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InfoSec News Nuggets 5/14/2020

Zoom etiquette: You’ve probably broken at least one of these video chat rules

With coronavirus lockdowns and quarantines still in place in most states, many of us are using video chat as the main way to keep in touch with coworkers, family and friends. Whether you’re using Zoom, Skype, FaceTime, Google Meet or Hangouts, Microsoft Teams or one of the other video chat services available, you’ve probably encountered some distracting video chat behaviors from colleagues and friends, taking your calls off the rails.  Here are six ways you may be accidentally ruining your video chats and meetings, and how to avoid them.

 

The Confessions of Marcus Hutchins, the Hacker Who Saved the Internet

AT AROUND 7 am on a quiet Wednesday in August 2017, Marcus Hutchins walked out the front door of the Airbnb mansion in Las Vegas where he had been partying for the past week and a half. A gangly, 6’4″, 23-year-old hacker with an explosion of blond-brown curls, Hutchins had emerged to retrieve his order of a Big Mac and fries from an Uber Eats deliveryman. But as he stood barefoot on the mansion’s driveway wearing only a T-shirt and jeans, Hutchins noticed a black SUV parked on the street—one that looked very much like an FBI stakeout. He stared at the vehicle blankly, his mind still hazed from sleep deprivation and stoned from the legalized Nevada weed he’d been smoking all night. For a fleeting moment, he wondered: Is this finally it?

 

Scientists used AI to make 44.8 gigapixel copy of historic Rembrandt painting

Each year, hundreds of thousands of art aficionados travel to Amsterdam to take a peek at Rembrandt‘s The Night Watch. But now you can get intimately familiar with this historic painting — without even having to step foot in the Rijksmuseum. A team of data scientists has made a 44.8 gigapixel digital copy of The Night Watch. The researchers created the ultra-detailed photograph of Rembrandt‘s painting from a total of 528 exposures — or 24 rows of 22 pictures each. They then used the help of neural networks to digitally stitch together the images.

 

Slack updates iOS and Android apps with new navigation features

Slack on Wednesday released updated versions of its mobile apps for iOS and Android. The updates build on Slack’s desktop revamp back in March, which aimed to make the user interface more intuitive and organized. Highlights of the mobile update include new navigation icons at the bottom of the app, and a new compose button that lets users write, send and save messages more quickly. Slack also added swipe gestures to the mobile app. A swipe right lets users view workspaces and a left swipe lets them view the last channel or direct message they were in. 

 

Google Chrome will finally help you organize your tabs

Google Chrome is rolling out a new feature to help you better manage all your open tabs. The company announced today the launch of “tab groups” for the beta version of its web browser, which will allow you to organize, label, and even color-code your tabs for easy access. The feature will make its way to the stable release of Chrome starting next week. To use the new feature, you can right-click on a tab and choose “Add tab to group.” You can then select an existing group to move the tab to or create a new one, which you’ll also name and label. The company had been testing this solution for several months before today’s public release, as some had already spotted. 

 

US formally accuses China of hacking US entities working on COVID-19 research

The US government has formally accused China today of orchestrating cyber-attacks against US companies working on COVID-19 research. The accusations were levied in a joint statement issued by the Department of Homeland Security Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (DHS CISA) and the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI). The two agencies said they’re investigating attacks carried out by “PRC-affiliated cyber actors and non-traditional collectors.” A non-traditional collector is a term used to describe malicious business partners or employees working inside a targeted organization (aka malicious insiders).

 

Zero-day broker: Stop sending us Apple bugs, we have enough already

A company that pays hackers to submit serious security vulnerabilities says it’s made aware of so many flaws in various Apple operating systems that it will temporarily stop acquiring new attack techniques. In a follow-up tweet, Zerodium chief executive Chaouki Bekrar said Zerodium also is aware of “a few” zero-day vulnerabilities affecting “all iPhones/iPads,” though he declined to provide more details when asked by CyberScoop. In a tweet Wednesday, Zerodium said it will stop accepting Apple iOS bugs that lead to “local privilege escalation,” which attackers use to dig deeper into an infected device, remote code execution bugs in the the company’s Safari web browser, or “sandbox escape” tools, which enable attackers to move from an app to other areas of a device.

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