Police bust phishing rental platform, a nine-year old virus found on Ukrainian computers, and more. Welcome to Cyber Security Today. It’s Friday, April 19th, 2024. I’m Howard Solomon.   The Europol European police co-operative says one of the largest phishing-as-a-service platforms has been severely disrupted. This week law enforcement agencies from 19 countries including the U.K., the United States and Canada shut the IT infrastructure of LabHost. They also arrested 37 suspects. For a monthly subscription the site sold access to phishing kits, infrastructure for hosting phony w ..read more

Just how real is quantum computing? We have an amazing guest on our Weekend Edition who will talk about how she is helping people prepare for IT careers using quantum computing. Meta’s new AI release sparks a debate about open versus closed source AI, major legislation expanding US government surveillance capabilities goes largely unnoticed, big questions about how accurate these AI launch videos are, and before you book that next business trip, a former Boeing manager says he won’t fly on some Boeing planes. All this and more on the “flying under the radar” edition of Hashtag Trending. I’m yo ..read more

More suspicious attempts to take over open source projects, a data theft at a Cisco Duo partner, and more. Welcome to Cyber Security Today. It’s Wednesday, April 17, 2024. I’m Howard Solomon. The recent takeover of an encryption utility used by Linux may not be an isolated incident. The OpenJS Foundation, home to open JavaScript projects, says it recently detected an attempt by a threat actor or actors to designate them as a new maintainer of a project to correct any vulnerabilities. After that the OpenJS recognized two other JavaScript projects not hosted by the Foundation had simil ..read more

YouTube clamps down on third party apps that block ads. Experts predict a new cyber-war between Iran and Israel. Elon Musk backs down on his fight with the Brazilian government and Broadcom makes concessions in the face of customer outrage and European regulatory scrutiny of its new VMWare pricing. All this and more on the “who blinks first” edition of Hashtag Trending. I’m your host, Jim Love. Let’s get into it. YouTube is escalating its battle against ad-blocking software and extensions. The video streaming giant has announced it will now crack down on third-party apps that allow users to s ..read more

Vidyard, a popular video messaging company, has recently announced its entry into the virtual digital avatar market and secured new funding of $15M from Export Development Canada (EDC), BMO Capital Partners, and existing investors Battery Ventures, Bessemer Venture Partners, and iNovia Capital. This brings the company’s total funding to $90.7M. According to Gartner Research, AI avatars using generative AI technology will support 70% of digital and marketing communications by 2025, up from less than 5% in 2022. The AI avatar market is valued at USD 14.34B in 2022 and is expected to grow at a co ..read more

Solar power is the largest source of new US electricity generation for the sixth month in a row, Microsoft is hiking prices on Dynamics 365 business apps by up to 16.7%, VMware’s Desktop Virtualization products rebranded as “Omnissa”, Tesla is laying off over 10% of global workforce amid delivery slump and the U.S. government gets some scathing criticism over Microsoft’s cybersecurity failures All this and more on the “price might not be right” edition of Hashtag Trending. I’m your host, Jim Love. Let’s get into it. New data shows solar power is rapidly expanding its share of electricity gene ..read more

Solar power is the largest source of new US electricity generation for the sixth month in a row, Microsoft is Hiking Prices on Dynamics 365 Business Apps By Up to 16.7%, VMware’s Desktop Virtualization Products Rebranded as “Omnissa”, Tesla is Laying Off Over 10% of Global Workforce Amid Delivery Slump and the U.S. Government gets some scathing criticism over Microsoft’s Cybersecurity Failures All this and more on the “price might not be right” edition of Hashtag Trending. I’m your host, Jim Love. Let’s get into it. New data shows solar power is rapidly expanding its share of electricity gener ..read more

Act fast to a plug hole in Palo Alto Networks firewall, Canadian comedy festival loses over $800K in email scam, and more. Welcome to Cyber Security Today. It’s Monday, April 15th, 2024. I’m cybersecurity reporter Howard Solomon. A critical vulnerability in the GlobalProtect feature of Palo Alto Networks’ PAN-OS operating system has been exploited at several organizations at least as far back as March 26th. That’s the finding by researchers at Volexity who discovered the hole. A threat actor has in some cases deployed a custom backdoor written in the Python language by using the vuln ..read more

Early Saturday morning listeners may have missed my weekend interview segment with Senator Colin Deacon. If you did, it was totally my fault. A typo in my posting instructions meant we didn’t get it online til late Saturday morning. But if you didn’t get a chance to listen, it’s still there, and it’s really worthwhile. Google Enhances Browser Security with AI and announces a New Paid ‘Premium’ Version, Google users report account lock outs that beat their two-factor authentication. Google Blocks California News Access Amid Fight Over a Journalism Payment Bill and Gen Z Ditching Google for TikT ..read more

Welcome to Hashtag Trending The Weekend Edition. I’m your host, Jim Love. I can understand that many of you might get frustrated about politics. What we see for the most part is a lot of BS. Ask a politician a simple question. You get a lot of non answers, talking points, ways their political opponents have it wrong. Yep. That’s true. Even in Canadian politics. So what can we do? We can get involved and try to change the process. I’ve certainly done that. I worked for every political party at one point. I’ve worked for the NDP, Neil Young, not the musician, unfortunately. He was a great guy t ..read more