All news with #privacy engineering tag

🔐 The UK government's proposal to require access to end-to-end encrypted data—intended to combat terrorism and child sexual abuse—would effectively demand backdoors that major vendors refuse to build. Apple removed Advanced Data Protection for UK users after a non-public notice under the Investigatory Powers Act reportedly sought access, and WhatsApp has supported Apple's stance. The article argues such per-country mandates are technically unenforceable and easily circumvented, creating border chaos and disproportionate privacy harms. ESET recommends preserving strong encryption and using court-backed, oversightable access mechanisms rather than backdoors.

🔒 UpGuard’s Cyber Risk Research team discovered and secured a public GitHub exposure containing sensitive employee and customer data belonging to OneHalf, a business process outsourcing firm in the APAC region. The principal artifact was the HRIS project, including a 1.2MB database dump (hrisdb-02012018.sql) with detailed personal records for roughly 250 employees, extensive medical histories, emergency contacts, and 300 usernames with plaintext passwords. A related repo, ohserviceform, listed 28 client companies and plaintext banking account numbers, increasing the risk of financial fraud. UpGuard notified OneHalf and the repositories were secured by August 22, 2018.

🔎 UpGuard discovered an unauthenticated Elasticsearch index containing roughly 22 million web-request records, of which about 95% referenced leakzone.net. The logs included client IP addresses, destination domains, request sizes, geolocation data and ISP metadata, spanning June 25 to discovery on July 18, with about one million requests per day. Analysis found extensive use of public proxies and clustered VPN exit nodes, alongside many one-off IPs likely representing direct users. The dataset raises privacy and operational concerns for visitors, service operators, and investigators.

🔒 AWS clarifies five key points about the CLOUD Act, stressing it does not grant automatic or unfettered access to customer content and that U.S. law requires judicial process for compelled disclosures. AWS reports no disclosure of enterprise or government customer content stored outside the U.S. since 2020. The company notes the Act applies to any provider with a U.S. presence and aligns with international law, while technical controls like AWS Nitro and AWS KMS limit operator access.

🔒 In this episode of Unlocked 403, host Becks and ESET Global Security Advisor Jake Moore examine how everyday online activity becomes a marketable commodity. They explain how social media, apps and websites harvest, analyze and monetize both first- and third-party data, and why metadata often reveals more than expected. The conversation highlights risks for children and the long-term consequences of pervasive collection. Jake shares practical tips for tightening app privacy settings, limiting permissions and embracing data minimization to better protect personal information.

🔓 UpGuard’s Cyber Risk Team discovered a publicly accessible Amazon S3 bucket belonging to Deep Root Analytics that contained roughly 1.1 TB of voter-related data tied to an estimated 198 million U.S. voters. The exposed files referenced Republican contractors TargetPoint Consulting and Data Trust and included names, dates of birth, addresses, phone numbers, voter registration details, and billions of modeled attributes used for political microtargeting. After notification and federal involvement, the bucket was secured and public access was removed.

🛡️ Google has open sourced its Zero-Knowledge Proof (ZKP) libraries to accelerate privacy-preserving digital ID and age-assurance solutions. Developed with Sparkasse, the release enables people to prove attributes (for example, that they are over 18) without sharing any other personal data. By making a performant ZKP codebase available, Google aims to help developers, researchers, businesses, and governments integrate privacy-first flows, including use cases for the European EUDI Wallet.

🔐 Google and Germany’s Sparkasse announced a wallet-based EU age assurance service that lets customers prove age online without sharing personal data. Using the Credential Manager API, Google Wallet and zero-knowledge cryptography, Sparkasse will issue trusted credentials across its network of 343 regional savings banks serving 50 million customers. Integration with Android and Chrome enables one-click age checks for apps and sites and will roll out in the coming months.