Kaspersky reports that fraudulent browser push notifications as a means of phishing and advertising are gaining popularity

Kaspersky research revealed that the monthly number of affected users has grown from 1,722,545 in January to 5,544,530 in September 2019. In total, during the first nine months of 2019, Kaspersky products protected more than 14 million users from attempts to allow websites to show unwanted notifications. Given that essentially every web user is a potential victim, this threat, although unsophisticated, requires additional attention.

Browser push notifications were introduced several years ago as a useful tool that kept readers informed with regular updates, but they are often used to bombard website visitors with unsolicited advertisements or even encourage them to download malicious software. 

The detected options include passing subscription consent off as another action, such as a CAPTCHA; switching the “accept” and “decline” buttons on subscription alerts mid-action; showing notifications from phishing copies of popular websites; and showing fraudulent subscribe pop-ups on websites.

Useful, user-friendly features, such as push notifications, are easy-to-use instruments for scams based on social engineering techniques, and therefore their growing popularity is not entirely unexpected. In light of the recent calendar invitations scam detected by Kaspersky, the company’s experts decided to dive deeper into push notification scams and phishing to find out how this tool can be abused.

Since a user’s consent is required in order to start sending notifications, attackers have come up with multiple, often out-of-the-box ways to trick and force people to sign up for subscriptions. 

To avoid receiving annoying notifications or scam ads, users can where possible, block all subscription offers, unless they come from popular and trusted websites, and be vigilant to ensure that they are not redirected to a fake website. If the user is unable to avoid an unwanted subscription, block it in the browser settings.

Adoption of a reliable security solution, like Kaspersky Security Cloud, which blocks ad and scam push subscription offers in browsers, can delete subscriptions that have already been approved, and has an anti-phishing feature.

Bill McDermott takes over as ServiceNow CEO from John Donahoe, who is stepping down to become Nike CEO

ServiceNow announced Tuesday that Bill McDermott will join ServiceNow by year-end 2019 as president and Chief Executive Officer and a member of the Board of Directors. McDermott will succeed John Donahoe, who is stepping down from ServiceNow to become president and CEO of Nike in January 2020. 

To ensure a smooth transition, Donahoe will remain ServiceNow’s CEO through the transition period and will retain his seat on the company’s Board of Directors for the remainder of his current term, ending in June 2020.

McDermott brings to ServiceNow extensive global leadership experience in enterprise software and a proven track record of driving transformative growth and strong shareholder value. McDermott served as CEO of SAP from 2014 until this month and was co-CEO from 2010 to 2014. 

McDermott recently announced his decision to not renew his contract and to step down as CEO, following a 17-year career with the company. He is joining ServiceNow following his transition from that role.

During McDermott’s tenure as co-CEO and CEO, SAP tripled its market value to approximately $140 billion, growing into a global software company with more than 437,000 customers in over 180 countries. 

McDermott led SAP’s successful transition to the cloud and generated substantial increases in total revenue, profit, employee engagement and environmental sustainability. 

Prior to SAP, McDermott held senior executive positions at Siebel Systems, Gartner and Xerox, where he started his career in sales and held a series of increasingly senior leadership roles throughout a 17-year career with that company.

In connection with the announcement, ServiceNow also provided preliminary third quarter 2019 financial results, as well as updated guidance for its full year 2019 financial outlook. As a reminder, the guidance ServiceNow provided on its second quarter earnings call on July 24, 2019, was based on foreign currency exchange (FX) rates as of June 30, 2019. These rates subsequently experienced declines.

The company’s full-year guidance issued Tuesday is based on FX rates as of Sept. 30, 2019. For the third quarter 2019, subscription revenues were $835 million, representing 35 percent year-over-year growth, adjusted for FX. Subscription revenues for the third quarter exceeded the mid-point of ServiceNow’s guidance by $9 million, excluding the impact of foreign exchange.

Subscription billings for the third quarter were $864 million, representing 29 percent year-over-year growth, adjusted for FX and duration. Subscription billings for the third quarter exceeded the mid-point of ServiceNow’s guidance by $10 million, excluding the impacts of FX and duration.