The FBI also said it traced attacks with Cuba ransomware to systems infected with Hancitor. This is a malware operation to access Windows machines.
It is also worth mentioning that Cuba is also one of the ransomware groups that gather and steal sensitive files from compromised companies before encrypting their files. If companies don’t pay, the Cuba group will threaten to dump sensitive files on a website they have been operating on the dark web since January this year.
We’ve heard lots recently from Apple whistleblowers like Ashley Gjovick and Cher Scarlett, and the broader #AppleToo movement. But the conversation tends to focus on the company’s corporate staff. The Verge has a very powerful and distressing report, containing allegations about what it’s like for those who work in places like the Apple Store.
Over the past five months, Apple’s hourly workforce has been watching as corporate employees advocate for more pay transparency. Some have organized with employees in Cupertino under the banner #AppleToo, to call for better working conditions. Others are just now beginning to speak out — realizing that the issues their well-compensated corporate colleagues are experiencing could be greatly exacerbated on the frontlines. The Verge spoke with 16 current and former employees on Apple’s retail, support, and sales teams who say their complaints about working conditions and pay have largely been ignored. Some say they are governed more by algorithms and systems than actual managers, making it difficult to get holistic help. All of them note that while they came into the job believing in Apple’s mission, they see a profound breakdown in how the company’s corporate values translate to the frontlines.
Over on iMore, Joe Wituschek argues that Spotify is better than Apple Music for a lot of reasons, and the recently released Wrapped feature is one of them. He makes some compelling arguments as to why he has given up on Cupertino’s offering. However, I stick with Apple Music because I do think the curation and radio shows (which you can listen to on-demand as a subscriber,) make it worth the money. This is particularly true if you get an Apple One bundle.
Don’t get me wrong, Spotify isn’t without its problems either. Support for the HomePod is still nonexistant and, even though they were able to build an Apple Watch app and cellular streaming to it for a while, it took them YEARS to implement the feature. Apple Music even arguably has some design wins over Spotify with its Now Playing screen and more advanced audio features with Spatial Audio and Lossless Audio. No music streaming service is going to be perfect but, if there ever was one that got as close as possible, it has to be Spotify. The user interface and navigation are clean and easy to understand, the personalized playlists are spot on, and the performance of the app (across mobile and desktop) are really responsive.
Google is working on a wearable to challenge the Apple Watch, according to a report from Insider, picked up on by The Verge. It could launch as soon as next year. I suspect that such a device, long-awaited by many, will prove popular, but doubt it can displace the Apple Watch.
The watch (codenamed “Rohan”) is being worked on by Google’s Pixel hardware group separately from Fitbit, which Google bought for $2.1 billion earlier this year. According to Insider’s report, the new upcoming Google watch — it’s not clear whether Google will actually be calling it a “Pixel Watch” yet — will serve much the same role as the Pixel phones do for Android: an example for both consumers and hardware partners of what Google’s software is truly capable of when given the right hardware. The device is expected to cost more than a Fitbit and compete more directly with the Apple Watch, according to The Verge’s source.The watch will have basic fitness tracking features, including step counting and a heart rate monitor, with Google also reportedly working on debuting a Fitbit integration into Wear OS (codenamed “Nightlight”) with the new watch when it launches.
Former Ubiquiti employee Nickolas Sharp has been arrested and charged with data theft and extortion.
As alleged, Nickolas Sharp exploited his access as a trusted insider to steal gigabytes of confidential data from his employer, then, posing as an anonymous hacker, sent the company a nearly $2 million ransom demand.
Siri can do a lot of things for you, but she can’t dictate your emojis.
Learn more about this in this segment from Mac Geek Gab 901.
BadgerDAO reported on Wednesday that it lost about 2,100 bitcoin and 151 ether in a hacking attack.
Kryptobi, who said he is on the BadgerDAO support team and has been looking into the hack, told Motherboard that it appears someone injected a malicious script into BadgerDAO’s frontend after compromising an API key for BadgerDAO’s Cloudflare account. Cloudflare is a web infrastructure, content delivery network, and website security company, which is used by millions of sites on the internet.
In October, a Planned Parenthood facility in Los Angeles suffered a data breach. It affected about 400,000 patients.
Letters from PPLA to affected patients warned that “we identified files that contained your name and one or more of the following: address, insurance information, date of birth, and clinical information, such as diagnosis, procedure, and/or prescription information.”
Wired writes that Facebook will require at-risk accounts to secure with two-factor authentication, an important security measure for users.
Facebook Protect started as a pilot project in the United States ahead of the 2018 midterm elections and expanded leading up to the 2020 presidential election. Facebook enrolls some prominent public figures in the program automatically, but the company has also been creating mechanisms for people to nominate themselves for inclusion, like enrolling whole newsrooms. Once users join Facebook Protect, they can’t opt out.
Check out what’s new with Apple’s DIY Repair Program in this mini-segment from Mac Geek Gab 901.
Get more information here: https://www.macobserver.com/news/self-service-repair-program/
When pondering what Jack Dorsey would do after his departure from Twitter, my first thought was focusing on Square and cryptocurrency. Now, a few days later, the company has changed its name to Block.
