The Supreme court has just delivered a new judgment that prohibits warrantless seizure of location records by the police. The case, Carpenter v. United States was decided on  5 – 4 margin, a slim one, om the issue of whether a user could expect a reasonable expectation of privacy regarding location records held by a third party. This would trigger fourth amendment protections if the court ruled in the affirmative. “Given the unique nature of cell phone location records, the fact that the information is held by a third party does not by itself overcome the user’s claim to Fourth Amendment protection,” said Chief Justice John Roberts in his delivery of the majority opinion. It was ruled that the Location Information obtained by police should generally be a considered search — as it is private information — triggering probable cause warrant requirement to obtain such records.  Location records are extremely sensitive, and chronicle “a person’s physical presence compiled every day, every moment, over several years.” said the court. “This is a groundbreaking victory for Americans’ privacy rights in the digital age.“The Supreme Court has given privacy law an update that it has badly needed for many years, finally bringing it in line with the realities of modern life.,” the ACLU said today. Read the Supreme Court decision on OUR FORUM.

The intentions of and delivery method of Mylobot are unknown - but it appears to be the work of a sophisticated attacker who could deliver trojans, ransomware and more. A new malware campaign is roping systems into a botnet and providing the attackers with complete control over infected victims, plus the ability to deliver additional payloads, putting the victims' devices at risk of Trojans, keyloggers, DDoS attacks and other malicious schemes. The malware comes equipped with three different layers of evasion techniques which have been described by the researchers at Deep Instinct who uncovered the malware as complex, rare and "never seen in the wild before". Dubbed Mylobot after a researcher's pet dog, the origins of the malware and its delivery method are currently unknown, but it appears to have a connection to Locky ransomware -- one of the most prolific forms of malware during last year. The sophisticated nature of the botnet suggests that those behind it aren't amateurs, with Mylobot incorporating various techniques to avoid detection. Follow this on OUR FORUM.