Lifeboat Foundation

Microsoft wants you to know this hack is even bigger than you think.

Microsoft president Brad Smith warned that the wide-ranging hack of the SolarWinds’ Orion IT software is “ongoing,” and that investigations reveal “an attack that is remarkable for its scope, sophistication and impact.” The breach targeted several US government agencies and is believed to have been carried out by Russian nation-state hackers.

Smith characterized the hack as “a moment of reckoning” and laid out in no uncertain terms just how large and how dangerous Microsoft believes the hack to be. It “represents an act of recklessness that created a serious technological vulnerability for the United States and the world,” Smith argues.

Continue reading “Microsoft president sounds alarm on ‘ongoing’ SolarWinds hack, identifies 40 more precise targets” »

As the U.S. government works to contain a sprawling hacking campaign that relies on software in technology from SolarWinds, a federal contractor, technology firms are disabling some of the hackers’ key infrastructure.

Cybersecurity giant FireEye on Wednesday said that it had worked with Microsoft and the domain registrar GoDaddy to take over one of the domains that attackers had used to send malicious code to victim machines. The move is no panacea for stopping the suspected state-sponsored hacking campaign, though it could help stem the tide of victims, which reportedly includes the departments of Treasury and Homeland Security.

The seized domain, known as a “killswitch,” will “affect new and previous” infections of the malicious code coming from that particular domain, FireEye said in a statement that was first reported by independent journalist Brian Krebs. “Depending on the IP address returned when the malware resolves avsvmcloud[.]com, under certain conditions, the malware would terminate itself and prevent further execution.”

ESET researchers have uncovered a supply-chain attack on the website of a government in Southeast Asia.

Just a few weeks after the supply-chain attack on the Able Desktop software, another similar attack occurred on the website of the Vietnam Government Certification Authority (VGCA): ca.gov.vn. The attackers modified two of the software installers available for download on this website and added a backdoor in order to compromise users of the legitimate application.

The widespread and monthslong hack of the U.S. government and some of America’s biggest corporations was enabled by an unlikely source: a little-known Austin, Texas, software company called SolarWinds Corp. that until this week was a household name only to computer network administrators.

Security investigators say the company that boasts more than 400 of the Fortune 500 corporations and many government agencies as clients provided the perfect delivery mechanism for a carefully executed intrusion attributed to Russia’s foreign-intelligence service.

SolarWinds provides the tools many companies use to manage their computer networks. That’s what made the hack of U.S. government agencies and some of America’s biggest corporations so pernicious.

Continue reading “Suspected Russian Cyberattack Began With Ubiquitous Software Company” »

The US government has confirmed that a massive hack had occurred in at least two federal departments, including the US Treasury and the Department of Commerce.

Hackers were able to monitor internal emails at US federal departments, including the Treasury, for months. There is concern officials have only scratched the surface of understanding the hack’s effects.

The U.S. government Agencies and cybersecurity firm FireEye were hacked using SolarWinds software supply chain attack.

https://youtube.com/watch?v=B-Osn1gMNtw

Elon Musk has been a vocal critic of artificial intelligence, calling it an “existential threat to humanity”. He is wrong, right?

Musk is heavily invested in AI research himself through his OpenAI and NeuroLink ventures, and believes that the only safe road to AI involves planning, oversight & regulation. He recently summarized this, saying:

Continue reading “Elon Musk, Artificial Intelligence and OpenAI” »

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