Security Leftovers and Windows Total Cost of Ownership (TCO)

posted by Roy Schestowitz on Jun 30, 2023

• Russian Cybersecurity Executive Arrested for Alleged Role in 2012 Megahacks

  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.

• Hackers attack Russian satellite telecom provider, claim affiliation with Wagner Group

  The attackers released nearly 700 files associated with the attack.

• The password game is playing on the nightmarish hellhole of internet security

  Do you think you’re good at creating passwords?

• Windows TCO

  • This Windows update is snarling up some endpoint security tools

    According to a note in the Windows Health Dashboard, some users – including those running Windows Server 2022 – were unable to open Microsoft or third party software, such as Outlook and other Office programs. It only affected 32-bit apps running on 64-bit Windows running Trellix's Endpoint Security software.

  • Costs of some 2022 ransomware attacks: Whitworth University hit with federal lawsuit, Little Rock School District tallies its costs

    A Whitworth University student is asking a federal judge to approve a class action against the school for damages stemming from a ransomware attack discovered in July 2022 that affected more than 65,500 people.

  • Federal lawsuit blames Whitworth University for ransomware attack last summer, loss of data

    The lawsuit, filed Thursday in U.S. District Court in Spokane, alleges Whitworth was negligent in allowing a still-unidentified attacker to access health, financial and personal data of past and present students, staff and faculty. It was filed by Patrick Loyola, identified in court documents as a student at the time of the attack. The university initially reported the incident as a “sophisticated security issue” in August before informing the Washington attorney general’s office in October that a ransomware attack had occurred.

    The federal lawsuit cites a recent report to the attorney general’s office in Maine, which has data breach reporting laws similar to those in Washington. In that April filing, Whitworth acknowledged the number of affected people was 65,593, a number confirmed by a university spokeswoman on Friday.

  • Little Rock School District tallies cyberattack’s cost

    The 2022 cyberattack on the 21,000-student Little Rock School District's data networks cost the capital city system almost $692,000, according to records obtained from the district.

    As much as $242,349.37 of that total went toward the purchase of hard-to-trace cryptocurrency -- bitcoins -- from Digital Mint, which is a self-described "cash-to-cryptocurrency provider." The cryptocurrency was demanded by the attackers as their price to exit from the district's operations.

  • Microsoft's GitHub under fire for DDoSing crucial open source project website

    "The GMP servers are under attack by several hundred IP addresses owned by Microsoft Corporation," he wrote. "We do not know if this is made with malice by Microsoft, if it is some sort of mistake, or if [it is one] of their cloud customers … running the attack. The attack targets the GMP repo, with thousands of identical requests. The requests are cleverly chosen as to cause heavy system load.

    "We're firewalling off all of Microsoft's IP addresses as an emergency response."

  • 'Godfather of AI' Issues New Warnings Over Potential Risks to Society

    Hinton warned that the risks of AI should be taken seriously.

    "I think it's important that people understand that this is not science fiction, this is not just fearmongering," he insisted. "It is a real risk that we must think about, and we need to figure out in advance how to deal with it."

  • ChatGPT lies better than humans

    A group of 697 people read 220 tweets written by other humans and by the artificial intelligence model GPT-3, the precursor to the current global success ChatGPT. First, they had to guess which tweets were true and which were false and then decide whether they were written by a person or a machine. GPT-3 won on both counts: it lied better than humans in tweets and also lied to pretend that it was a human who was writing. “GPT-3 is able to inform and misinform us better,” conclude the authors of a new study that was published in the journal Science Advances.