Two-for-Tuesday vulnerabilities send Windows and Linux users scrambling
The world woke up on Tuesday to two new vulnerabilities—one in Windows and the
other in Linux—that allow hackers with a toehold in a vulnerable system to
bypass OS security restrictions and access sensitive resources. As operating
systems and applications become harder to hack, successful attacks typically
require two or more vulnerabilities. One vulnerability allows the attacker
access to low-privileged OS resources, where code can be executed or sensitive
data can be read. A second vulnerability elevates that code execution or file
access to OS resources reserved for password storage or other sensitive
operations. The value of so-called local privilege escalation vulnerabilities,
accordingly, has increased in recent years. The Windows vulnerability came to
light by accident on Monday when a researcher observed what he believed was a
coding regression in a beta version of the upcoming Windows 11. The researcher
found that the contents of the security account manager—the database that stores
user accounts and security descriptors for users on the local computer—could be
read by users with limited system privileges.
Establishing the right analytics-based maintenance strategy
Although predictive maintenance is often held up as a prime example of the value
that IoT and advanced analytics can generate, in fact, any predictions in the
real world are imperfect. Our research shows that some organizations, even with
highly qualified AA teams, are unlikely to realize the desired impact. The AA
algorithm employed may fail to predict a breakdown, giving a false negative, and
in other cases can predict an event that would not have happened, giving a false
positive. Although much effort is often put into minimizing false negatives, it
is often the false positives that make predictive maintenance less viable. Make
no mistake, predictive maintenance can be very valuable. In situations with very
high cost or safety issues associated with a breakdown, such as the midair
failure of a jet turbine, operators need the closest estimate possible of when a
breakdown might occur. In addition, in cases in which failures are highly
predictable and well-understood—and the chance of a false positive is therefore
minimal or very low-cost—predictive maintenance is well worth the expense.
Politicization and stigmatization won’t solve cyber security concerns: Chinese Mission to the EU and embassies
Slamming the EU and NATO's allegations, spokesperson of the Chinese Mission to
the EU said that the statements were not based on facts, but speculation and
groundless accusations. He added that China has always been a firm defender of
cyber security and has cracked down on cyber attacks launched within China or
using Chinese cyber facilities. "For years, certain countries in the West have
abused their technological advantages for massive and indiscriminate
eavesdropping across the world, even on its close allies. At the same time, they
have boasted themselves as the guardians of cyber security. They push around
their allies to form small circles and repeatedly smear and attack other
countries on cyber security issues," the Mission said. Such practices fully
expose the West's hypocrisy, it added. The Mission said it will follow closely
NATO's attempts to break its geographical constraints under the guise of cyber
security to make false accusations against China. Over the years, China has been
a major victim of cyber attacks.
Old Agile vs New Agile
Agile 2 is new in that it aggregates the ideas of these new thinkers, and
integrates these ideas into a cohesive system of thought, while adding missing
pieces. Agile 2 interprets these many writings and translates them into a common
and holistically integrated shared narrative. But what is that narrative? Agile
2 is complex because humans are complex. It is not a set of bumper sticker
maxims asserted without supporting explanation and rationale. Agile 2 is nuanced
and broad, and is published with the thought that went into it. But I will
summarize it, to give you a sense. Agile 2 is defined by its Values and
Principles. Most of those principles could be summarized as described here.
Basically, Agile 2 says that extremes don’t usually work well, and that judgment
is called for when applying any practice. It also emphasizes the critical
importance of having the right kinds of leadership for each situation. Note that
“kinds of leadership” is plural. Agile 2 favors emergent leadership and
autonomy, but it views those as aspirations rather than assumptions, and
includes the theory that senior leaders need to be intentional about the kinds
of leadership needed within their organization ...
Google advances ‘invisible’ cloud security with intrusion detection, analytics and more
Google’s new Cloud IDS offering epitomizes that vision. Announced in preview
today, Cloud IDS is said to be a cloud-native, managed intrusion detection
system that enterprises can deploy in just a few clicks in order to protect
themselves against malware, spyware, command-and-control attacks and other
network-based threats, Potti said. Google worked closely with Palo Alto Networks
Inc. to develop Cloud IDS. The system incorporates that company’s advanced
threat detection technologies to detect malicious network activity with very low
false positives. It’s essentially a managed version of Palo Alto’s threat
detection services, available in Google Cloud, where scaling, availability and
updates are all automated. Google Cloud IDS stands out for its flexibility, the
company says. It can easily be integrated with third-party security information
and event management and security orchestration, automation and response
platforms, enabling users to both investigate and automatically respond to any
alerts, Potti said.
