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operating systems

MediaLab acquires messaging app Kik, expanding its app portfolio

October 19, 2019 by Blockchain Consultants

Popular messaging app Kik is, indeed, “here to stay” following an acquisition by the Los Angeles-based multimedia holding company, MediaLab.

It echoes the same message from Kik’s chief executive Tim Livingston last week when he rebuffed earlier reports that the company would shut down amid an ongoing battle with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. Livingston had tweeted that Kik had signed a letter-of-intent with a “great company,” but that it was “not a done deal.”

Now we know the the company: MediaLab. In a post on Kik’s blog on Friday the MediaLab said that it has “finalized an agreement” to acquire Kik Messenger.

“Kik is one of those amazing places that brings us back to those early aspirations,” the blog post read. “Whether it be a passion for an obscure manga or your favorite football team, Kik has shown an incredible ability to provide a platform for new friendships to be forged through your mobile phone.”

MediaLab is a holding company that owns several other mobile properties, including anonymous social network Whisper and mixtape app DatPiff. In acquiring Kik, the holding company is expanding its mobile app portfolio.

MediaLab said it has “some ideas” for developing Kik going forwards, including making the app faster and reducing the amount of unwanted messages and spam bots. The company said it will introduce ads “over the coming weeks” in order to “cover our expenses” of running the platform.

Buying the Kik messaging platform adds another social media weapon to the arsenal for MediaLab and its chief executive, Michael Heyward .

Heyward was an early star of the budding Los Angeles startup community with the launch of the anonymous messaging service, Whisper nearly 8 years ago. At the time, the company was one of a clutch of anonymous apps — including Secret and YikYak — that raised tens of millions of dollars to offer online iterations of the confessional journal, the burn book, and the bathroom wall (respectively).

In 2017, TechCrunch reported that Whisper underwent significant layoffs to stave off collapse and put the company on a path to profitability.

At the time Whisper had roughly 20 million monthly active users across its app and website, which the company was looking to monetize through programmatic advertising, rather than brand-sponsored campaigns that had provided some of the company’s revenue in the past. Through widgets, the company had an additional 10 million viewers of its content per-month using various widgets and a reach of around 250 million through Facebook and other social networks on which it published posts.

People familiar with the company said at the time that it was seeing gross revenues of roughly $1 million and was going to hit $12.5 million in revenue for that calendar year. By 2018 that revenue was expected to top $30 million, according to sources at the time.

Anonymous app Whisper lays off 20% of staff to survive

The flagship Whisper app let people post short bits of anonymous text and images that other folks could like or comment about. Heyward intended it to be a way for people to share more personal and intimate details —  to be a social network for confessions and support rather than harassment.

The idea caught on with investors and Whisper managed to raise $61 million from investors including Sequoia, Lightspeed Venture Partners, and Shasta Ventures . Whisper’s last round was a $36 million Series C back in 2014.

Fast forward to 2018 when Secret had been shut down for three years while YikYak also went bust — selling off its engineering team to Square for around $1 million. Whisper, meanwhile, seemingly set up MediaLab as a holding company for its app and additional assets that Heyward would look to roll up. The company filed registration documents in California in June 2018.

According to the filings, Susan Stone, a partner with the investment firm Sierra Wasatch Capital, is listed as a director for the company.

Heyward did not respond to a request for comment.

Zack Whittaker contributed reporting for this article. 

Read more: https://techcrunch.com/2019/10/19/medialab-kik-messenger-app-portfolio/

Filed Under: cryptocurrency Tagged With: California, facebook, Instant Messaging, kik, Kik Messenger, lightspeed venture partners, Los Angeles, michael heyward, operating systems, programmatic advertising, secret, Sequoia, shasta ventures, Social Media, Social Network, social networks, Software, U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, whisper, Yik Yak

Cryptocurrencys bad day continues as the SEC blocks Telegrams $1.7 billion planned token sale

October 12, 2019 by Blockchain Consultants

Cryptocurrency’s bad news day continues to get worse as the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission has said it has filed an emergency action and received a restraining order for the $1.7 billion planned token offering of Telegram’s blockchain.

The move from the SEC follows the continued dissolution of the corporate alliance that was supporting Facebook’s planned Libra cryptocurrency.

EBay, Stripe and Mastercard drop out of Facebook’s Libra Association

Telegram’s ambitious founder Pavel Durov was hoping to launch the Telegram Open Network as a payment option that would exist apart from the global regulatory system in much the same way that Libra would have done, according to initial TechCrunch reporting.

