Microsoft Patch Tuesday, May 2023 Edition

Credit to Author: BrianKrebs| Date: Wed, 10 May 2023 01:19:58 +0000

Microsoft today released software updates to fix at least four dozen security holes in its Windows operating systems and other software, including patches for two zero-day vulnerabilities that are already being exploited in active attacks.

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Feds Take Down 13 More DDoS-for-Hire Services

Credit to Author: BrianKrebs| Date: Tue, 09 May 2023 14:05:44 +0000

The U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) this week seized 13 domain names connected to “booter” services that let paying customers launch crippling distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attacks. Ten of the domains are reincarnations of DDoS-for-hire services the FBI seized in December 2022, when it charged six U.S. men with computer crimes for allegedly operating booters.

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$10M Is Yours If You Can Get This Guy to Leave Russia

Credit to Author: BrianKrebs| Date: Fri, 05 May 2023 01:50:08 +0000

The U.S. government this week put a $10 million bounty on the head of a Russian man who for the past 18 years operated Try2Check, one of the cybercrime underground’s most trusted services for checking the validity of stolen credit card data. U.S. authorities say 43-year-old Denis Kulkov’s card-checking service made him at least $18 million, which he used to buy a Ferrari, Land Rover, and other luxury items.

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After the remote-work rush, vacant offices and empty downtowns

Core business centers in large and small cities throughout the US are suffering the effects of hybrid- and remote-work policies, which has led to a 20% to 40% reduction in office space use, according to global management consulting firm McKinsey & Company.

The switch to primarily remote work at the start of the COVID pandemic in March 2020 left downtowns largely empty. Since then, commercial areas have seen a slow, but steady, return to the office, with average office occupancy hitting 50% of pre-pandemic levels this past March, according to commercial real estate services firm CBRE Group.

But that’s enough to offset sizeable drops in the value of office space, and the need to re-think what an “office” now is. In San Francisco, for example, an office building worth $300 million before the pandemic could now be worth just $60 million, an 80% loss in value. Nearly 30% of downtown office space is vacant, according to CBRE.

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How to use Google passkeys for stronger security on Android

Still signing into your Google account by tapping out an actual password? That’s, like, so 2022.

Now, don’t get me wrong: The tried-and-true password is perfectly fine, especially if you’re using it in conjunction with two-factor authentication. But particularly for something as important as your Google account, you want to have the most effective security imaginable to keep all your personal and/or company info safe.

And starting this week, you’ve got a much better way to go about that.

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Promising Jobs at the U.S. Postal Service, ‘US Job Services’ Leaks Customer Data

Credit to Author: BrianKrebs| Date: Tue, 02 May 2023 22:08:35 +0000

A sprawling online company based in Georgia that has made tens of millions of dollars purporting to sell access to jobs at the United States Postal Service (USPS) has exposed its internal IT operations and database of nearly 900,000 customers. The leaked records indicate the network’s chief technology officer in Pakistan has been hacked for the past year, and that the entire operation was created by the principals of a Tennessee-based telemarketing firm that has promoted USPS employment websites since 2016.

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Q&A: At MIT event, Tom Siebel sees ‘terrifying’ consequences from using AI

Speakers ranging from artificial intelligence (AI) developers to law firms grappled this week with questions about the efficacy and ethics of AI during MIT Technology Review’s EmTech Digital conference. Among those who had a somewhat alarmist view of the technology (and regulatory efforts to rein it in) was Tom Siebel, CEO C3 AI and founder of CRM vendor Siebel Systems.

Siebel was on hand to talk about how businesses can prepare for an incoming wave of AI regulations, but in his comments Tuesday he touched on various facets of the debate of generative AI, including the ethics of using it, how it could evolve, and why it could be dangerous.

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