Free Republic

Massive data breaches have become so common that we’ve gotten numb to reports detailing another hack or 0-day exploit. That doesn’t reduce the risk of such events happening, as the cat-and-mouse game between security experts and hackers continues. As some vulnerabilities get fixed, others pop up requiring attention from product and service providers. The newest one has a name that will not mean anything to most people. They call the hack Log4Shell in security briefings, which doesn’t sound very scary. But the new 0-day attack is so significant that some people see it as the worst internet hack in history.......

A pair of Iranian hackers have been charged with breaking into a Missouri tech firm’s cloud-computing account and running up a $760,000 bill while mining cryptocurrency. Prosecutors say the two men, who live and operate in Iran, managed to access the company’s Microsoft Azure cloud-computing account and install several new servers and programs to mine a cryptocurrency called Monero — a process known as cryptojacking... ..The company was unaware of the intrusion until it received a bill from Microsoft for $760,00 for the use of the additional server capacity, prosecutors said....

Tesla has yet to explain the outage, but the issue appears to span the globe. Based on several posts on Twitter, it seems that Tesla owners around the world are reporting not being able to connect their phone to their vehicle or, in some cases, not even being able to start the car. The reports mention an unexplained "500 Internal Server Error," which is, unfortunately, a pretty generic error. The existence of he outage appears to be corroborated by the website DownDetector.com, with 74% of reports of outages referring to the app. Tesla boss Elon Musk responded to one user...

Apple is making U.S. states foot part of the bill and provide customer support for its plan to turn iPhones into digital identification cards, according to confidential documents obtained by CNBC. The company requires states to maintain the systems needed to issue and service credentials, hire project managers to respond to Apple inquiries, prominently market the new feature and push for its adoption with other government agencies, all at taxpayer expense, according to contracts signed by four states. Apple announced in June that its users could soon store state-issued identification cards in the iPhone’s Wallet app, billing it as a...

LAUSANNE, Switzerland (AP) — The final frontier has rarely seemed closer than this — at least virtually. Researchers at one of Switzerland’s top universities are releasing open-source beta software on Tuesday that allows for virtual visits through the cosmos including up to the International Space Station, past the Moon, Saturn or exoplanets, over galaxies and well beyond.... ...VIRUP is accessible to everyone for free — though it does require at least a computer and is best visualized with VR equipment or 3D capabilities.... ...To be sure, VR games and representations already exist...But the EPFL team says VIRUP goes much farther...

As the world grapples with an ongoing chip shortage, a quiet giant among chipmakers has committed to investing $100 billion over three years to ramp up production. Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company may not be a household name, but with a market value of over $550 billion, it’s one of the world’s 10 most valuable companies. Now, it’s leveraging its considerable resources to bring the world’s most advanced chip manufacturing back to U.S. soil. CNBC got an exclusive tour of the $12 billion fabrication plant, or fab, outside Phoenix, Arizona, where TSMC will start making 5-nanometer chips in 2024. The company...

...The cars — equipped with technology and a human driver in case of emergencies — appear completely baffled as they take in the street and make a multi-point turn to get out of the dead end, CBS San Francisco reported. Not long after one car is gone, another one shows up and does the same thing. And it never really stops, according to the street's residents.... ...The company was originally Google's self-driving car project before becoming a separate subsidiary of the tech giant's parent, Alphabet. It launched a ride-hailing program with its self-driving vehicles in San Francisco for "Trusted Testers"...

The Pentagon's first ever chief software officer resigned last month in protest at the slow pace of technological transformation in the U.S. military, claiming the failure to respond to China winning the Artificial Intelligence battle is putting the U.S. at risk. Nicolas Chaillan, 37, told the Financial Times after resigning: 'We have no competing fighting chance against China in 15 to 20 years.' 'Right now, it's already a done deal – it is already over in my opinion,' he added. 'Whether it takes a war or not is kind of anecdotal.' Chaillan worked for three years on a Pentagon project...

(CNN Business)Just days after several of its major services went down for about six hours, Facebook is suffering another outage. "We're aware that some people are having trouble accessing our apps and products," the company said on its verified Twitter account on Friday. "We're working to get things back to normal as quickly as possible and we apologize for any inconvenience." Instagram, the Facebook-owned photo sharing service, also announced on Twitter that some of its users were facing issues. The disruption initially appeared to be smaller than what those platforms and others faced earlier in the week...

Wait… did ⁦@JoeBiden⁩ just call Lori Lightfoot “Mr. Mayor?” What am I missing? pic.twitter.com/J3o3Ohb7Oz — Kate Hyde (@KateHydeNY) October 7, 2021 Does Biden know something we don’t about Lori Lightfoot?

