Facebook Buries Millions of Leaked Instagram Passwords Amid Weekly Cyber Threats
Facebook quietly revises its estimate of exposed Instagram passwords from thousands to millions during a major political news cycle. Meanwhile, Utah strengthens digital privacy laws and an unknown agent exposes an Iranian hacking group.
Facebook quietly updates a previous blog post to reveal that a plaintext password storage bug affects millions of Instagram users, not hundreds of thousands as initially reported. Critics accuse the social media giant of intentionally burying this bad news by releasing the updated figures at the exact same time as the highly anticipated Mueller report summary.
Utah passes the Electronic Information or Data Privacy Act, a new law that requires police to obtain a warrant based on probable cause before searching digital data. This legislation closes a major Fourth Amendment loophole that previously allows law enforcement to access emails, photos, and other cloud content using only a subpoena.
An unidentified entity doxes members of an Iranian hacker group known as APT34 or OilRig by dumping their personal information and code into a Telegram channel. Separately, a ransomware attack forces The Weather Channel off the air for over an hour, disrupting live programming before the network manages to restore its broadcast.