News
- Phishing emails "notify" victims of an active $50 subscription
- Victims can "cancel" the subscription, by clicking on a link in the email body
- The link leads to a fake login page where Apple ID credentials are harvested
Cybercriminals are impersonating a popular video editing app to steal people’s Apple ID logins, security researchers are warning.
Earlier this week, the security outfit Cofense warned about spotting a new phishing campaign. In it, the attackers would spoof CapCut, a video and graphic editing app developed by ByteDance, the company behind TikTok.
CapCut is immensely popular, boasting hundreds of millions active users. It offers both a free tier, and a paid tier, which is what the attackers are now abusing.
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The spoofed email imitates CapCut’s branding to boost legitimacy, and “notifies” the victim that they just subscribed to the paid version, costing $50.
Further in the email, the victim is offered to “cancel subscription” if it was made by mistake.
With many mobile apps charging for their services by default, it’s not completely irrational to trust the email, and rush to cancel the subscription.
However, clicking on the link redirects the victim to a fake Apple login page, where they are asked to provide their Apple ID credentials.
These credentials are then relayed to the attackers, which they can use to access people’s images, messages, and other sensitive data. They can also use it to make purchases, causing direct financial harm, as well.
The best way to defend against these attacks, Cofense says, is to be skeptical of all incoming emails, especially those that require people to urgently do something:
“This phishing campaign highlights how easily trust can be manipulated through familiar branding and urgency. By imitating CapCut’s/Apple’s identity and dangling the threat of unwanted charges, attackers guide victims through a seamless two-stage credential theft process,” the researchers explain.
“The use of a fake verification step at the end is a subtle yet strategic move to delay suspicion and extend the attack window. As always, skepticism is a critical defense—check URLs carefully, question unexpected prompts for sensitive information, and report suspicious messages.”
Via Cybernews
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- Microsoft recently threw a lifeline to consumers, offering alternatives to paying $30 for extended support for Windows 10
- PIRG thinks this doesn't go far enough in terms of avoiding an impending e-waste calamity
- The organization suggests Microsoft considers providing longer-term support for Windows 10, or relaxes the spec requirements for Windows 11
Microsoft's recent lifeline to help those stuck on Windows 10 – due to not meeting the stricter hardware requirements for a Windows 11 upgrade – simply isn't enough, according to a consumer rights group.
The Register reports that it has spoken to Lucas Rockett Gutterman, who leads the Designed to Last campaign for the Public Interest Research Group (PIRG) in the US.
As you may be aware, PIRG has a mission to combat obsolescence and e-waste. The organization has previously levelled accusations at Microsoft of its Windows 11 requirements effectively shoving hundreds of millions of otherwise perfectly serviceable PCs into landfill, come the end of Windows 10 in October 2025. (The organization isn't alone in that, either.)
You may have seen that last week, Microsoft made a concession on this front. We've long known that one option for consumers will be to pay $30 for an additional year of security updates (something that's never been offered before), but now Microsoft just introduced some other choices too.
Instead of forking out cash, you can elect to use the Windows Backup app to sync all your settings to the cloud (OneDrive). Alternatively, you can redeem 1,000 Microsoft Rewards points.
However, Gutterman remains distinctly unimpressed with the new choices, telling The Register that: "Microsoft's new options don't go far enough and likely won't make a dent in the up to 400 million Windows 10 PCs that can't upgrade to Windows 11."
Gutterman adds that: "What [Microsoft hasn't] done is commit to automatically providing longer support for Windows 10 or loosening the hardware requirements for Windows 11."
"It's obvious that users are frustrated," Gutterman concludes. "They feel yanked around and don't think this [latest] announcement provides a viable solution."
Analysis: thinking beyond a one-year extension(Image credit: Microsoft)To be fair to Microsoft, I think that giving Windows 10 users a couple of new options to avoid paying $30 to keep security updates going for an extra year (through to October 2026) is actually a very positive move – especially because simply using the Backup app isn't a particularly hefty imposition.
I can see where Gutterman is coming from with the points he makes, but the suggestion that Microsoft might consider loosening the system requirements for Windows 11 is, I feel, rather a waste of breath. That isn't going to happen at this point, and I think the software giant has been pretty clear on that.
For me, the key point raised is providing Windows 10 support beyond an extra year for consumers, and this is something I've been harping on for some time. While businesses can get a three-year program of extended security updates (if they want that much), so far Microsoft is only offering consumers a single year.
Perhaps the software giant feels that this is enough, but it really isn't – not when it comes to keeping all those olds PCs off the scrapheap. Why isn't Microsoft looking at extending support for multiple years for consumers too, from an eco-friendly angle?
Just a second additional year of support would be some welcome extra breathing room, even if Microsoft charged for it rather than offering any kind of alternative angle like using the Backup app. Of course, a non-paying option would be better. I'd even suggest making Windows 10 ad-supported to keep those security updates coming for two or three years.
What do you mean that's already happened and ads are all over the place? Ahem – in all seriousness, I think allowing Microsoft to push more ad notifications (in a still limited fashion) within Windows 10 would be a compromise many would take, rather than paying extra to keep their non-Windows 11 compatible PC alive through to 2027 or 2028. At least suffering the adverts would have a plus side to it in this scenario, and if you can't stand the idea of yet more ads, you can stump up the $30.
Whatever the case, I fully agree with PIRG that a one-year extension for consumers isn't good enough in terms of Microsoft's responsibilities towards preventing excessive e-waste – and hopefully the company will see the sense in further extended updates for consumers, too, not just businesses.
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- The latest Steam update adds a new performance monitoring feature
- The overlay can display FPS values, monitor CPU and GPU usage, and more
- Valve says the overlay is designed to help players understand how their PC is performing and how it impacts their game's performance
Valve has released a new Steam Client update that lets players easily monitor the performance of their games.
As explained in a new blog post, this update adds a performance monitoring overlay and is "designed to help you understand how your PC is performing and how it is impacting your game's performance."
Unlike the previous frames per second (FPS) counter that can be toggled to appear in the corner of a game, this new feature will monitor frame rate values, but also break out generated frames from Deep Learning Super Sampling (DLSS) or FidelityFX Super Resolution (FSR) vs in-game FPS.
There are four levels of monitoring with this overlay, including Single FPS Value, FPS Details, FPS Details, CPU & GPU Utilization, and FPS, CPU, GPU, and RAM.
"It can show you min/max single frame values and a graph of frame rate over time," Valve explained. "Additionally, it will show you CPU performance information, GPU performance information, and system memory usage information. These pieces of data can be useful to understand the causes of bad game performance whether that be a slow CPU, GPU, or too high graphics settings that are over subscribing your video or system ram."
When enabled, the overlay will appear at the bottom of the screen, but players can keep the display small with a single FPS value, or expand it to show the full details when debugging a performance issue.
Players can freely adjust details live in-game, change color saturation, text size, and background opacity to their liking, show a graph of FPS over time, and a graph of CPU utilization per-core.
To enable the new performance overlay, users need to go to Settings > In Game and scroll down to the new Performance Overlay section. There, they can change the position of the overlay, make a hotkey for easier access, and more.
Valve also said it has plans to add additional pieces of data to the performance overlay, "to detect certain common bad hardware performance scenarios, and to show a larger summary of your game's performance in the overlay itself when you hit shift-tab."
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