Today’s topics include Google tracking your location even when you tell it to stop, and the DHS using its Red Team approach to improve national cyber-security.
According to an investigation by the Associated Press and Princeton University, some Google apps are still storing detailed location information in your location history, even when you’ve changed the privacy settings to bar location tracking.
Location markers are stored in a setting called “Web and App Activity,” which can only be found and individually deleted on your online Google account, not device. But even that doesn’t stop all location tracking.
Some apps, such as Google Maps, will continue to track your location and save it to app-specific locations in your Google account. To turn location tracking off, you can sign in to your Google account and go to myactivity.google.com.
Speaking at Defcon in Las Vegas on Aug. 10, members of the Department of Homeland Security National Cybersecurity Assessments and Technical Services described their Red Team activities to help evaluate the cyber-hygiene of software infrastructure. NCATS Red Team services help both government agencies and private organizations identify and understand vulnerabilities in critical infrastructure.
One service NCATS provides is a Risk and Vulnerability Assessment, which is a two-week penetration test that looks for both insider and outsider vulnerabilities. Looking specifically at election security, NCATS has an Applied Vulnerability Assessment function, where vendors can submit their election control systems for analysis.
NCATS will also look at the election systems with a full penetration test and help to identify any potential flaws.