Telegram plans multi-billion dollar ICO for chat cryptocurrency

While the Telegram offering had been in the works since January 2018, it had run into problems by the middle of last year and the future of the protocol was already in jeopardy.

According to the SEC complaint, Telegram Group and its TON Issuer subsidiary began raising capital in January 2018 to finance the company’s business, including the development of the TON blockchain and Messenger .

The defendants sold 2.9 billion tokens at discounted prices to 171 initial investors, including more than 1 billion of the company’s tokens to 39 U.S. buyers.

Telegram said it would deliver the tokens to the purchasers by no later than October 31, 209 and the purchasers would be able to sell them into the market. According to the SEC complaint Telgram failed to register their offers and sales of the tokens, which the SEC considers to be securities.

“Our emergency action today is intended to prevent Telegram from flooding the U.S. markets with digital tokens that we allege were unlawfully sold,” said Stephanie Avakian, Co-Director of the SEC’s Division of Enforcement, in a statement. “We allege that the defendants have failed to provide investors with information regarding Grams and Telegram’s business operations, financial condition, risk factors, and management that the securities laws require.”

Read more: https://techcrunch.com/2019/10/11/sec-blocks-the-1-7-billion-token-sale-for-telegrams-cryptocurrency/

Filed Under: cryptocurrency Tagged With: Cryptocurrencies, facebook, initial coin offering, Libra, Messenger, operating systems, Pavel Durov, Software, Telegram, U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, United States

A cryptocurrency stealing app found on Google Play was downloaded over a thousand times

May 24, 2019 by Blockchain Consultants

Researchers have found two apps masquerading as cryptocurrency apps on Android’s app store, Google Play.

One of them was largely a dud. The second was designed to steal cryptocurrency, the researchers said.

Security firm ESET said one of the two fake Android apps impersonated Trezor, a hardware cryptocurrency wallet. The good news is that the app couldn’t be used to steal cryptocurrency stored by Trezor. But the researchers found the app was connected to a second Android app that could have been used to scam funds out of unsuspecting victims.

Lukas Stefanko, a security researcher at ESET — who has a long history of finding dodgy Android apps — said the fake Trezor app “appeared trustworthy at first glance” but was using a fake developer name to impersonate the company.

The fake app was designed to trick users into turning over a victim’s login credentials. Uploaded to Google Play on May 1, the app quickly ranked as the second-most popular search result when searching for “Trezor” behind the legitimate app, said Stefanko. Users on Reddit also found the fake app and reported it as recently as two weeks ago.

According to Stefanko, the server where user credentials were sent was linked to a website linked to another fake wallet, purportedly to store cryptocurrency, and also listed on Google Play since February 25.

“The app claims it lets its users create wallets for various cryptocurrencies,” said Stefanko. “However, its actual purpose is to trick users into transferring cryptocurrency into the attackers’ wallets – a classic case of what we’ve named wallet address scams in our previous research into cryptocurrency-targeting malware.”

Both apps were collectively downloaded more than a thousand times. After ESET contacted Google, the apps were pulled offline the next day.

Read more:

  • Half a million Android users tricked into downloading malware from Google Play
  • Security researchers find over a dozen iPhone apps linked to Golduck malware
  • A powerful spyware app now targets iPhone owners
  • Google warns app developers of three malicious SDKs being used for ad fraud
  • Apple tells app developers to disclose or remove screen recording code
  • Apple restores Google’s internal iOS apps after certificate misuse punishment

Read more: https://techcrunch.com/2019/05/23/cryptocurrency-stealing-android-app/

Filed Under: cryptocurrency Tagged With: app-store, apple wallet, computing, cryptocurrency, e-commerce, Google Play, iphone, mobile app, online marketplaces, operating systems

Two years after WannaCry, a million computers remain at risk

May 17, 2019 by Blockchain Consultants

Two years ago today, a powerful ransomware began spreading across the world.

WannaCry spread like wildfire, encrypting hundreds of thousands of computers in over 150 countries in a matter of hours. It was the first time that ransomware, a malware that encrypts a user’s files and demands cryptocurrency in ransom to unlock them, had spread across the world in what looked like a coordinated cyberattack.

Hospitals across the U.K. declared a “major incident” after they were knocked offline by the malware. Government systems, railway networks and private companies were also hit.

Security researchers quickly realized the malware was spreading like a computer worm, across computers and over the network, using the Windows SMB protocol. Suspicion soon fell on a batch of highly classified hacking tools developed by the National Security Agency, which weeks earlier had been stolen and published online for anyone to use.

