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Amazon says email banning TikTok from employee phones was ‘sent in error’

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Re: Amazon says email banning TikTok from employee phones was ‘sent in error’

#341

Post by hoten »

jsf01 wrote: post #313
sevencolors wrote: post #299

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Does anyone have a "explain it like I'm 5 but took some CS classes back in college"? I know that if you craft your buffer overflow just right it will overwrite other parts of memory with the new function. But how do you know what parts will get overwritten? Does that mean the new function can do almost anything?

With a buffer overflow, you can write your own code into a chunk of memory that ends up being run by the application. In this case, since WhatsApp already had SMS read privileges as part of the signup auth flow, the attacker also had those privileges. The article has some detail about the remote code execution part of this exploit. “What this means is that there was a software flaw in the WhatsApp code for handling M…

So the payload would be some corrupted video file sent to Bezo's phone. Would the attack look something like:

1) Discover/buy/steal Bezo's Whatsapp number (how did they do that...)

2) Discover/buy/steal a 0-day bug in Whatsapp.

3) Write and compile a program that reads SMS from the OS and beacons it to some server you control.

4) Create a corrupted video file that would trigger the video parsing bug, and within that video file place the compiled program from the previous step in the correct place so that it gets executed.

5) Send to Bezos.

Re: Amazon says email banning TikTok from employee phones was ‘sent in error’

#343

Post by ghaff »

RobRivera wrote: post #320
ghaff wrote: post #133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I might be with you if Uber, say, is requiring its drivers to install MDM--which I'm guessing would be a really bad idea for their drivers-not-employees position. But for engineers and other office workers at tech companies? As a practical matter, people have to buy lots of things to do professional jobs that they wouldn't need to buy without those jobs. In this day and age, if you want a second phone, buying a few y…

Wasnt there a recent supreme court ruling regarding the Native Americans of Oklahoma that said something to the effect of 'just because you keep doing an evil, doesnt make it right, and letting it be right is an injustice to those in the right'?

You have to dress into the office—albeit many don’t wear suits any longer. Many have to drive. Those who travel a lot need many accessories for the purpose. The ideas that well-paid professionals should have all these things covered by a company seems... unreasonable.

And, seriously, complaining about having to spend a few bucks for something you need at work is equivalent to circumstances around Indian treaties in the US?

Re: Amazon says email banning TikTok from employee phones was ‘sent in error’

#344

Post by propogandist »

nickthegreek wrote: post #258
scohesc wrote: post #217

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's been admitted that tiktok actively suppresses content on peoples front pages that include visibly disabled users, "ugly" users, fat users, etc. etc. - anything that makes their image look "bad" in their eyes. Kind of goes against current shoe-horned American societal values of "everyone should be respected, regardless of who, what, how, when, where they are"

And they also came out to make changes to that system.

after they were exposed, to avoid negative PR

Re: Amazon says email banning TikTok from employee phones was ‘sent in error’

#345

Post by three_seagrass »

enitihas wrote: post #17
orblivion wrote: post #8

Sorry if I missed something obvious, but if we're at the point where the U.S. government is even contemplating banning TikTok, how come it's on Google and Apple stores at this point? They seem to be at least somewhat vigilant about spyware etc.

Apple earns a lot of money from China, so difficult for them to do something which irritates the Chinese government. Google behaves the same way, even though they have no income from China right now, but I think they are secretly hopefully of dragonfly.

Dragonfly was canned after Google employees revolted. I'd be surprised if Google could even get a project like that resourced again without more leaks.

Re: Amazon says email banning TikTok from employee phones was ‘sent in error’

#346

Post by _abox »

melling wrote: post #342

The email sent to Amazon employees was a mistake. https://variety.com/2020/digital/news/amazon-bans-tiktok-emp...

Someone goes through all the trouble of typing that explicit email and it's a mistake?

Sounds more like 'pulled after huge feedback'.

Though personally I'd agree with this decision. TikTok seems to be a particularly bad apple: https://www.reddit.com/r/videos/comments/fxgi06/not_new_news...

Re: Amazon says email banning TikTok from employee phones was ‘sent in error’

#347

Post by quuUuw »

dvt wrote: post #109

Looks like TikTok is slowly imploding. I know there's plenty of political implications and a lot of discussion here is on that (which is interesting in its own right), but I wonder if there's opportunity here for a potential competitor.

Everywhere I go I see this comment. Competitors are literally being made daily. Hell, even instagram has one now. The problem is money and technology can never buy a community and that's really why vine and tiktok were so successful.

Re: Amazon says email banning TikTok from employee phones was ‘sent in error’

#348

Post by scarface74 »

LinuxBender wrote: post #286
scarface74 wrote: post #240

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I doubt the government even has the right to ban an app. If so, could they also ban a website?

Yes, if the owner or organization is found to be breaking the law. Malicious domains are seized every day. Here [1] is one of the most recent examples. Some people try to evade this [2] with varying degrees of success. [1] - https://www.msn.com/EN-US/news/technology/microsoft-secretly... [2] - https://torrentfreak.com/how-to-stop-domain-names-being-seiz...

And if the domains are registered out of the country?

Re: Amazon says email banning TikTok from employee phones was ‘sent in error’

#349

Post by GekkePrutser »

bonzini wrote: post #270
ballark wrote: post #268

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Amazon employee here. They do use work profiles on Android phones.

So in theory they should have no control on the apps you install on the personal side. Is this just moral obligation, or are they requiring full control of the phone even outside the work profile?

I manage phones for a big corp. Just want to clarify what's possible. Google highly limits what you can do in Work Profile mode, you can't control much outside the work profile.

We can't see the app list on the personal side in work profile mode, BUT we can specify some that are a no-go. I'll show up as a compliance violation. But we can't view the list anymore like we could do with the pre-work profile Android Device Admin management (and still can with Apple).

We're not blocking any apps ourselves right now but it is possible. We do grant all BYOD phones access to our network, so for that reason we would want the capability to block any known threats if they are around.

We can also control some minor things on the personal side, like a pincode requirement and forbidding of sideloading and rooting. But in general we have very little visibility and control, which is the way I (as an admin) like it too. I only want to know what I really need to know especially on the personal side. We can (and do) also block copy/paste from work profile to personal, as data loss prevention, but we allow it the other way around.

In general users complain a lot about the work profile being separate, and not being able to integrate their personal and work calendars.. But for personal privacy it's a big win IMO. Apple has something similar since iOS 13 (called User Enrolment) but it's still a bit too limited to be sufficient for us. And it requires Apple federated accounts which have some requirements that are impossible for us to meet :(

Re: Amazon says email banning TikTok from employee phones was ‘sent in error’

#350

Post by quuUuw »

ralston3 wrote: post #139
maerF0x0 wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What does tiktok have that IG stories or SnapChat does not provide? It appears to me that TikTok is just a perpetuation of exclusivity in Social Networks (the same way kids exited FB when their parents signed up) ...

The "For You" page. Sure its just another algorithmic-based feed. But in my experience (and from talking to a few ppl who enjoy TikTok), the For You page is a differentiator. It's like a combination of what's trending, what's recent (time wise), and what you've spent time interacting (watching, liking, commenting) with previously. Again all platforms do some form of this, but just saying TikTok does it in a pretty ad…

I seem to be the only person here who actually uses tiktok. What makes tiktok different is the musical background (somehow people never mention this when comparing it to vine), the fyp algorithm being incredibly good, and the various communities built around certain niches. It's night and day compared to other apps.
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