A FIFA data breach is about to make headlines, how to hack a pumpkin, and Facebook’s new system to prevent fake ads is easily fooled.
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FIFA says it’s been hacked again. It revealed on Tuesday that it was hacked earlier this year. The world’s largest soccer governing body didn’t reveal what information was leaked. But we will likely get some idea today, as European media plans to publish stories based on the leaked internal documents. The last time FIFA suffered a data breach, it was very embarrassing. Some players were revealed to have failed drug tests, yet went unpunished. There were even criminal prosecutions related to the leaks, targeting top players and coaches for tax evasion. It’s all the result of cyber criminals succeeding in their phishing attempts targeting FIFA. This organization should be making a point to train its staff on how to identify malicious emails, and to avoid clicking on unknown links or file attachments.
A new Github project contains the recipe for “Pumpkin Pi.” No, not the kind you eat. As Boing Boing explains Yale cyber security lecturers built a Jackolantern using a Raspberry Pi computer and invited their students to hack it. This pumpkin features red and yellow LEDs to simulate candlelight. The students were challenged to turn a green light. By using a tool called “hydra” to brute force the password, they succeeded in gaining access. Maybe next Halloween, you could download the source code and give this exercise a try yourself.
It’s election season in the U.S. and Facebook has been promising more transparency around political advertising. That includes telling users who is paying for the ads they see. But Business Insider reports that tool is easily fooled. The publication was able to run ads under the name “Cambridge Analytica,” even though that was banned from Facebook. Vice also says it fooled Facebook’s tool. It was approved to buy ads for U.S. vice-president Mike Pence, the terrorist group ISIS, and 100 different U.S. senators. Facebook has responded by saying that its approach to removing fake ads is both proactive and reactive.