Microsoft, Proprietary Software, and Security
Submitted by Roy Schestowitz on Sunday 4th of July 2021 10:55:08 AM
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‘Picking Winners And Losers’ Here’s How Congress’ Antitrust Legislation Avoids Regulating Many Big Tech Companies
Last-minute changes to major antitrust legislation working its way through the House appears to exempt several Big Tech companies from being affected by its regulations.
The legislation, which has been months in the making and was crafted to take on Big Tech monopolies, targets a handful of companies while excluding others that also have massive market power, a leading expert told the Daily Caller News Foundation. Existing federal and state antitrust law already prohibits a wide range of anticompetitive business activity across all industries like unlawful mergers and monopolization.
“Antitrust law is generally applicable,” Berin Szoka, president of technology policy think tank TechFreedom, told the DCNF in an interview. “That is its chief virtue, which means that it doesn’t pick winners and losers.”
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A service must also fall under the specific definition of what the legislation defines as an “online platform.”
However, between the time Democrats released the bills on June 11 and the time the committee held a markup hearing for the legislation on June 23, the MAU criteria and definition of an “online platform” had been altered. The MAU had been changed from 500,000 to 50 million while the definition of online platform was changed from “operating system” to “mobile operating system.”
Szoka said the last-minute changes were made to ensure that the vast majority of tech services outside of those produced by Amazon, Facebook, Google and Apple wouldn’t be affected. He noted that the changed bills favored Microsoft, a tech company with enormous market power, since its massive operating software Windows isn’t a “mobile operating system” and its gaming service Xbox Live doesn’t have more than 50 million U.S.-based MAU.
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Nobelist: scrap patent system and publicly fund drug discovery
Chemistry laureate George Smith argues a publicly funded system would more than pay for itself by ending monopoly pricing in pharmaceuticals
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The vast bulk of the underlying research that leads to new treatments is already funded publicly, he said.
A case in point were the mRNA vaccines that are so effective against the pandemic. “That technology has depended on hundreds of major discoveries in immunology over at least a century in many dozens of countries, and it of course stands on the shoulders of modern molecular biology and virology,” he said. “The overwhelming majority of this work was done in academic labs with public funding.”
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Kaseya Case Update | DIVD CSIRT
On the night of 7-3 (CET), the DIVD CSIRT did a mass scan for online exposed Kaseya VSA instances due to an alarming statement from Kaseya. Kaseya turned off their SaaS services and advised all on-premise customers to turn off Kaseya VSA because it was being used to spread ransomware to various MSPs.
We were able to react very swiftly because we were already running a broad investigation into backup and system administration tooling and their vulnerabilities. One of the products we have been investigating is Kaseya VSA. We discovered severe vulnerabilities in Kaseya VSA and reported them to Kaseya, with whom we have been in regular contact since then. Additionally, we have, in confidence, also reported these vulnerabilities to our trusted partners.
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7 essential privacy tools to stay protected online
It’s a sad fact that your online presence constantly exposes you to cyberattacks. Hackers, scammers and other bad actors want your login credentials, personal information, financial data and more.
Ransomware attacks are particularly vicious. These operators steal files and personal data and hold them hostage in exchange for payment. Ransomware attacks are up, particularly in the past year. Tap or click here for more information on these attacks.
You can’t be immune to attack, but you can take steps to protect yourself. Read on to learn about tools that can beef up your online privacy.
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The very browser you use can affect your online security. Big Tech browsers are not the most discrete when it comes to privacy and data collection. Tap or click here for our rundown of the most popular browsers.
Google Chrome is banning cross-site trafficking, but this doesn’t mean the tech giant won’t track you on its own. Firefox’s default settings include tracker blocking, and the browser offers adjustable global protection levels for its users.
Edge has default tracking prevention and adjustable levels of protection, similar to Firefox. Microsoft has recently been accused of collecting users’ IP addresses.
Safari blocks cross-site trafficking out of the box. Safari uses Google as its default search engine, blocks malicious websites and pop-ups, and protects users from malware and phishing scams.
Brave blocks malware, phishing scams, advertisements, trackers and plug-ins. The company does not store your browsing data. Tap or click here to see the best browsers for privacy ranked.
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Another day, another WD security flaw
The researchers found that they could get into a Cloud OS 3 device by remotely updating it with modified firmware. The firmware update functionality is meant to be accessible only to authenticated users, but they were able to get around that because the NAS seemingly has a user on it with a blank password, which they were able to use to authenticate in some cases.
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Major Swedish Supermarket Chain Hit by Cyberattack [iophk: Windows TCO]
One of Sweden's biggest supermarket chains said Saturday it had to temporarily close around 800 stores nationwide after a cyberattack blocked access to its checkouts.
"One of our subcontractors was hit by a digital attack, and that's why our checkouts aren't working any more," Coop Sweden, which accounts for around 20 percent of the sector, said in a statement.
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Swedish Coop supermarkets shut due to US ransomware cyber-attack
Coop Sweden says it closed more than half of its 800 stores on Friday after point-of-sale tills and self-service checkouts stopped working.
The supermarket was not itself targeted by [cr]ackers - but is one of a growing number of organisations affected by an attack on a large software supplier the company uses indirectly.
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digiKam 7.7.0 is released
After three months of active maintenance and another bug triage, the digiKam team is proud to present version 7.7.0 of its open source digital photo manager. See below the list of most important features coming with this release.
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Dilution and Misuse of the "Linux" Brand
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Samsung, Red Hat to Work on Linux Drivers for Future Tech
The metaverse is expected to uproot system design as we know it, and Samsung is one of many hardware vendors re-imagining data center infrastructure in preparation for a parallel 3D world.
Samsung is working on new memory technologies that provide faster bandwidth inside hardware for data to travel between CPUs, storage and other computing resources. The company also announced it was partnering with Red Hat to ensure these technologies have Linux compatibility.
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