ArsTechnica Archives – Gridinsoft Blog https://gridinsoft.com/blogs/tag/arstechnica/ Welcome to the Gridinsoft Blog, where we share posts about security solutions to keep you, your family and business safe. Mon, 20 Sep 2021 22:07:57 +0000 en-US hourly 1 https://wordpress.org/?v=65771 200474804 Epik hoster hack affected 15 million users, not just the company’s clients https://gridinsoft.com/blogs/epik-hoster-hack-affected-15-million-users/ https://gridinsoft.com/blogs/epik-hoster-hack-affected-15-million-users/#respond Mon, 20 Sep 2021 22:07:57 +0000 https://blog.gridinsoft.com/?p=5939 Last week, Anonymous hacktivists reported about hack of the database of the domain registrar and hoster Epik, which was previously often criticized for hosting “right-wing” sites including 8chan, Gab, Parler and The Donald. The stolen data (over 180 GB) was published in torrent format and, according to hackers, contains information for the last decade. Since… Continue reading Epik hoster hack affected 15 million users, not just the company’s clients

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Last week, Anonymous hacktivists reported about hack of the database of the domain registrar and hoster Epik, which was previously often criticized for hosting “right-wing” sites including 8chan, Gab, Parler and The Donald.

The stolen data (over 180 GB) was published in torrent format and, according to hackers, contains information for the last decade.

Since the company denied the fact of hacking, the hackers laughed at Epik and additionally hacked the hoster’s knowledge base, adding their own mocking edits to it.

In total, the dump published by the hackers contained 15,003,961 email addresses that belong to both Epik customers and people who had no business with the company, ArsTechnica now reports.

Reporters explain that Epik scraped the WHOIS records of domains, including those that were not owned by the company, and kept those records for themselves. As a result, the contact information of people who had never interacted directly with Epik were also kept by the company.

The data breach aggregator HaveIBeenPwned has already begun sending out warnings to millions of victims whose email addresses have been compromised. One of the victims was the founder of this service, Troy Hunt, although he never had anything to do with Epik.

In a Twitter poll, Hunt asked his followers if affected non-Epik customers would like to be notified of violations. The majority answered the question in the affirmative.

The leak revealed a huge amount of data not only about Epik customers, but also WHOIS records belonging to individuals and organizations that were not customers of the company. This data includes over 15 million unique email addresses (including anonymous ones to ensure domain privacy), names, phone numbers, physical addresses and passwords stored in a variety of formats.writes HaveIBeenPwned.

ArsTechnica reporters note that they saw part of the whois.sql file, which is approximately 16 GB in size. It is filled with email addresses, IP addresses, domains, physical addresses, and phone numbers of users. However, some WHOIS records are clearly out of date and contain incorrect information about domain owners (people no longer own these assets).

Hoster Epik hack

According to information security specialists Emily Gorchensky and Adam Sculthorpe, Epik representatives have finally admitted the fact of the hack and are now notifying their clients about “unauthorized intrusion” into their systems.

The company urges customers to remain vigilant and monitor any information they use while using the company’s services (including billing information, credit card numbers, names, usernames, email addresses and passwords).

Hoster Epik hack

Although the company does not yet know for sure whether customers’ bank card data has been compromised, users are advised to “contact the companies that issued the bank cards used for transactions with Epik and notify them of potential data compromise” as a precautionary measure.

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End of support for Adobe Flash caused interruptions in the Chinese railway system https://gridinsoft.com/blogs/end-of-support-for-adobe-flash-caused-interruptions-in-the-chinese-railway-system/ https://gridinsoft.com/blogs/end-of-support-for-adobe-flash-caused-interruptions-in-the-chinese-railway-system/#respond Tue, 26 Jan 2021 16:57:26 +0000 https://blog.gridinsoft.com/?p=5034 As you know, back in 2017, Apple, Facebook, Google, Microsoft, Mozilla, as well as Adobe itself announced the end of support for Adobe Flash. The technology was officially “killed” on December 31, 2020, after which support for Adobe Flash Player was finally discontinued. In December, Adobe released the latest Flash update and has become more… Continue reading End of support for Adobe Flash caused interruptions in the Chinese railway system

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As you know, back in 2017, Apple, Facebook, Google, Microsoft, Mozilla, as well as Adobe itself announced the end of support for Adobe Flash. The technology was officially “killed” on December 31, 2020, after which support for Adobe Flash Player was finally discontinued.

In December, Adobe released the latest Flash update and has become more aggressive in advising users to uninstall the app. In addition, the company has repeatedly warned that starting from January 12, 2021, Adobe will block the launch of any Flash content, and a special code for self-destruction has been built into the software code in advance.

However, it appears that the end of Flash support and operation came as a surprise to rail workers in China’s Liaoning province.

Apple Daily reports that China Railway Shenyang’s railway software is based on Flash, and after the technology shutdown on January 12, employees, in fact, lost control of the entire system.

Tuesday’s chaos arose after China Railway Shenyang failed to deactivate Flash in time, leading to a complete shutdown of its railroads in Dalian, Liaoning province. Staffers were reportedly unable to view train operation diagrams, formulate train sequencing schedules and arrange shunting plans.reports Apple Daily.

According to Apple Daily, the problem was solved only the next day, by installing a pirated version of Flash.

However, ArsTechnica journalists write that, most likely, an inaccuracy crept into the Apple Daily material due to the complexity of translation from Chinese.

After a day of chaos, the railroad found a solution: it reverted to an older version of Flash without the self-deactivating code. The railroad installed it early on the morning of January 13, allowing operations to resume.clarified ArsTechnica journalists.

So, a detailed report on what happened was published by officials in the Chinese social network QQ (later the message was deleted due to ridicule).

Finally, Chinese users suggested in the English media that the latest Flash client in China can still be downloaded from flash.cn (according to adobes flash support page), and it has no time bomb.

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