“It’s real,” said Kevin Beaumont, a U.K.-based security researcher at the time. “The shit is going to hit the fan big style.”

WannaCry relied on stolen NSA-developed exploits, DoublePulsar and EternalBlue, to hack into Windows PCs and spread through the network. (Image: file photo)

An unknown hacker group — later believed to be working for North Korea — had taken those published NSA cyberweapons and launched their attack — likely not realizing how far the spread would go. The hackers used the NSA’s backdoor, DoublePulsar, to create a persistent backdoor that was used to deliver the WannaCry ransomware. Using the EternalBlue exploit, the ransomware spread to every other unpatched computer on the network.

A single vulnerable and internet-exposed system was enough to wreak havoc.

Microsoft, already aware of the theft of hacking tools targeting its operating systems, had released patches. But consumers and companies alike moved slowly to patch their systems.

In just a few hours, the ransomware had caused billions of dollars in damages. Bitcoin wallets associated with the ransomware were filling up by victims to get their files back — more often than not in vain.

Marcus Hutchins, a malware reverse engineer and security researcher, was on vacation when the attack hit. “I picked a hell of a fucking week to take off work,” he tweeted. Cutting his vacation short, he got to work. Using data from his malware tracking system, he found what became WannaCry’s kill switch — a domain name embedded in the code, which, when he registered, immediately saw the number of infections grind to a halt. Hutchins, who pleaded guilty to unrelated computer crimes last month, was hailed a hero for stemming the spread of the attack. Many have called for leniency if not a full presidential pardon for his efforts.

Trust in the intelligence services collapsed overnight. Lawmakers demanded to know how the NSA planned to mop up the hurricane of damage it had caused. It also kicked off a heated debate about how the government hoards vulnerabilities to use as offensive weapons to conduct surveillance or espionage — or when it should disclose bugs to vendors in order to get them fixed.

A month later, the world braced itself for a second round of cyberattacks in what felt like would soon become the norm.

NotPetya, another ransomware which researchers also found a kill switch for, used the same DoublePulsar and EternalBlue exploits to ravish shipping giants, supermarkets and advertising agencies, which were left reeling from the attacks.

Two years on, the threat posed by the leaked NSA tools remains a concern.

As many as 1.7 million internet-connected endpoints are still vulnerable to the exploits, according to the latest data. Data generated by Shodan, a search engine for exposed databases and devices, puts the figure at the million mark — with most of the vulnerable devices in the U.S. But that only accounts for devices directly connected to the internet and not the potentially millions more devices connected to those infected servers. The number of vulnerable devices is likely significantly higher.

More than 400,000 exposed systems in the U.S. alone can be exploited using NSA’s stolen hacking tools. (Image: Shodan)

WannaCry continues to spread and occasionally still infects its targets. Beaumont said in a tweet Sunday that the ransomware remains largely neutered, unable to unpack and begin encrypting data, for reasons that remain a mystery.

But the exposed NSA tools, which remain at large and able to infect vulnerable computers, continue to be used to deliver all sorts of malware — and new victims continue to appear.

Just weeks before the city of Atlanta was hit by ransomware, cybersecurity expert Jake Williams found its networks had been infected by the NSA tools. More recently, the NSA tools have been repurposed to infect networks with cryptocurrency mining code to generate money from the vast pools of processing power. Others have used the exploits to covertly ensnare thousands of computers to harness their bandwidth to launch distributed denial-of-service attacks by pummeling other systems with massive amounts of internet traffic.

WannaCry caused panic. Systems were down, data was lost, and money had to be spent. It was a wakeup call that society needed to do better at basic cybersecurity.

But with a million-plus unpatched devices still at risk, there remains ample opportunity for further abuse. What we may not have forgotten two years on, clearly more can be done to learn from the failings of the past.

Read more:

  • Ransomware based on leaked NSA tools spreads to dozens of countries
  • US government says North Korea was behind massive WannaCry cyber attack
  • US Treasury sanctions North Korea over Sony hack and WannaCry attack
  • Malware researcher Marcus Hutchins pleads guilty, ending his legal case
  • Cryptojacking attacks using leaked NSA exploits still highly active a year later

Read more: https://techcrunch.com/2019/05/12/wannacry-two-years-on/

Filed Under: cryptocurrency Tagged With: cyberattacks, Cyberwarfare, malware, microsoft, microsoft windows, National Security Agency, North Korea, operating systems, ransomware, search engine, security, security breaches

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