Americans are worried about threats to next week’s mid-term elections; searching for Chrome using Bing leads to unexpected results, and why using a company computer to visit adult websites can lead to a very embarrassing audit.
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There’s a lot to be afraid of on Halloween. David Bowie once sang that he was “afraid of Americans.” Well, what are Americans afraid of? Unfair elections, according to a survey conducted by cyber security firm ExpressVPN. At least when it comes to the mid-term elections coming up November 6th. Just six per cent of Americans say they trust social media more than news media and electoral candidates. It seems like recent crises around fake news and Russian propaganda campaigns have soured people on Facebook in particular. 76 per cent of Americans say they trust the New York Times more than Facebook. Also, 63 per cent say they’re concerned about the security of voting systems.
If you’re looking for a Halloween thrill, try searching for Chrome on Microsoft’s Bing search engine. It might be the world’s most popular browser, says cyber security researcher Graham Cluley, but somehow searching for it can still lead to a bogus website. One one Twitter user searched “download Chrome” he found a promoted link to a scam website. It’s designed to trick people into downloading malicious code. It just goes to show you that you can’t always trust paid-for links to be what they appear. Microsoft did respond to this scam by removing the ad and banning the account.
For our final tale of terror for today, an investigation by the U.S. Geological Survey into a malware infection traced the problem back to an employee’s penchant for visiting porn websites. A report details how the employee his a government-provided computer to somehow visit 9,000 different adult video sites. The employee also broke security protocols by using an unauthorized USB drive to save the videos, and his Android smartphone. The cell phone was also infected with malware. Lesson learned – don’t just depend on policies to enforce cyber security. Use technological means to ban blacklisted websites and prevent untrusted devices from being connected to company computers. Otherwise, you might have a future audit end in equally terrifying results.