The artist formerly known as Kanye West acquires Parler, and other news bytes of the week.

Parlement Technologies put out a press release this week that stated it had entered into “an agreement in principle” to sell Kanye West, now legally known as Ye, the conservative social media platform Parler. The announcement comes just days after Ye was banned by both Instagram and Twitter for antisemitic comments. According to the press release, “Ye has become the richest Black man in history through music and apparel and is taking a bold stance against his recent censorship from Big Tech, using his far-reaching talents to further lead the fight to create a truly non-cancelable environment.” 

Parler has been suffering from low daily usage, so it remains to be seen if the acquisition brings any popularity to the platform. As of this week, Ye himself still has less than 16,000 followers on Parler. For more on this story, see The Verge. 

31 arrested for hacking keyless vehicles

Software developers, car thieves, and resellers were among those arrested for taking part in a car theft ring that hacked into keyless vehicles and stole them without needing to use the physical key fob. The takedown was coordinated by French authorities, with help from their Latvian and Spanish counterparts and Europol. Twenty-two locations were searched, and over a million Euros in criminal assets were seized. The ring targeted keyless vehicles made by two French car manufacturers. The criminals used a hacking tool to open the car doors and start the ignition. See the full Europol announcement for more. 

Industrial cybersecurity about to take off

Market research companies do not all agree on how much value the industrial cybersecurity market will have in a decade’s time, but they do all agree that it will experience a steady growth. The market is currently valued at $20 billion, and some researchers predict it will exceed $40 billion by 2030. Industrial cybersecurity solutions are increasingly needed as more organizations and governments rely on IoT and cloud technologies, and more threat actors target those organizations and governments. Network security is expected to dominate the market, but cloud security will see the most growth. To learn more, see Security Week. 

FBI warns of disinformation ahead of midterms

The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) and the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) issued two public service announcements (PSAs) this month to address concerns surrounding the midterm elections in November. The first PSA is more of an assurance to the public that U.S. voting infrastructure is sound. It reports that any attackers’ attempts to compromise the election will unlikely succeed. In contrast, the second PSA cautions the public against disinformation that may try to undermine voter confidence through false claims of voter suppression, voter or ballot fraud, and cyberattacks on election infrastructure. For more, see CSO. 

This week’s must-read on the Avast blog 

There are steps you can take to create and manage strong passwords for children, without losing your mind in the process. Here’s what we recommend.