Independent – Page 36 – Computer Security Articles

Before the pandemic, the business world took for granted that the vast majority of knowledge workers would be working in corporate offices most of the time. In the post-pandemic world, however, many employees can work from anywhere, at any time, and on any device with an internet connection.

When COVID-19 work-at-home mandates took effect around the world in early 2020, organizations rushed to adopt online collaboration tools. With capabilities ranging from voice- and videoconferencing to document co-authoring and project tracking, these tools helped teams communicate, work together, and share updates on various projects and initiatives from home or anywhere else.

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Independent Krebs

July 7, 2023 admin

Top Suspect in 2015 Ashley Madison Hack Committed Suicide in 2014

Credit to Author: BrianKrebs| Date: Fri, 07 Jul 2023 19:55:45 +0000

When the marital infidelity website AshleyMadison.com learned in July 2015 that hackers were threatening to publish data stolen from 37 million users, the company’s then-CEO Noel Biderman was quick to point the finger at an unnamed former contractor. But as a new documentary series on Hulu reveals [SPOILER ALERT!], there was just one problem with that theory: Their top suspect had killed himself more than a year before the hackers began publishing stolen user data.

ComputerWorld Independent

July 7, 2023 admin

OpenAI launches new alignment division to tackle risks of superintelligent AI

OpenAI is opening a new alignment research division, focused on developing training techniques to stop superintelligent AI — artificial intelligence that could outthink humans and become misaligned with humans ethics — from causing serious harm.

“Currently, we don’t have a solution for steering or controlling a potentially superintelligent AI, and preventing it from going rogue,” Jan Leike and Ilya Sutskever wrote in a blog post for OpenAI, the company behind the most well-known generative AI large language model, ChatGPT. They added that although superintelligence might seem far off, some experts believe it could arrive this decade.

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ComputerWorld Independent

July 7, 2023 admin

Lawyers and Incident Response can be a dangerous combo

Credit to Author: eschuman@thecontentfirm.com| Date: Fri, 07 Jul 2023 03:30:00 -0700

Lawyers and C-suite leaders have the same basic mission: protect the enterprise from bad actors who want to do harm. But they often often approach the job in such polar opposite ways that they wind up fighting each other instead of working together.

A new academic report on the topic from researchers at the University of Edinburgh, the University of Innsbruck, Tufts University and the University of Minnesota tried to document how stark those differences have become.

“Cyber insurance sends work to a small number of [incident response] firms, drives down the fees paid and appoints lawyers to direct technical investigators,” the report noted. “Lawyers, when directing incident response often introduce legalistic contractual and communication steps that slow down incident response, advise IR practitioners not to write down remediation steps or to produce formal reports and restrict access to any documents produced.”

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Independent Krebs

July 3, 2023 admin

Who’s Behind the DomainNetworks Snail Mail Scam?

Credit to Author: BrianKrebs| Date: Mon, 03 Jul 2023 14:56:35 +0000

If you’ve ever owned a domain name, the chances are good that at some point you’ve received a snail mail letter which appears to be a bill for a domain or website-related services. In reality, these misleading missives try to trick people into paying for useless services they never ordered, don’t need, and probably will never receive. Here’s a look at the most recent incarnation of this scam — DomainNetworks — and some clues about who may be behind it.

Independent Krebs

June 29, 2023 admin

Russian Cybersecurity Executive Arrested for Alleged Role in 2012 Megahacks

Credit to Author: BrianKrebs| Date: Thu, 29 Jun 2023 18:30:08 +0000

Nikita Kislitsin, formerly the head of network security for one of Russia’s top cybersecurity firms, was arrested last week in Kazakhstan in response to 10-year-old hacking charges from the U.S. Department of Justice. Experts say Kislitsin’s prosecution could soon put the Kazakhstan government in a sticky diplomatic position, as the Kremlin is already signaling that it intends to block his extradition to the United States.

ComputerWorld Independent

June 28, 2023 admin

Apple warns that UK's Online Safety Bill puts people at 'greater risk'

Apple has raised its voice against a UK law that will dramatically undermine secure commerce and trust online, warning it could put UK citizens at risk.

And Apple is not alone. More than 80 civil society organizations, academics, and experts from 23 nations have warned against the UK government’s decision, which would turn the UK into the first democracy to require routine surveillance of people’s private chats.

The current UK government’s Online Safety Bill includes the power to force encrypted messaging tools such as WhatsApp, Signal, and iMessage to scan messages.

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Independent Krebs

June 27, 2023 admin

U.K. Cyber Thug “PlugwalkJoe” Gets 5 Years in Prison

Credit to Author: BrianKrebs| Date: Tue, 27 Jun 2023 19:44:03 +0000

Joseph James “PlugwalkJoe” O’Connor, a 24-year-old from the United Kingdom who earned his 15 minutes of fame by participating in the July 2020 hack of Twitter, has been sentenced to five years in a U.S. prison. That may seem like harsh punishment for a brief and very public cyber joy ride. But O’Connor also pleaded guilty in a separate investigation involving a years-long spree of cyberstalking and cryptocurrency theft enabled by “SIM swapping,” a crime wherein fraudsters trick a mobile provider into diverting a customer’s phone calls and text messages to a device they control.