Page 7 - Threat Intelligence 8-16-2019

Regulatory and

Privacy News

The hot microphone in lawmakers' pockets - On Capitol Hill, a lawmaker’s typical day may consist
of hundreds of conversations with a range of stakeholders. There are policy and strategy discussions
with senior staff, meetings with constituents, issue-focused talks with lobbyists and activists, get-
togethers with members of the same party or political coalition, private committee meetings,
legislative discussions with colleagues and their staffs and closed-door fundraisers. Each of these
data points represent an extremely valuable form of currency for adversarial nations. While
lawmakers have learned to self-censor their emails (thanks, Russia) and phone calls (thanks, China)
for fear that they may end up on the front page, the revelations that occur during everyday
conversations are largely unguarded and unbounded.

Source: https://gcn.com/articles/2019/07/12/microphone-phone-
vulnerability.aspx?admgarea=TC_SecCybersSec

Voice assistants are listening to you: How to delete Siri, Alexa and Google recordings - Apple is
suspending a program that allows third-party contractors to listen to the questions you ask Siri. This
comes after a whistleblower said that workers listen to the recordings to help Siri improve and
determine if the request was handled correctly, a process called grading, reported The Guardian.
Amazon and Google came under fire earlier this year for similar reasons when it was discovered
workers were listening to the recordings the Echo and Google Assistant collected. Although smart
speakers are only supposed to record after you say “Hey, Siri” or other wake phrases, reports show
that conversations have been recorded in other instances – including recordings involving medical
information, drug deals and intimate moments.

Source: https://news.yahoo.com/voice-assistants-listening-delete-siri-135809040.html

Chrome's 'more private' Incognito mode: Websites can still detect you're using it - Website
developers have already crafted methods to bypass Google's recent efforts to stop them detecting
when Chrome is in Incognito mode. Only last month, Google announced it was modifying Chrome's
Filesystem API, which sites use to store temporary or permanent files. Previously, if the API was not
available, a website could assume the browser was in Incognito mode. Google also promised to
close off any new methods to detect when a browser is in Incognito mode. Some news websites
attempt to detect when Chrome is in private mode to enforce free article limits and ask visitors to
switch to regular tabs. But security researcher Vikas Mishra recently found that publishers could tell
if a tab is in Incognito mode by looking at the amount of space the API makes available to a website.

Source: https://www.zdnet.com/article/chromes-more-private-incognito-mode-websites-
can-still-detect-youre-using-it/

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