The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) has issued its first ever ban of a stalkerware app and its CEO, in what could be the start of a crackdown on this category of controversial surveillance software. The FTC kicked SpyFone and CEO Scott Zuckerman out of the surveillance business due to concerns that the app “secretly harvested and shared data on people’s physical movements, phone use and online activities through a hidden device hack.” That’s basically the definition…

A Texan who was indicted on capital murder charges after being accused of cyber-stalking real estate agents and threatening to sexually assault their children has died in jail.  Andy Castillo was “released deceased” from the Lubbock County Detention Center on Friday at 4:33pm. Officials from the Lubbock County Sheriff’s Office haven’t revealed how the 58-year-old former resident of Lubbock met his end, but did say that Castillo was at the University Medical Center when he died.  Castillo…

The FBI has issued a new alert warning companies in the food and agricultural sector that they are increasingly at risk of ransomware as their corporate attack surface expands. The Private Industry Notification, seen by Infosecurity, noted that the vertical is a critical infrastructure sector which, if impacted by such threats, could negatively impact the food supply chain. “Ransomware may impact businesses across the sector, from small farms to large producers, processors and manufacturers, and…

A man from Southern Illinois who moderated a website focused on child sexual abuse material (CSAM) has been sent to federal prison for 12 years and 7 months. Thirty-seven-year-old Sparta resident Kory R. Schulein was indicted by a federal grand jury in October 2020 on a single count of knowingly receiving CSAM over the internet.  Prosecutors said the unemployed man from Randolph County spent years downloading, sharing, and storing videos and images of minors being…

The personal information of more than 100,000 UK-based firearm owners appears to have been leaked online. The data was reportedly published on the blog of an animal rights activist in the form of a reformatted CSV file. When imported into Google Earth, the file showed individual home addresses where guns were believed to be stored, along with owners’ zip codes, phone numbers, IP addresses and email addresses.  Blog readers were encouraged to “contact as many [gun owners]…

Make your cybersecurity spending pay off with added defense tactics and provider accreditation By Tom Brennan, Chairman, CREST USA Cyber criminals are branching out from the big guys, the Facebook-type large scale breaches, to the small-to-medium-sized enterprises. A new global study by Analysys Mason shows SMB’s are paying attention: they estimate SMBs spent $57 billion on cyber-security in 2020, and anticipate this figure hitting $90 billion in 2025. By nature, SMBs work with less security budget…