Security News
A 36-year-old man from Portage, Michigan, was arrested on Thursday for allegedly renting thousands of textbooks from Amazon and selling them rather than returning them. Rew Birge, US Attorney for the Western District of Michigan, said Geoffrey Mark Hays Talsma has been indicted on charges of mail and wire fraud, transporting stolen property across state lines, aggravated identity theft, and lying to the FBI. Also indicted were three alleged co-conspirators: Gregory Mark Gleesing, 43, and Lovedeep Singh Dhanoa, 25, both from Portage, Michigan, and Paul Steven Larson, 32, from Kalamazoo, Michigan.
Iran-linked threat actors are targeting the Office 365 tenants of US and Israeli defense technology companies in extensive password spraying attacks. The activity cluster was temporarily dubbed DEV-0343 by researchers at Microsoft Threat Intelligence Center and Microsoft Digital Security Unit, who have tracked it since late July.
In somewhat of an oddity, given the nature of its work, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts & Sciences has only recently started to move away from using DVDs and browser-based streaming platforms to share movies with its members around the globe. It was only in 2019 that the Academy made its Academy Screening Room streaming app available via Apple TV and, more recently, on Roku, streaming devices.
The Quad group of nations - the USA, India, Australia, and Japan - has announced several joint initiatives to share technology and spur its development, among them a plan to set new global security standards for the technology industry. The four nations' leaders met late last week and announced a set of initiatives, among them development of shared "Quad Principles on Technology Design, Development, Governance, and Use".
Amidst ongoing pandemic-driven change at work and at home, a SolarWinds survey seeks to understand how tech pros feel about their daily roles and responsibilities, the lessons they learned over the past year, and what they think of the primary technical and nontechnical skills needed to capitalize on opportunities for their future career growth. After a year of challenges and change, tech pros responding to this year's survey report a positive perception of their roles and say they look forward to what lies ahead. 48% of tech pro respondents say they're proud of what they do, another 44% love what they do, and 41% believe this year has proven they're more capable than they realized.
An IT recruitment agency says a "Phishing scam" is behind a fake email sent to its customers with details on how to apply for a "Coronavirus Digital Passport." The email - sent to applicants and clients of Concept Resourcing, based in Dudley, England, on 14 September and seen by The Reg - claimed users could "Get your Digital Coronavirus Passports today" and showed recipients a big juicy link where they could do so.
Australia, the United States of America, and the United Kingdom have signed a new defence and technology-sharing pact. Dubbed AUKUS, the headline item of the pact is assistance from the UK and US to help Australia build nuclear-powered submarines that are interoperable with their own fleets.
Brits are too polite to tell phone scammers to "Get stuffed", "Take a hike" or "Sling yer 'ook" when they impersonate so-called "Trusted organisations" such as banks. That's according to the trade association UK Finance, which found that the number of "Impersonation scam cases" more than doubled in the first half of 2021 to 33,115 - up from 14,947 during the same period last year.
Japanese technology giant Olympus is currently investigating a cyber incident on its EMEA IT systems that happened earlier this month that sources said is the result of a BlackMatter ransomware attack. It appears Olympus was the victim of the BlackMatter ransomware group, one of the cybercriminal organizations that's risen to prominence after other purveyors of ransomware like DarkSide, REvil and Ragnarok shut down operations, according to a report in TechCrunch.
UK-headquartered Kape Technologies announced on Monday it has acquired ExpressVPN in a $936m cash and stocks deal, a move it claims will double its customer base to at least six million. In a canned statement, Kape said combining the two companies would "Create a premium consumer privacy and security player," and that the acquisition "Further positions Kape to define the next generation of privacy and security protection tools and services to return greater control over the digital sphere to consumers."