Tuesday Newsday: Meta-in-the-Middle (MITM)

You've heard of the infamous Man-in-the-Middle attack. But you've likely never heard of a Meta-in-the-Middle. Why is that, you ask? Because I just made the acronym up

I am certainly no fan of Meta. If you've read this segment before that is likely not a surprise to you. This latest revelation has honestly got to be THE most egregious violation of consumer laws I have ever seen. Meta (allegedly) created a program that intercepted data traffic from competitor mobile apps like Snapchat. In other words, they took corporate espionage to an entirely new level by spying on both the corporate AND its users.

Last week, security researchers discovered a purposefully placed backdoor into the XZ Utils open-source compression library. While the details are still not fully clear, it appears over the last few years, a malicious user was slowly slipping in their code in in small pieces to avoid detection. It's unclear if the malicious user is a real person or part of a larger, possibly state-sponsored attack.

Despite years of previous denial, AT&T has finally admitted the scale of the data breach that saw 73 million former and current customer's data leaked. In 2021, a threat actor by the name of Shiny Hunter claimed to have breached AT&T systems and offered the 73 million records for sale. Early in 2024, another threat actor leaked the data online, claiming it was the same data that had been stolen by Shiny Hunter.

The previously ad-free platform beloved by gamers and niche communities worldwide has succumbed to the seductions of surveillance capitalism, and will now show ads in the app.

In case you missed it, on April 1st we made a very serious announcement that we'll henceforth be a much more humor-resistant operation. No more funny business, shenanigans, schemes, or riffraff will be tolerated.

The first 500 to join the revolution get 1 year of Windscribe Pro for only $29!