Advanced Technology Outcomes: Humans Vs. Machine Or Human With Machine?
There is no doubt that we humans have always benefited from machines and also
that we have the power to turn them off when required. But now the situation has
turned around. The increasing issue is the vital role played by machines both as
a single unit and collectively as infrastructures. This means humans no longer
have the option to shut the machines off. In the health sector as well machines
are evolving at a faster rate. Surgery is becoming robotized and medical
diagnostics has become dependent on machines. Even there are automated machines
that are manufacturing drugs. Therefore, pulling the plug off will result in
terrible consequences for thousands of people worldwide. Besides all this, we
are making use of machines as an extension of ourselves and applying them as
stronger, faster, and cheaper hands. And, because of this, we still win over the
machines but it is on us to make accurate decisions for the upcoming future. We
are continuously getting engaged with machines. We use smartphones to show
routes, to reach a destination, to look for recipes, even we use smartphones to
check our health and the list is increasing rapidly.
Bringing Your Factory to the Edge in 2021
Is your factory living in the dark ages? Are you constantly checking manual
reports to see your production scores? Do you wish that you could check your
factory health on your smart device from anywhere in the world? If so, you could
benefit from taking your factory to the edge. ... Reading information directly
from our fieldbus-connected devices works great for a retrofit if you are an end
user and not a programmable logic controller (PLC) programmer, or if you do not
have access to the controller in the system because the integrator did not
provide source codes. You can use a number of protocol converters and
commercially available edge connection devices to take your machine-level data
to an edge platform with some basic education online. For a large number of
users, this option will get their factory “talking” to them for minimal human or
equipment capital. It will require only protocol conversion and an edge
connector (which we will discuss in a moment) and the cloud setup of choice,
which can be outsourced.
MosaicLoader Malware Delivers Facebook Stealers, RATs
Once installed on a machine, the malware creates a complex chain of processes,
according to Bitdefender. Its hallmark, researchers said, is a unique
obfuscation technique that shuffles small code chunks around resulting in an
intricate, mosaic-like structure – hence the name. The first stage of the
execution flow is the installation of a dropper, which mimics legitimate
software: Most of the first-stage droppers that researchers analyzed have icons
and “version information” that mirror those used for legitimate applications. In
some cases, the dropper pretends to be a NVIDIA process, for instance. The
dropper makes contact with the C2 (the URL of the C2 is hardcoded as a string),
then downloads a .ZIP file into the %TEMP% folder that contains two files
required for the second stage: appsetup.exe, and prun.exe. These are extracted
to an innocuous-sounding “PublicGaming,” folder in the C: directory, while the
dropper also launches several instances of Powershell to add exclusions from
Windows Defender for the folder and the specific file names.
The biggest remote communication challenges within organisations
Zooming back out to an organisational level, recent events have pushed
leadership teams to fully embrace digital transformation. For many
organisations, making remote work plausible meant pulling together
capabilities from a range of technology providers into something of a
patchwork of solutions, that didn’t necessarily behave well together but was
necessary given the organisational shock felt initially. Recognising that
remote working is going to be a significant and constant part of our working
landscape, it is now time to think about how to make this tech stack work more
effectively. In many cases, this will involve consolidation, ideally onto a
single CRM platform, where the sharing of customer and prospect data between
marketing, sales and customer service teams is seamless, and where the
platform supports growth, instead of creating friction points. ... The effects
of COVID-19 disrupted the working landscape profoundly last year, meaning that
UK organisations have had to rethink their working strategies. It is vital
that business leaders constantly keep in touch with their employees and
support them when these changes are taking place.
Image encryption technique could keep photos safe on popular cloud photo services
Now researchers have created a way for mobile users to enjoy popular cloud photo services while protecting their photos. The system, dubbed Easy Secure Photos (ESP), encrypts photos uploaded to cloud services so that attackers – or the cloud services themselves – cannot decipher them. At the same time, users can visually browse and display these images as if they weren’t encrypted. “Even if your account is hacked, attackers can’t get your photos because they are encrypted,” said Jason Nieh, professor of computer science and co-director of the Software Systems Laboratory. ESP employs an image encryption algorithm whose resulting files can be compressed and still get recognized as images, albeit ones that look like black and white static to anyone except authorized users. In addition, ESP works for both lossy and lossless image formats such as JPEG and PNG, and is efficient enough for use on mobile devices. Encrypting each image results in three black-and-white files, each one encoding details about the original image’s red, green, or blue data.
Quote for the day:
"Leaders can choose to grow and
change, but generally the most powerful predictor of future performance is
past behavior. Evaluate them realistically." -- Lee Ellis
No comments:
Post a Comment