The summer of scams continues full swing with users of the remote access tool Teamviewer as the latest targets. Social media was abuzz late yesterday with reports of Paypal accounts being drained, email accounts being compromised and unauthorized purchases being made on Amazon and eBay, with many users speculating that TeamViewer itself had been hacked. The TeamViewer website also suffered an outage of around 3 hours, leaving users unable to connect to their PC's remotely. The company was quick to respond on their website stating that "the source of the problem, according to our research, is careless use, not a potential security breach on TeamViewer’s side." It was further stated that the website outage was due to a unrelated DNS issue and denial-of-service attack. Some users had reported seeing a Windows malware called webbrowserpassview.exe showing up in their logs, indicating that the scammers were possibly using a variety of methods to gain entry into the victim's computers. Continue reading
Spread Between Chinese And Other Exchanges Settles With Dollar Lower Against Bitcoin
The recent spread event between Chinese and other fiat/Bitcoin interfaces which took the price of the United States dollar to nearly a two year low versus Bitcoin has settled with the interfaces reporting roughly a hundred more United States dollars required to acquire a Bitcoin than it did one week ago. Up until this latest Chinese run the number of dollars required to get a Bitcoin had been remarkably stable in the 400s ever since they were remarkably stable in the 200s. Forecasts place the next subsidy halving just 39 days into the future which is likely to place further financial strain on the mining sector. As always Qntra recommends HODL as the best course of action for your psychological, spiritual, and financial well being. Sorry for your loss, but this halving train is a coming round the bend.
Forbes Revises Theranos CEO's Estimated Wealth To Near Zero
Forbes Magazine has revised their estimate of Theranos CEO Elizabeth Holmes's (WOT:nonperson) net worth from 4.5 Billion United States dollars to nearly zero. Back in October Qntra reported on the likely at the time impending collapse of the healthcare startup which attracted investment from well connected figures in the criminal gang purporting to govern the United States from Washington, DC including Henry Kissinger (WOT:nonperson) and former Senate majority leader Bill Frist, MD (WOT:nonperson). United States Marine Corps General James Mattis (WOT:nonperson) even ended up on the Board of Theranos after intervening to protect a relationship between the firm and the United States military. Between October and today the firm once valued at 9 billion United States dollars generated much noise as the reliable rumours that their product's inaccuracy rendered it worthless were confirmed. On the way to building a 9 billion United States dollar valuation, the product simply never worked in spite of numerous fraudulent misrepresentations that it did. Sorry for your loss.
Bespoke Windows Exploit On The Market
Researchers with Trustwave’s Spiderlabs team announced the discovery of a new Windows zero-day exploit being offered for sale on the Russian forum exploit.in. A member known as BuggiCorp is offering the exploit, a local privilege escalation vulnerability, for sale to a single buyer with a price tag of $90,000 USD. The Trustwave team believes the exploit is "absolutely genuine" and said the user published proof-of-concept videos showing the exploit in action. The vulnerability further bypassed Microsoft Enhanced Mitigation Experience Toolkit (EMET) protections. No comments from Microsoft were available at the time of this article.
Social Media Warrior Follows LinkedIn Hack With MySpace Hack
The hacker known as Peace, who Qntra reported was responsible for the leak of LinkedIn data, has announced he is now in possession of passwords and emails for more than 360 million MySpace users and will be selling access for the price of 6 Bitcoin. Although unclear when the data was originally obtained, it is believed to be from an old unreported breach from June 2013. MySpace, once the dominant social media site a decade ago has shifted it's focus to becoming a music network and was purchased by Time, Inc. in February of this year. MySpace attempted to sooth fears on it's blog stating "No user financial information was therefore involved in this incident; the only information exposed was users’ email address and Myspace username and password." although research shows password reuse across sites generally leads to further incidents. MySpace claims they have almost one billion registered users and 50 million unique visitors per month.
Qntra (S.QNTR) May 2016 Report
Microsoft, Google, And Facebook Partner With EU On Censorship Effort
"Law Enforcement" agencies in the European Union have entered into an agreement with Microsoft, Google, and Facebook to streamline their censorship processes together. The agreement is being referred to publicly as a "code of conduct" though it appears to be more akin to the also somewhat misleadingly named legal construction commonly referred to as a "consent" decree. Under the guise of combating illegal "hate" speech the companies have been pledged to censor material on their platforms determined to be "hate" speech within 24 hours. The European Commision has bound these countries to follow these guidelines singularly throughout the European Union with out any variance to accommodate local cultural norms.
Former Governors Johnson And Weld Compose US Libertarian Party Ticket
At the United States Libertarian party convention in Orlando, Florida former New Mexico Governor Gary Johnson (WOT:unknown/undisclosed) and former Massachusetts governor William Weld (WOT:unknown/undisclosed) secured the party's presidential and vice presidential nominations. Johnson and Weld both served as two term governors in their respective states easily winning during their re-election campaigns. This gives them both greater executive experience in government than Major Socialist party likely nominee Hilary Rodham-Clinton (WOT:nonperson) or Minor Socialist party presumptive nominee Donald Trump-Clinton (WOT:nonperson) possesses. In national polls against Hilary Rodham-Clinton and Donald Trump-Clinton Johnson manages to consistently draw ten percent of likely voters to his ticket.
As promising as this development is it only reduces the near certainty that the next United States president will be a Clinton by the smallest of margins. Notable candidates present at the Libertarian Party convention who Johnson defeated include Vermin Supreme (WOT:unknown/undisclosed), John McAfee (WOT:nonperson), Austin Petersen (WOT:unknown/undisclosed), and Darryl Perry (WOT:unknown/undisclosed).
Self Propagating Ransomware Arrives
Microsoft is raising the alarm on the latest threat it opened its customers to: Zcryptor, a new ransomware product with self propagation features. Zcryptor is capable of deploying itself to shared network drives and portable storage devices accessible from an infected machine. Zcryptor also allows infected machines to be used as part of a DDoS gang for additional monetization opportunities. Once again ransomware seems to be leading other accessory industries surrounding Bitcoin in product improvement.
Forced Outrage Over Ohio Gorilla Shooting
USistani news outlets have been constipated this weekend trying to pass a steaming pile of forced outrage upon the American populace. At the center of this effort is the shooting of a 400 pound male gorilla that was roughly dragging a toddler through the moat of its enclosure. In order to protect the life of the toddler and to protect themselves from torts of all kinds, zoo keepers in this incident immediately used lethal force against the silverback Harambe (WOT:nonperson). Now all manner of media in the United States is reporting the story alongside substantial supposing that the situation might have been handled in some way that lead to an outcome other than Harambe's death.
Harambe's legacy of failing to drown a human child is vastly eclipsed by the accomplishments of cetacean freedom fighter Tilikum who managed to bludgeon to death and drown 3 grown adults homo sapiens trained to oppress him during his ongoing captivity at various "amusement" parks. Tilikum rather than being shot for committing homicide instead was rewarded with the opportunity to sire 21 children through his captivity with the enthusiastic assistance of his captors. Apparently in the warped value system unloaded onto the American people whale lives matter more than those of apes and mens. Sorry for your loss. Peace in Our Time.