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Profiles and contact info found on unsecured Google Cloud server. A massive four-terabyte trove of sensitive personal data belonging to over a billion profiles has been found on an unsecured Google Cloud server - its owner still a mystery - in one of the largest single-source data leaks ever. The mountain of data, including phone numbers, email addresses, and social media profiles, was sitting unprotected on an anonymous server hosted on the Google Cloud when security researchers Vinny Troia and Bob Diachenko found it while scanning for vulnerabilities last month. After they reported the massive exposure to the FBI, it disappeared within hours. It’s not clear who accessed it before Troia and Diachenko, and what they did with the data, but the sheer enormity of the leak, with 1.2 billion unique data profiles potentially slurped up by malicious actors, is enough to cause alarm. The information was likely obtained in four chunks from so-called “data enrichment” companies, Troia suggested in a blog post on Friday announcing his discovery. These entities allow a customer to use a single piece of information on a person, even just their name, to access potentially hundreds more data points - anything from email address to preferred social activities. Two data enrichers - People Data Labs and OxyData.io - were discovered to be the sources for the data on the rogue server. However, after communicating with both companies, Troia was satisfied that the server did not belong to either. Its owner could have bought the data from them and just left it lying around unsecured - without any further information about the server’s owner, there was little that could legally be done.

WhatsApp is a “Trojan horse” exploited to snoop on millions of users naive enough to believe that the Facebook-owned messenger differs from its parent company, long beset by privacy scandals, Telegram founder Pavel Durov said. In a lengthy post on his Telegram channel on Wednesday, Durov took aim at one of his brainchild’s biggest rivals – WhatsApp, the world’s leading messaging app, which became a Facebook subsidiary in 2014 and boasts some 1.5 billion monthly active users. “Regardless of the underlying intentions of WhatsApp’s parent company, the advice for their end-users is the same: Unless you are cool with all your photos and messages becoming public one day, you should delete WhatsApp from your phone." The Russian-born entrepreneur pulled no punches, citing a long record of privacy-related violations by Facebook to back up his case.  “WhatsApp doesn’t only fail to protect your WhatsApp messages – this app is being consistently used as a Trojan horse to spy on your non-WhatsApp photos and messages. Why would they do it? Facebook has been part of surveillance programs long before it acquired WhatsApp." In his stinging attack on the messenger, Durov also recounted a recent discovery of yet another system vulnerability in WhatsApp, which allowed hackers to send a specially crafted MP3 file to Android and iOS users and thereby obtain access to all their data.

Fortune's annual Businessperson of the Year list features 20 business leaders "who tackled audacious goals, overcame impossible odds, found creative solutions". The list is topped by Nadella, who has been at the helm of the technology giant since 2014. Microsoft’s India-born Chief Executive Officer Satya Nadella has occupied the top spot in Fortune’s Businessperson of the Year 2019 list, an annual compilation that also includes Mastercard CEO Ajay Banga and Arista head Jayshree Ullal. Fortune’s annual Businessperson of the Year list features 20 business leaders “who tackled audacious goals, overcame impossible odds, found creative solutions”. The list is topped by Nadella, who has been at the helm of the technology giant since 2014. “In a year dominated by political chaos and bluster, it was a rare brand of steady — even quiet — leadership that won the day in the business world. And no one epitomizes that brand of obsessively results-driven, team-based leadership more than our new No. 1 Businessperson of the Year,” Fortune said. Banga is ranked 8th, while Ullal comes in at the 18th spot in the list for which Fortune looked at 10 financial factors ranging from a total return to shareholders to return on capital. Both Banga and Ullal are of Indian-origin. Fortune said Nadella, a computer scientist, was “neither a founder like Bill Gates nor a big-personality sales leader like his predecessor, Steve Ballmer when he was named the “surprise choice” to lead Microsoft in 2014. “He’d never worked in finance, another training ground for CEOs. And his stature on the global stage was non-existent. What’s more, having joined Microsoft in 1992, he was thoroughly steeped in a dog-eat-dog Microsoft culture that had contributed to the company’s stagnation,” Fortune said. Today, Nadella “wears the gaps in his resume as comfortably as the jeans and blazers that are his corporate uniform”, it said. “Key to his leadership style is a willingness to delegate,” particularly to three members of his management team — president Brad Smith, who runs policy and legal affairs; Microsoft’s chief financial officer Amy Hood and chief people officer Kathleen Hogan. “I am wired to be fairly confident in myself and to let others shine,” Fortune quotes Nadella as saying. “CEOs can only do what they do if they have an amazing team. I am blessed to have that. Want to know more visit Our Forum.

  

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