We built the Square brand for our Seller business, which is where it belongs. Block is a new name, but our purpose of economic empowerment remains the same. No matter how we grow or change, we will continue to build tools to help increase access to the economy.
Take a deep dive into MacBook Battery Drain Issues and how Mac Geek Gab fixed it.
Command: pmset -g log | grep "Wake Requests"
Nvidia is building a powerful supercomputer it calls Earth-2. They want to use simulation to make predictions in climate change with meter-scale resolution.
For the first time, we have the technology to do ultra-high-resolution climate modeling, to jump to lightspeed and predict changes in regional extreme weather decades out.
We can achieve million-x speedups by combining three technologies: GPU-accelerated computing; deep learning and breakthroughs in physics-informed neural networks; and AI supercomputers, along with vast quantities of observed and model data to learn from.
It seems that Ted Lasso has won over everyone, including Apple’s fiercest rivals. In a recent interview, reported on by iMore Alphabet CEO Sundar Pichai praised the Apple TV+ hit, saying he preferred it to Netflix offering Squid Game.
The CEO recently sat down for a wide-ranging interview with Bloomberg. During the interview, Pichai was asked to choose between the Apple TV+ series “Ted Lasso” or the Netflix series “Squid Game. “While Picahi [sic] says he enjoys both shows, he said that “Ted Lasso” was the easy winner.
A report from PCMag today discusses Qualcomm’s latest chip, the Snapdragon 8 Gen 1. It has anti-spoofing technology to protect against Stingrays.
Spoof cell sites can now be run on small, widely available boxes that pass bad data and phishing messages, Qualcomm said at its Snapdragon Summit today. Otherwise known as “Stingrays,” these faux cells can be run by criminals, law enforcement, or security agencies to collect your personal data without your permission.
Use this Shutdown Shortcut for your iPhone to shutdown your MacBook
Check out how to set it up in this mini-segment from Mac Geek Gab 901.
To go along with its announcement for World AIDS Day, Apple shared the story of Model of Hope program in Ghana.
Joseph is one of 13.8 million people who has access to ART as a result of Apple’s contributions to the Global Fund’s efforts in Africa, and he sees the effect COVID-19 is having on those he counsels through the Model of Hope program.
Hackers are exploiting a bug from 2017 to attack the EdgeMarc Enterprise Session Border Controller. This device is used by businesses to manage phone calls and video calls.
The vulnerability being exploited to infect the devices is tracked as CVE-2017-6079, a command-injection flaw that penetration tester Spencer Davis reported in 2017 after using it to successfully hack a customer’s network. The vulnerability stemmed from an account in the device that, as Davis learned from this document, had the username and password of “root” and “default.”
In macOS Monterey there is now a built-in network quality speed test. Learn how to access it in this mini-segment from Mac Geek Gab 901.
command: networkQuality
Amazon SageMaker Canvas is a new machine learning service that doesn’t require any coding. It lets you build ML models and generate predictions.
SageMaker Canvas leverages the same technology as Amazon SageMaker to automatically clean and combine your data, create hundreds of models under the hood, select the best performing one, and generate new individual or batch predictions. It supports multiple problem types such as binary classification, multi-class classification, numerical regression, and time series forecasting. These problem types let you address business-critical use cases, such as fraud detection, churn reduction, and inventory optimization, without writing a single line of code.
Apple is set to overtake Samsung as the world’s top smartphone brand in the fourth quarter of this year. Furthermore, it could launch a 5G iPhone SE in the following three-month period. The finds from Trendforce, reported on by AppleInsider, could have very interesting consequences for the smartphone market going forward.
Trendforce…estimates that Apple will overtake Samsung and become the world’s top smartphone brand in the fourth quarter — the busy holiday shopping season — with 23.2% of the market. The analysis firm also forecasts that Apple is on-track to release with a third-generation iPhone SE in the first quarter of 2022. It believes that the device could be a “major instrument” in helping Apple achieve a more foothold in the midrange 5G market.
It’s been one of the most interesting things to ponder since Jack Dorsey announced his shock departure from Twitter – was it his choice? Nick Bilton at Vanity Fair has had a go at working it all out. Personally, the smoothness of the transition, plus the fact Mr. Dorsey is being replaced by a close ally and will complete his board term, indicated to me that this was to a large extent his decision. However, that’s not quite what Mr. Bilton found.
I spoke to almost half a dozen people familiar with the company’s inner workings, and while they were not directly involved in Dorsey’s “resignation,” these are people who have a deep understanding of the place, and as such theorized that Dorsey is being ousted as CEO, rather than leaving of his own accord. (Twitter itself did not immediately respond to a request for comment.)
A report from PCMag: Democrats are reintroducing a bill that would ban automated bots from buying online goods. The legislation aims to stop scalpers.
The proposed legislation expands on an earlier law passed in 2016 that outlawed automated bots from circumventing control measures to buy up ticket sales for public events, such as music concerts and sporting events. In addition, the law made it illegal for scalpers to resell the tickets obtained through the bot.
TechCrunch shares an update to Twitter’s private information safety policy regarding images posted on its platform. It bans sharing images and videos of private people without their consent.
This doesn’t mean that Twitter will require consent from all individuals in a photo or video before its posted. But if a person depicted wants the media taken down, Twitter will take it down.
