IoT products make people’s lives easier in many ways, but dubious digital privacy practices have long marred their reputations. Countless consumers and experts have complained about the lack of clarity surrounding many products, how much data they collect from users, and how exactly they use it. Now, after many years of these complaints, the Connectivity Standards Alliance (CSA), a group of companies that maintain the Matter, the open-source interoperability standard that allows IoT devices to communicate with each other, will finally do something about it.

In recent disgruntled employee news, the US Department of Justice (DOJ) announced that 37-year-old Nickolas Sharp pled guilty to multiple federal charges concerning a scheme he perpetrated to steal confidential files from his employer. Although this employer is referred to as “Company-1” in the official DOJ press release, The Verge reports that the company in question is network technology provider Ubiquiti.

One of the most popular password managers will be getting rid of passwords in the near future. 1Password announced that from summer 2023, users will have the option to unlock their password accounts with a passkey instead of a password. The company asserts that passkeys are the modern alternative to passwords and are faster and more secure to boot.

Over the past few years, online businesses, public infrastructure, and ordinary people alike have faced a spate of ransomware attacks that show no signs of letting up. Ransomware involves malicious hackers infecting an organization’s computer systems with a type of malware that steals sensitive data and locks out employees until they agree to pay a ransom. The threat actors claim they will publish the data online if they don’t pay up.

ESET Research, a Slovak security research company, discovered a cyberattack launched in Ukraine on January 25, 2023, that deployed a new type of wiper malware. Written in the Go programming language, Russia is believed to be behind the attack and the malware, which ESET has dubbed “SwiftSlicer”. 

In case you haven’t noticed, everyone’s been talking about AI lately. Over the last year, the technology seems to have improved by leaps and bounds. If you want to create a beautiful (often kind of weird) image, you’ve got the likes of DALL·E 2 to help you, or if you want to create a line of code or some kind of prose, there’s the chatbot, ChatGPT. With the improvement has come a whole host of debates. While many think it’s the future, many fear it will steal jobs from creatives. Some academics even worry students will start using ChatGPT to write all their college essays. 

European law enforcement agencies from several countries teamed up to shut down a multi-country network of organized crime groups committing online investment fraud. According to Europol, the network operated through call centers, tricking victims into investing in fake cryptocurrency schemes. Authorities believe they stole millions of euros from victims.