Legal recourse? Nissan balances competitive and security fallout from source code leak.

News that source code of Nissan North America tools leaked online because of a misconfigured Git server spurs questions not only about potential cyberattacks by bad actors, but also whether competitors could use the sensitive data against the automobile giant.

Nissan offerings associated with the leaked source code ran the gamut from Nissan North America mobile apps and Nissan’s internal core mobile library to some parts of the Nissan ASIST diagnostic tool and sales and marketing research tools and data. The Git server has since been taken offline, after data began to get shared on Telegram and hacking forums.

DarkOwl analysts have observed a now well-established digital economy in the darknet around the trade of social media accounts and its influencers – accounts sold in bulk that could be easily leveraged for a dis- or mis-information campaign by a foreign government or agency with malicious intention.

In this blog, DarkOwl, with contributions from Nisos, looks at how the darknet is rife with “disinformation as a service” type offerings, and how technology such as blockchain is now being leveraged to persistently disseminate false narratives to the public. 

Imagine this: You click on a news clip and see the President of the United States at a press conference with a foreign leader. The dialogue is real. The news conference is real. You share with a friend. They share with a friend. Soon, everyone has seen it. Only later you learn that the president’s head was superimposed on someone else’s body. None of it ever actually happened.

Sound farfetched? Not if you’ve seen a certain wild video from YouTube user Ctrl Shift Face (take a look at the clip above). Since last August, it's gotten almost 9.5 million views.

In our TendingBar interview, Jen describes how the COVID-19 era has taught us to pay more attention to the well-being of our co-workers, and to offer compassion through our jobs. As an outspoken advocate for corporate diversity, Jen explains that diverse teams are good for business.  More importantly, Jen argues that every business should aspire to fit the values of its people, and that good business management should be an expression of respect and regard for one’s colleagues. 

Security consulting firm NISOS has released a report analyzing one such attempted fraud, and shared the audio with Motherboard. 

A security firm analyzed a suspicious voicemail left to a tech company employee, part of an attempt to get the employee to send money to criminals.

Russians and others won't stay out of 2020. But they'll be able to amplify US-created disinformation and have more time to disrupt 2020 in other ways.

We live in an age of heightened interpersonal conflict, stress and anxiety in the workplace. One of the fallouts of all of this is data theft. According to Verizon's 2019 Insider Threat Report, insider threat actors are prevalent in many industries, and the causes range from personal gain (such as selling sensitive data on the black market) to a disgruntled employee who lashes out in retaliation for a perceived slight. An employee may also unknowingly become a pawn in an external actor’s game of gaining access or, more likely, they may be simply careless in their use of technology.

The hashtag #BoycottOliveGarden went viral this week on Twitter, amid claims that the Italian restaurant chain was helping to fund President Trump’s reelection campaign. The problem, according to the restaurant and independent researchers, is that it’s just not true.

The number of countries in the cross-hairs of political disinformation campaigns more than doubled to 70 in the last two years, according to a recent report from researchers at Oxford University. Given the efficacy of such attacks, it’s not surprising that disinformation campaigns are also becoming a business problem. Companies as varied as Olive Garden, Koch’s Turkeys, and Columbine Chemicals have been recent victims of massive social media hoaxes spreading false information connected to their product or brand.