Users of popular forum website Reddit are fuming once more as the social media platform experiences its second global outage in as many days. Connectivity issues on the site have been detected across the globe, including in the UK, US, Canada and Australia. The disruption was confirmed by Down Detector, a website that tracks the status of social media platforms. Data from the site shows that the amount of reports of Reddit being down skyrocketed by 11 times just before 3am today.... .

Lloyds, Halifax and Bank of Scotland customers struggled to access their accounts this morning following technical issues across all three banks. Complaints on social media show people were unable to use both mobile banking and apps.... ...Outage tracker DownDetector showed the issues started around 6am with 2,000 people complaining of technical difficulties with Lloyds Bank....

Facebook staff said they experienced "what felt like a snow day" when the site's global outage left them paralysed on Monday. ...A Facebook employee reportedly said workers were not able to enter buildings to examine the scale of the outage on Monday.... ....Meanwhile other members of staff at Facebook said it felt like they were having a 'snow day' as the firm's internal tools and communications also went down yesterday. This meant no one was able to do any work, tech reporter Ryan Mac tweeted... The issues were caused by a faulty configuration change, according to Facebook. Explaining the outage,...

Facebook executives are preparing for a whistleblower to accuse the network of contributing to the Capitol riot by turning online safeguards off too soon after the presidential election. The whistleblower, whose identity has not been publicly revealed, is expected to make the fresh allegations and reveal her identity in a bombshell interview on CBS's 60 Minutes Sunday. Facebook went into damage control Friday ahead of the interview sending a 1,500-word email to its employees attempting to prepare them for the allegations about to surface. The email, from the company's Vice President of Policy and Global Affairs Nick Clegg and obtained...

The tech executive referenced in the criminal case against leading cybersecurity lawyer Michael Sussmann was identified Thursday as an industry pioneer who’s founded the world’s first commercial internet hosting company, is an expert in detecting malware and holds 10 patents. Rodney Joffe is the person referred to as “Tech Executive-1” in Sussman’s indictment for allegedly lying to the FBI by withholding his connections to Hillary Clinton’s losing 2016 election campaign against former President Donald Trump, according to CNN... ..Joffe also founded and was chief technology officer of Genuity, which was the first company to offer commercial hosting services that allow...

Johnny Lin, a former Apple engineer and co-founder of the software company Lockdown Privacy says Apple's "Ask App Not To Track" button is a "dud" that gives users "a false sense of privacy," according to a Washington Post report. Even if users request apps not to collect their activity across other companies' apps and websites, popular iPhone apps like Subway Surfers still collect personal data, a new study by Lockdown Privacy determined. "We found that App Tracking Transparency made no difference...

Aggressive ravens have forced a drone delivery service to pause flights altogether after bizarre footage emerged of the birds attacking them in the skies above Australia's capital. The service Wing, run in collaboration with Google, offers Canberra residents the option to buy essential items like coffee, food, medicine and hardware supplies through a drone which drops off each package to their homes. But lately in the northern suburb of Harrison those eagerly awaiting their morning lattes have instead been greeted by vicious ravens...

Minutes before former President Donald Trump left office, a shadowy company residing at a shared workspace above a Florida bank took control over a large chunk of internet space owned by the Pentagon. Now the Department of Defense has reclaimed the 175 million IP addresses - about six percent the size of the entire current internet - from Global Resource Systems LLC, which is headquartered in Plantation, Florida, the Washington Post reported Friday. 'It is massive. That is the biggest thing in the history of the internet,' said Doug Madory, director of internet analysis at Kentik, a network operating company....

Google has temporarily locked some Afghan government email accounts in an apparent attempt to head off the Taliban’s hunt for the identities of former officials who worked with the recently collapsed US-backed administration. “In consultation with experts, we are continuously assessing the situation in Afghanistan. We are taking temporary actions to secure relevant accounts, as information continues to come in,” a Google spokesperson said in a statement obtained by The Post.... ...Days after the Taliban entered Kabul on Aug. 15, Google-owned YouTube said it would “terminate” any account it believes to be operated by the extremist group. By contrast, Twitter...

Ragnarok, a hacking gang that’s locked victims out of their computers and extorted them since 2019, suddenly appears to have called it quits. The group shared a free tool Thursday that will help previous victims unlock their files and gain access to their computers again, according to security researchers. It’s not clear why Ragnarok is abandoning its pilfering ways. But the apparent decision to self-destruct is a move that other ransomware gangs have been adopting as well. Ragnarok is the fifth ransomware operator that’s appeared to backtrack on its previous grift following increased international attention to ransomware hacking. Ziggy ransomware...