### Issue 1436 - Tuesday 24th August, 2021

## In Today's Issue

- South Australia trials facial recognition app to police home quarantine
- iCloud phisher busted with loads of porn he pilfered from unsuspecting victims
- Razer USB gear installs "driver" that allows the easiest Windows privilege escalation ever
- Install this browser plugin and give researchers a peek into Google's search algorithm
- Cheap AirPods Pro, Google Nest Audio, Google Nest Hub, iPhone 12 Mini, Optus 365-day pre-paid SIM

## The News

### South Australia trials facial recognition app to police home quarantine

South Australia has had enough of hotel quarantine and is going to use "a smartphone app that uses facial recognition and geolocation" to police a home quarantine system for visitors to the state coming from COVID-19 hotspots. The app is called Home Quarantine SA and is getting tested with 50 residents this week. Apparently it'll randomly ask you to prove you're at home, giving a 15 minute window to do a "live face check". The app also has a "home quarantine schedule" telling you when you check for symptoms and when to go get tested so you can leave the house. Good luck to everyone involved.

### iCloud phisher busted with loads of porn he pilfered from unsuspecting victims

A dude in Los Angeles going by the name "icloudripper4you" has been busted offering the ability to hack into people's iCloud accounts on demand. He broke into at least 306 people's accounts and obtained more than 620,000 private photos and 9,000 videos - mostly of young women. Hao Kuo Chi admitted "that he impersonated Apple customer support staff in emails that tricked unsuspecting victims into providing him with their Apple IDs and passwords". He would then share his "wins" with other perverts. The scam was discovered by a "company that specializes in removing celebrity photos from the internet" after they reviewed logins to a victim's iCloud account and saw an odd one, which got the FBI involved. What a grubby little game this guy was playing.

### Razer USB gear installs "driver" that allows the easiest Windows privilege escalation ever

Heaps of people told me about this Razer privilege escalation exploit, so I figure I'll mention it here - "when plugging in a Razer device into Windows 10 or Windows 11, the operating system will automatically download and begin installing the Razer Synapse software on the computer", alright that sounds fine, what's the big deal? "Security researcher jonhat discovered a zero-day vulnerability in the plug-and-play Razer Synapse installation that allows users to gain SYSTEM privileges on a Windows device quickly". Oh. As the linked article from Bleeping Computer shows, it's a piece of piss to take advantage of for anyone with local access to the computer and a Razer mouse/keyboard/whatever. If you don't know, SYSTEM privileges is basically God mode on Windows.

## Something I Saw On The Internet

### Install this browser plugin and give researchers a peek into Google's search algorithm

The Australian Research Council's Centre of Excellence for Automated Decision-Making and Society is running a study called the Australian Search Experience to "better understand the decisions that search algorithms make and whether the information you receive is influenced by your search profile. We also want to determine how the information you receive changes over time". If you'd like to take part in this research, all you gotta do is install a browser extension (Chrome, Firefox, Edge). Every 4 hours it opens a new browser window, does some generic searches and sends it back to the ARC for analysis. I know some people simply won't want to take part and that's cool, but if you are inclined to take part the research doesn't get much more legit than this.

## Bargains

- Apple AirPods Pro - $279 from MyDeal
- Google Nest Audio - $99 from Google
- Google Nest Hub 2nd Gen - $98 at Harvey Norman
- iPhone 12 Mini 64GB/128GB - $799/$899 from Telstra
- Optus prepaid SIM, 365 days, 300GB data - $225 from Optus

## The End

📻 Silver Lizard - Tumbleweed

😎 The Sizzle is curated by Anthony "@decryption" Agius and emailed every weekday afternoon.

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