My Weekly Roundup #137
Cybersecurity
Free Cybersecurity Services and Tools
As part of our continuing mission to reduce cybersecurity risk across U.S. critical infrastructure partners and state, local, tribal, and territorial governments, CISA has compiled a list of free cybersecurity tools and services to help organizations further advance their security capabilities.
Hackers can crash Cisco Secure Email gateways using malicious emails
Cisco has addressed a high severity vulnerability that could allow remote attackers to crash Cisco Secure Email appliances using maliciously crafted email messages.
US says Russian state hackers lurked in defense contractor networks for months
Hackers backed by the Russian government have breached the networks of multiple US defense contractors in a sustained campaign that has revealed sensitive information about US weapons-development communications infrastructure, the federal government said on Wednesday.
Log4j2 In The Wild | Iranian-Aligned Threat Actor “TunnelVision” Actively Exploiting VMware Horizon
By Amitai Ben Shushan Ehrlich and Yair Rigevsky Executive Summary SentinelLabs has been tracking the activity of an Iranian-aligned threat actor operating in the Middle-East and the US.
The Elite Hackers of the FSB
Cyberattacks On Ukraine Could Be Prelude To More Aggression, Experts Say
Tuesday’s cyberattacks on Ukrainian banks and military, suspected to originate in Russia, appear to be an attempt to cause psychological disruption in Ukraine and could be a signal for a far more significant attack in the future, and possibly a physical one, Ukrainian officials and cybersecurity e
An All-in-One Well-Architected Framework Guide for Cloud Architects
Not so easy, huh? Luckily, Microsoft® Azure® and AWS have created several white papers on the Well-Architected Framework to explain cloud architectural design principals that can help guide you through the process.
KlaySwap crypto users lose funds after BGP hijack
Hackers have stolen roughly $1.9 million from South Korean cryptocurrency platform KLAYswap after they pulled off a rare and clever BGP hijack against the server infrastructure of one of the platform’s providers.
Adobe patches Magento CMS zero-day
Adobe has released an emergency security update on Sunday to address a zero-day vulnerability in the Magento and Adobe Commerce platforms that was actively abused in the wild by attackers. The zero-day, tracked as CVE-2022-24086, was described as a pre-authentication remote code execution issue.
Technology
The DeLorean is returning as an EV — and I want more classic car comebacks
Ioanna is a writer at SHIFT. She likes the transition from old to modern, and she’s all about shifting perspectives.
Apple-1 Mystery Is Finally Solved 45 Years Later
About 45 years ago, Apple sold 200 of its first-ever product: the Apple-1 computer. Of those, around 82 still exist and about 80 in the first batch of 100 are said to have a handwritten serial number on the mainboard (these appear as “01-00##”). Only a few dozen of those 80 are still around.
Apple taps ‘Oldboy’ director to shoot a martial arts fantasy film on an iPhone 13 Pro
Apple has commissioned famous Korean director Park Chan-wook to create a short film as part of its “Shot on iPhone” campaign.
Researcher fully recovers text from pixels: how to reverse redaction
Using pixelation to redact images? Those pixels may not actually be hiding anything. A researcher has demonstrated how he was able to successfully recover text that had been redacted using the pixelation technique.
Privacy
Possible Government Surveillance of the Otter.ai Transcription App
The next day, I received an odd note from Otter.ai, the automated transcription app that I had used to record the interview.
Is Firefox OK?
At the end of 2008, Firefox was flying high. Twenty percent of the 1.5 billion people online were using Mozilla’s browser to navigate the web. In Indonesia, Macedonia, and Slovenia, more than half of everyone going online was using Firefox.
The Worst Timeline: A Printer Company Is Putting DRM in Paper Now
Update 2/16/22: This article first appeared with a typo as well as a computation error that listed the manufacturing cost of printer ink at $250/oz; the correct figure is $170/gal. We regret the error and thank the eagle-eyed readers who spotted it and pointed it out on Twitter.
Entertainment
Spotify acquires two more companies to become a podcasting juggernaut
Streaming-audio platform Spotify has announced its acquisition of two podcasting companies, each of which sheds some light on Spotify’s long-term plan to dominate the podcasting business. The online audio giant is acquiring both Podsights and Chartable.
Music
Star Wars Legend John Williams Has Composed the Obi-Wan Kenobi Theme
When Ewan McGregor’s Obi-Wan Kenobi makes its Disney+ debut in May, the character’s theme music will be composed by one of Star Wars’ most important architects: John Williams, whose symphonic scores for the original trilogy (and other adjacent works) have long helped the series feel both epic
Steve Vai Elaborates On ‘Pizza Incident’ That Caused His Tour Postponement
Steve Vai will reemerge later this year on his ‘Inviolate’ tour with a surgically repaired left hand and a twice surgically-repaired right shoulder.
Jack White’s Latest, ‘Fear of the Dawn,’ Is a Big Riff Ripper With a Fittingly Chaotic Video
Jack White has released a bruising new song, “Fear of the Dawn,” the title track from his first of two 2022 albums, which will arrive on April 8.
History of rock ’n’ roll
From baseball and television to air conditioning and Coca-Cola, the United States has offered the world no shortage of contributions. Few of those contributions, however, can hold a candle to the one American export that completes the vaunted triple crown of sex, drugs, and rock ’n’ roll.