Proprietary Leftovers
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RealPage Accused of Colluding With Landlords to Increase Rents
A Texas-based real estate tech company is facing a new barrage of questions about whether its software is helping landlords coordinate rental pricing in violation of antitrust laws.
Seventeen Democratic members of the U.S. House of Representatives sent a letter Monday to the Department of Justice and the Federal Trade Commission asking the agencies to investigate RealPage’s rent-setting software. In an Oct. 15 story, ProPublica detailed how RealPage’s pricing algorithm uses competitor data to suggest new prices daily for available apartments.
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Amazon is shutting down Amazon Drive at the end of 2023
In the email, Amazon informs Drive customers that support for uploading new files will be disabled on January 31, 2023. Customers who use Amazon Drive may continue to access files uploaded prior to that date, but the option to add new files or change existing ones is no longer available after January 31, 2023.
Amazon Drive customers have until December 31, 2023 to access their files and download them to their devices. After December 31, 2023, access to Amazon Drive is cut off for all customers.
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Researchers Say China State-backed Hackers Breached a Digital Certificate Authority [Ed: This seems to be all about Microsoft Windows (Hannotog and Sagerunex) but dishonestly disguised as a "China" problem; also demonstrates the limits of CAs as a shallow security model]
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Ransomware gangs shift tactics, making crimes harder to track [iophk: Windows TCO]
Ransomware gangs increasingly use their own or stolen computer code, moving away from a leasing model that made their activities easier to monitor, new research shows.
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Ransomware gangs shift tactics, making crimes harder to track [iophk: Windows TCO]
Ransomware is a type of malware that encrypts a victim’s computers. The attackers then demand a ransom payment to unlock them. Ransomware payments have skyrocketed in recent years, U.S. government data show, as many groups have adopted a type of double extortion. In addition to encrypting files and demanding money, they also are stealing private troves of data and threatening to release it if their demands aren’t met.
The Treasury Department said that U.S. financial institutions reported nearly $1.2 billion in likely ransomware-related payments in 2021, usually in response to breaches originating with Russian criminal groups.
The payments more than doubled from 2020, underscoring the pernicious damage that ransomware continues to wreak on the private sector.
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Increase in data attacks put Aussies at ‘higher risk’ of Black Friday scams
Email and collaboration cyber security provider Mimecast says that recent data from its threat research team has revealed that social media platforms, as well as delivery businesses and services, are most likely to be attacked or impersonated this year.
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Russian software disguised as American finds its way into US. Army, CDC apps
According to company documents publicly filed in Russia and reviewed by Reuters, Pushwoosh is headquartered in the Siberian town of Novosibirsk, where it is registered as a software company that also carries out data processing. It employs around 40 people and reported revenue of 143,270,000 rubles ($2.4 mln) last year. Pushwoosh is registered with the Russian government to pay taxes in Russia.
On social media and in US regulatory filings, however, it presents itself as a US company, based at various times in California, Maryland and Washington, D.C., Reuters found.
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Thomson Reuters to acquire tax software maker SurePrep for $500M
The acquisition values SurePrep at $500 million. Thomson Reuters plans to finance the acquisition in cash and expects to receive a tax benefit worth about $60 million as part of the transaction. According to the companies, the transaction is set to close in the first quarter of 2023.
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Generating Two-Factor Authentication Codes With A Commodore 64
If you’ve used a corporate VPN or an online-banking system in the past fifteen years or so, chances are you’ve got a few of those little authenticator key fobs lying around, still displaying a new code every 30 seconds. Today such one-time codes are typically sent to you by text message or generated by a dedicated smartphone app, which is convenient but a bit boring. If you miss having a dedicated piece of hardware for your login codes, then we’ve got good news for you: [Cameron Kaiser] has managed to turn a Commodore SX-64 into a two-factor authenticator. Unlike a key fob that’s one gadget you’re not likely to lose, and any thief would probably need to spend quite some time figuring out how to operate it.