Proprietary Stuff and Security Debacles

posted by Roy Schestowitz on Oct 03, 2023

• Google announces Chromebook Plus with boosted hardware specs and AI features

  Google LLC today rolled out a new line of Chromebooks named “Chromebook Plus” that bring artificial intelligence features into ChromeOS and enhance the hardware specification of the entire family of products for a better productivity and entertainment experience.

• Unity Fallout Continues: Dev Group Shuts Down While Developers Refuse To Come Back

  The fallout from game engine Unity’s decision to try to cram a completely new and different pricing structure down the throats of game developers continues. Originally announced in mid-September, Unity took a bunch of its tiered structures of its offerings and suddenly instituted per-install fees, along with a bunch of other fee structures and requirements for its lower-level tiers that never had these pricing models. The backlash from developers and the public at large was so overwhelmingly one-sided and swift that the company then backtracked, making a bunch of noise about how it will listen better and learn from this fiasco. The backtracking did make a bunch of changes to address the anger from its initial announcement, including: [...]

• Snap store from Canonical hit with malicious apps

  Canonical are currently dealing with a security incident with the Snap store, after users noticed multiple fake apps were uploaded so temporary limits have been put in place.

• Don’t Let Zombie Zoom Links Drag You Down

  Many organizations — including quite a few Fortune 500 firms — have exposed web links that allow anyone to initiate a Zoom video conference meeting as a valid employee. These company-specific Zoom links, which include a permanent user ID number and an embedded passcode, can work indefinitely and expose an organization’s employees, customers or partners to phishing and other social engineering attacks.

• Windows TCO

  • US State Dept has no idea if its IT security actually works, say auditors

    The State Department, which handles diplomacy and US foreign policy, wrote a risk management strategy for its IT security, the Government Accountability Office (GAO) said, and that's basically where the dept gave up. As a result, department-wide risks haven't actually necessarily been mitigated, there's no overall monitoring program in place, and IT infrastructure used by the department may not have been adequately secured.