Lifeboat Foundation: Safeguarding Humanity
Toggle light / dark theme

Blog – Page 25

Get the latest international news and world events from around the world.

Log in for authorized contributors

Feeling angry makes people more likely to share news from low-credibility sources

The second experiment involved 116 university students and focused specifically on comparing moral anger and moral disgust. Participants read 18 false news headlines that described minor or severe moral violations. This time, the headlines were presented as coming from either a highly credible source or a low credibility source.

The scientists wanted to see how different emotional states influenced the sharing of these headlines. They asked the students to rate their current feelings of anger, their feelings of disgust, or their neutral attention. After this emotional prompt, the students rated their willingness to share the news.

The researchers found that participants prompted to feel anger were significantly more willing to share headlines from low credibility sources compared to the disgust and control groups. The disgust prompt did not increase sharing willingness compared to the neutral control group. This suggests that moral anger actively reduces a person’s reliance on credibility when deciding to share information.

PyPI package with 1.1M monthly downloads hacked to push infostealer

An attacker pushed a malicious version of the popular elementary-data package Python Package Index (PyPI) to steal sensitive developer data and cryptocurrency wallets.

The dangerous release is 0.23.3, and it extended to the Docker image due to the package’s workflow that creates the image from the code and uploads it to a container registry for deployment.

Community member crisperik spotted the malicious upload and opened an issue on the project’s GitHub on Saturday, alerting the maintainer and decreasing the exposure window.

Canada arrests three for operating “SMS blaster” device in Toronto

Canadian authorities have arrested three men for operating an “SMS blaster” device that pretends to be a cellular tower to send phishing texts to nearby phones.

Such tools trick devices into connecting to them by emitting signals that mimic a legitimate tower. Mobile phones in its range automatically link to them as there is stronger reception.

Once the connection is established, the operators of these rogue cellular base stations can push SMS messages directly to connected devices, which appear to come from trusted entities such as banks or the government.

Home security giant ADT data breach affects 5.5 million people

The ShinyHunters extortion group stole the personal information of 5.5 million individuals after breaching the systems of home security giant ADT earlier this month, according to data breach notification service Have I Been Pwned.

Founded in 1874 as American District Telegraph, ADT is the oldest and largest home security company in the United States, currently providing monitored security and smart home solutions to over 6 million residential and small-business customers.

ADT has previously disclosed two other data breaches in August 2024 and October 2024 that exposed employee and customer information.

GlassWorm malware attacks return via 73 OpenVSX “sleeper” extensions

A new wave of the Glassworm campaign is targeting the OpenVSX ecosystem with 73 “sleeper” extensions that turn malicious after an update.

Six of the extensions have been activated and deliver malware, while researchers assess with high confidence that the rest of them are dormant or at least suspicious.

When initially uploaded, the extensions are benign but deliver the payload at a later stage, revealing the attacker’s true intention.

/* */