advertisers.
“Seeing those words made me disgusted and disappointed – disgusted by these sentiments and disappointed that our systems allowed this. Hate has no place on Facebook and as a Jew, as a mother and as a human being, I know the damage that can come from hate,” she added.
Facebook recently acknowledged that Russian-controlled pages and accounts spent $100,000 on ads meant to “amplify divisive social and political messages” before the US presidential election.
Another recent ProPublica probe found that Facebook allowed housing advertisers to target audiences by race and exclude minorities, raising questions about whether the company is in compliance with federal fair housing rules that prohibit such discrimination.
Facebook, however, called it a “technical failure”.
—IANS
by admin | May 25, 2021 | Markets, Social Media, Technology
San Francisco : The Indian government requested Facebook for data 9,853 times in the first half of 2017 – up from 6,324 times in the first half of 2016 — Facebook’s latest ‘Government Requests Report’ revealed on Tuesday.
Facebook restricted access to 1,228 pieces of content “in response to legal requests from law enforcement agencies and the India Computer Emergency Response Team within the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology,” the company said.
“The majority of content restricted was alleged to violate local laws relating to defamation of religion and hate speech,” Facebook said.
The Indian government and law enforcement agencies also requested for some information on 13,752 user accounts. Facebook produced “some data” in 54 per cent of the cases in the January-June 2017 period.
In the case of 262 Facebook accounts flagged in the “Emergency” category from user/account requests, the company produced “some data” in 36 per cent of the cases.
Facebook was down for 21 times in the first half for the Indian users.
“We are aware of disruptions affecting access to Facebook products and services in India that took place during all six months of this reporting period. These disruptions were contained to specific regions,” the company said.
“For the first time, we are expanding the report beyond government requests to provide data regarding reports from rights holders related to intellectual property (IP) — covering copyright, trademark, and counterfeit,” said Chris Sonderby, Deputy General Counsel, Facebook.
In the first half of 2017, Facebook received 224,464 copyright reports about content on Facebook, 41,854 trademark reports and 14,279 counterfeit reports.
Requests for account data increased by 21 per cent globally compared to the second half of 2016 — from 64,279 to 78,890.
“Fifty-seven per cent of the data requests we received from law enforcement in the US contained a non-disclosure order that prohibited us from notifying the user, up from 50 per cent in our last report,” Sonderby said in a blog post.
Overall, the number of content restrictions for violating local law increased by 304 per cent globally compared to the second half of 2016 — from 6,944 to 28,036.
“This increase was primarily driven by a request from Mexican law enforcement to remove instances of a video depicting a school shooting in Monterrey in January. We restricted access in Mexico to 20,506 instances of the video in the first half of 2017,” Facebook added.
There were 52 disruptions of Facebook services in nine countries in the first half of 2017, compared to 43 disruptions in 20 countries in the second half of 2016.
“We continue to be deeply concerned by internet disruptions, which can create barriers for businesses and prevent people from sharing and communicating with their family and friends,” Facebook said.
—IANS
by admin | May 25, 2021 | Markets, Online Marketing, Social Media, Technology, World
London : Downplaying claims that Kremlin-backed groups helped swing the Brexit vote in 2016, Facebook has told EU investigators that less than one pound was spent by Russians on ads posted on its platform during the referendum, The Telegraph reported on Thursday.
On the other hand, Twitter disclosed that Russian-backed accounts spent $1,031.99 to buy six Brexit-related ads on its platform.
Facebook responded to the UK Electoral Commission, saying the Internet Research Agency, a shadowy organisation with links to the Russian government, spent just $0.97 (73 pence) during the EU referendum campaign.
“Damian Collins, the chair of the Digital, Culture, Media and Sport (DCMS) Committee, accused Facebook of failing to probe the true extent of Russian meddling,” the report added.
Collins said Facebook “had only identified adverts from pages that had already been discovered in the US investigation, and that studies showing thousands of Twitter bots had attempted to disrupt the vote were strong evidence that there was Russian meddling”.
Earlier in November, a group of data scientists found 156,252 Russian accounts on Twitter which mentioned #Brexit and posted nearly 45,000 messages related to the EU referendum in the 48 hours around the vote.
In the US, Facebook, Twitter and Google are facing intense fake news scrutiny after disclosing the details about the presence of Russian political ads, tweets and posts on their platforms during the presidential election in 2016.
The Kremlin-linked Russian organisations purchased more than $100,000 of ads on social media platforms during the 2016 US presidential election.
Facebook told US Congress in November that 126 million of its users in the US might have seen ads produced and circulated by Russian operatives.
According to Collins, “no work has been done by Facebook to look for Russian activity around the EU referendum”.
Meanwhile, Twitter told the Electoral Commission that the ads in question were purchased during the regulated period for political campaigning in the June 2016 EU Referendum — specifically from April 15 to June 23, 2016, TechCrunch reported.
British Prime Minister Theresa May has accused Russia of meddling in the elections and planting fake stories.
According to data scientists from Swansea University in Wales and the University of California, Berkeley, over 150,000 Russian accounts who were posting about the Ukrainian conflict swiftly started tweeting about Brexit in days leading up to the 2016 vote.
Political events like the Brexit referendum and the US presidential election have observed the use of social bots in spreading fake news and misinformation, the data scientists observed.
—IANS
by admin | May 25, 2021 | Markets, Networking, Social Media, Technology
San Francisco : With political pressure mounting on digital giants to pay more taxes, Facebook has announced plans to move to a local selling structure in countries where it has an office — a move aimed at paying tax in the country where profits are earned.
Currently, advertising revenue supported by Facebook’s local teams are recorded by its international headquarters in Dublin, Ireland.
The change in its selling structure announced on Tuesday means that advertising revenue supported by the local teams would be recorded by its office in that country.
“We believe that moving to a local selling structure will provide more transparency to governments and policy makers around the world who have called for greater visibility over the revenue associated with locally supported sales in their countries,” Dave Wehner, Chief Financial Officer, Facebook, wrote in a blog post.
The social media giant is expected to start paying tax on its local operations across roughly 30 jurisdictions outside the US including France, Germany and eight other EU countries where it has local offices, according to Politico.eu.
“It is our expectation that we will make this change in countries where we have a local office supporting advertisers in that country. That said, each country is unique, and we want to make sure we get this change right,” Wehner said
“We plan to implement this change throughout 2018, with the goal of completing all offices by the first half of 2019,” Wehner added.
The company has been under pressure from the US and Europe for its tax practices.
The European Commission feels that digital companies pay less tax than it should.
—IANS
