While most pundits agree that Trump’s first hundred days in office were underwhelming on the legislative front, he did manage to pass a measure on internet privacy that caused quite a stir in the media. This would be the rollback of privacy regulations that prevent ISPs (internet service providers) from selling user browsing history to third parties. As soon as the measure appeared likely to make it to the president’s desk, article after article was written decrying the development. Sensational headlines spelled out the end of the internet as we know it, a complete surrender of our personal data to big corporations, and social media was aflame with cries of “the end of privacy.”
Blog post and research by Pavel Sramek, David Jursa, and Lukas Rypacek
WannaCry, the worst ransomware outbreak in history, gained a lot of media attention, but WannaCry isn’t the only malware strain spreading on a massive scale. One of them is Adylkuzz, a cryptocurrency miner, that has been infecting PCs around the world, just like WannaCry.
While last Friday wasn’t Friday the 13th, it sure seemed like it. PCs around the world, including those belonging to hospitals and government agencies, were hit by the WannaCry (AKA WanaCrypt0r, or WCry) ransomware, causing chaos. Up until now we have seen more than 250,000 detections in 116 countries. About 15% of our more than 400 million users worldwide haven’t patched the MS17-010 vulnerability, which could have made them vulnerable to this attack, if they didn’t have Avast protecting them.
We have observed a massive peak in WanaCrypt0r 2.0 (aka WCry) ransomware attacks today, with more than 57,000 detections, so far. According to our data, the ransomware is mainly being targeted to Russia, Ukraine and Taiwan, but the ransomware has succe…
While most people know Garry Kasparov as the chess grandmaster who in 1985 became history’s youngest world chess champion, since his 2005 retirement he’s become an outspoken expert on the intersection of human rights, free speech, and technology.
With the FCC chair’s recent push to dismantle net neutrality, on top of last month’s rollback of FCC regulations that would have protected online privacy, interest in virtual private networks (VPNs) is probably at an all-time high. Targeted marketing, based on your online searching, viewing, shopping – everything – habits, is already prevalent. These new changes will most certainly result in companies’ scrutinizing and selling your data even more aggressively. And the death of net neutrality means these same companies can use that data to determine which streaming services you use, for instance, then charge you a premium to access them.