Cyber Round Up: LinkedIn App Sparks Privacy Concerns; NSA Civilian Employee “Tricked” Into Giving Snowden Passwords; New Trojan Horse Emerges

Late last year, LinkedIn released “Intro,” an application for iOS and Android that basically routes all user emails through the LinkedIn servers and pastes the sender’s LinkedIn profile into the email.  Hacker News reports that, in light of controversy due to privacy concerns, the app will be shut down early next month.  Although LinkedIn pledged that all information run through the servers was encrypted and immediately deleted, according to Hacker News, the app puts user data entirely within the company’s control.

Recently E-Hacking News reported that a new Trojan Horse, “OSX/CoinThief.A,” emerged targeting Mac operating systems in order to watch user Internet traffic and steal bitcoins.

Forbes reports that Google, Facebook, Twitter, Microsoft, LinkedIn, Sprint, and security firms Trend Micro and Symantec, came together to celebrate Safer Internet Day (SID) last week.  The event was founded in the early 2000s by the European Commission, according to Forbes, and just last year the Department of Homeland Security signed a joint declaration with the European Commission to bring SID to ConnectSafely.org, a U.S. non-profit Internet safety organization.  Here’s a video from SID.

Here’s a link to an interesting article by Wired that discusses how hacked x-rays could permit weapons to slip through airport security.  As the article explains, two researchers believe the Threat Image Projection function of such machines, which is designed to train x-ray operators and allows supervisors to “superimpose a chosen image of contraband onto the screen of any baggage system in the airport,” could backfire.

 You may have heard that Forbes was the target of an attack by the Syrian Electronic Army last Friday.  Here’s USA Today’s report on the incident.

Lastly, a recently exposed NSA memo alleges that one of Snowden’s coworkers was tricked into providing Snowden with the passwords to access classified information, CNN reports.  The memo said: “At Mr. Snowden’s request, the civilian entered the PKI password at Mr. Snowden’s computer terminal.  Unbeknownst to the civilian, Mr. Snowden was able to capture the password, allowing him even greater access to classified information.”