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Google is shutting down its goo.gl URL shortening service
URL shorteners can be both useful and fun. Google's take on the tech launched in 2009, and added a third-party API, the ability to create QR codes and the power to link right to iOS and Android apps. Even Keanu Reeves has a URL shortener named in his honor. Unfortunately, Google is replacing its own service, goo.gl, with Firebase Dynamic Links (FDL) as of April 13th. These new smart URLs let you send folks to any location within iOS, Android or web apps.
Russian hackers had hundreds of US targets in addition to the DNC
Various US agencies continue to look into the role Russia played in last year's presidential election, and targets of those investigations include interactions between Trump advisors and Russian officials, ads purchased by Russian agents through social media sites like Facebook and Twitter and whether the Kremlin was involved in the DNC email hacks of last year. In regards to the latter, Russia has been suspected of being behind the hacks for quite some time and just this week, reports have surfaced that the US Department of Justice has pinpointed six Russian officials it believes to have been involved in the hacks. However, a report released today by the Associated Press suggests that the group behind the DNC email breaches actually had a much wider range of targets.
Shortened URLs make it easy to spy on people
Security researchers have discovered that short URLs are able to be brute-forced, potentially exposing personal data to anyone motivated to look. The issue was found by Martin Georgiev and Vitaly Shmatikov after looking at the abbreviated web addresses used by companies like Google, Microsoft and bit.ly. The standard Google Maps URL, for instance, takes up around 150 characters, but for ease of use, the product offered a six-character alternative. But a combination of six-characters is small enough that it's possible to break simply with trial and error, exposing your cloud storage files and mapping requests to the world.
Facebook helps online services warn each other about security threats
Malware frequently strikes multiple targets, but online services rarely do a great job of warning each other about related threats; your data could be at risk simply because your favorite social network didn't get a heads-up in time. Facebook is clearly sick and tired of this problem, as it just launched a hub that's designed to mount a coordinated defense. Its new ThreatExchange web platform lets services both look up existing threat info and share their discoveries with as many sites as they see fit. If Facebook reels under a botnet attack, it can let others know what to do to protect themselves.
