Technology

Heroku has had the passwords of all of its user accounts changed. The move comes about a month after the company's OAuth tokens were stolen.   Cloud platform Heroku has asked its users to change their passwords before the company resets them itself. API tokens will also expire, so apps running on the platform may no longer work until a new token is created. According to Heroku itself, it is a response from the PaaS vendor to a "security incident" in which some of the user accounts were compromised. However, that incident happened almost a month ago. In April, OAuth tokens from Heroku and another company, Travis CI, were stolen, GitHub said in a security report. Those authentication tokens allowed attackers to download data from GitHub from various organizations. GitHub reported th...

Spotify gained more users in the first quarter, despite the outcry about comedian Joe Rogan's podcasts earlier this year. The originally Swedish company now has 422 million monthly active users, an increase of 19 percent compared to a year earlier.   There are now 182 million paid subscribers of all users. However, Spotify came into disrepute early this year after several major artists, such as singer Neil Young decided to remove their music from the service. According to the musicians and other critics, comedian Joe Rogan would spread disinformation about the coronavirus in his Spotify podcast. Spotify has also withdrawn from Russia because of the war in Ukraine. As a result, the company lost 1.5 million paying subscribers in the country. In addition, Spotify still had to deal wi...

Unknowns have stolen a series of NFTs by posting a phishing link on Bored Ape Yacht Club's Instagram account. The latter is the 'exclusive' group for owners of a jpeg with a bored monkey on it.   NFTs remain a magnet for robberies. The industry makes it a practice to give away free stuff to generate more hype, but that can also be used against those enthusiasts. It happened this week at Bored Ape Yacht Club, the so-called clubhouse of holders of a Bored Ape NFT. Those are jpegs of cartoon monkeys with a receipt on the blockchain, making them worth millions of dollars in certain circles. This week, the brand's Instagram account was taken over by a fraudster who posted a link to an 'airdrop'. This would allow NFT holders to claim free ownership in the Bored Ape Yacht Club metaverse, ...

Some hackers have found an efficient way to retrieve someone's personal data: they pose as an agent who urgently needs the information 'for a matter of life or death'.   The method is as simple as it is genius. When formally requested information from a social network or other technology company, it must go through a court petition. But in life-or-death cases, the procedure takes too long, and you are asked to pass on the information in advance. Security researcher Brian Krebs discovered that this is where things go wrong. With the help of hacked e-mail accounts of police officers, criminals can credibly and successfully send such data requests. No concrete cases are mentioned, but the providers of such accounts promote the option to request data from Snapchat, Apple, Uber, Instag...

The settlement between game producer Activision Blizzard and a US government agency over sexual misconduct in the workplace has finally been approved. Not everyone involved is equally happy with the result.   A series of revelations came to light last year around Activision Blizzard, the maker of Call of Duty and World of Warcraft, among others. Harassment, sexism, sexual harassment, paying less for sharing nude photos of colleagues and women and giving fewer promotion opportunities were commonplace. One employee committed suicide after extensive bullying. That led to a settlement in September last year. Activision Blizzard was willing to pay $18 million to end a lawsuit brought by the US regulator EEOC (Equal Employment Opportunity Commission). The judge said he is ready to accept...