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In a report on Friday, Google highlights the importance of linking a phone to an account when it comes to fighting hijacking attempts from automated attempts from bots, phishing, and targeted attacks. An email address is at the center of our online life, essential for creating accounts to web services and for receiving communication more or less sensitive in nature. Moreover, providers of a large host of services, like Google and Microsoft, have moved to the single sign-in system where the same username and password to access all services from the same provider. On top of this, these accounts can be used to sign up or log into third-party services. It's no wonder email accounts are coveted by hackers of any sort. Account hijacking attempts occur every day, by the hundreds of thousands, and companies like Google have developed defenses against these threats. Adding a recovery phone number to the Google account seems to be an effective way to win against take-over attacks, especially if they are not targeted. A study from academic researchers shows that where a Google account was linked to a phone, the takeover prevention rates went up as much as 100% in the case of automated bots, as high as 99% with run-of-the-mill phishing, and up to 90% with targeted attacks. According to a study from researchers from New York University and Google real-world efforts to hijack a Google account were mostly ineffective against device-based challenges. More detailed information is posted on OUR FORUM.

Do you think your email on Gmail is private? If so, you may want to think again, as your Gmail messages are being scanned by Google for purchases, which are then displayed in your Google account. This week, a user posted on Reddit about how they discovered that their Google Account's Purchases page contained all of the purchases they have made from Amazon and other online stores even though they do not use Google Pay. When I saw this, I checked my Google Account Purchases page, located at myaccount.google.com/purchases, and saw that it too contained the purchases I made from online services such as Dominos, Steam, 1-800-Flowers.com, Amazon, Adidas, and more. The general consensus was that Gmail was analyzing incoming emails for purchase receipts and then extracting that information. When Google was contacted about this, they confirmed the information was coming from Gmail messages. They also stated that this was being done to help their users find their data and that they do not use any information stored in your emails, including your purchases, to serve you ads. While Google told us that you can delete this information at any time, they did not mention how much of a pain it is to do so. Instead of having a single setting that allows you to control how this data is saved, you need to go into each and every purchase and click on the Remove Purchase button. This will bring you to the original email that the data was pulled from and once this email is trashed, the purchase will be removed from the Purchases page. Full details are posted on OUR FORUM.

Cisco upgraded three remote code execution (RCE) vulnerabilities impacting the web management interfaces to critical severity with a CVSS base score of 9.8 after initially rating them as high with a base score of 8.8 when the advisories were first published on May 15. Cisco Prime Infrastructure (PI) and Cisco Evolved Programmable Network (EPN) Manager are network management tools used by administrators "for provisioning, monitoring, optimizing, and troubleshooting both wired and wireless devices." According to Cisco's security advisory published on May 15 and updated on May 16, the critical vulnerabilities exist "because the software improperly validates user-supplied input" and they can be remotely exploited by potential attackers to gain the ability to execute arbitrary code with "root-level privileges on the underlying operating system." The most dangerous is the issue tracked as CVE-2019-1821 which could be "exploited by an unauthenticated attacker that has network access to the affected administrative interface." The other two flaws tracked as CVE-2019-1822 and CVE-2019-1823 are less concerning given that they would "require that an attacker have valid credentials to authenticate to the impacted administrative interface." The three vulnerabilities affect the following software versions: Cisco PI Software Releases prior to 3.4.1, 3.5, and 3.6, and EPN Manager Releases prior to 3.0.1. While there are no workarounds that address these vulnerabilities, Cisco has published free software updates which can be used to patch the software flaws. The web-based management interface software is also affected by two other Improper Input Validation flaws rated as high severity and tracked as CVE-2019-1824 and CVE-2019-1825 which "could allow an authenticated, remote attacker to execute arbitrary SQL queries." More complete details are posted on OUR FORUM.