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In November, the Justice Department said the 22-year-old was behind the July 2021 ransomware attack against Kaseya, which crippled hundreds of companies around the world for days. CyberScoop reported in November that Vasinskyi was arrested at a border crossing in Dorohusk – a Polish-Ukrainian border town – on October 8. Vasinskyi made his first appearance and was arraigned today in the Northern District of Texas. “When last year I announced charges against members of the Sodinokibi/REvil ransomware group, I made clear that the Justice Department will spare no resource in identifying and bringing to justice transnational cybercriminals who target the American people,” said Attorney General Merrick Garland....

But finally, here I was on a plane flying cross-country to actually attend a meeting in body as well as spirit. The trip proved that in-person meetings still get far more done than the Zoomified type. It also proved that wearing a mask for six hours is about as enjoyable as a transparent glass sauna in Times Square. Still, there I was on the way back, sipping my water (you doubt me?...

First uncovered in June, MaliBot steals passwords, bank details and the contents of cryptocurrency wallets from users – and it does so by bypassing multi-factor authentication protections. The malware can also access text messages, steal web browser cookies and can take screen captures from infected Android devices. MaliBot can also spread itself by hijacking SMS capabilities to send malicious messages to other users – a technique similar to that which allowed FluBot malware to become so successful before it was taken down by coordinated law enforcement action in May....

No such Thing as a Free Lunch A virtual Private Network or VPN creates a secure connection between the user and the internet. It sends all data traffic through an encrypted virtual tunnel, thus providing crucial benefits to users. Some users turn to VPNs to better secure their connections, others to, for example, stream American Netflix from anywhere in the world. There are a lot of VPN’s on the market for many different purposes....

Who is Anomaly Six? Anomaly Six is a small federal contractor based in Virginia with a lot of contacts. The company was founded by two US military veterans with backgrounds in intelligence. Oddly, Anomaly Six has close ties with US defense and intelligence communities. The company says it provides location data products to branches of the US government and private sector clients. It claims, “we leverage detailed location data from numerous first-party sources to provide insights into groups, behaviors, and patterns....

In the ruling, the presiding judge Yvonne Gonzales Rogers found Apple engaged in anticompetitive conduct under California’s competition laws. Consequently, she issued a permanent injunction to block Apple’s App Store rule that prevents developers from adding in-app links to payment websites. The injunction also ordered for Apple to allow developers to communicate with customers via contact information that is voluntarily submitted by customers when they set up an account within an app....

The report initially sent Apple shares up slightly in late trading, though the stock quickly gave up gains. CEO and Tim Cook remarked the company’s “teams built on a period of unmatched innovation by sharing powerful new products with our users, at a time when using technology to connect people everywhere has never been more important.” Added Cook, “We’re continuing to press forward in our work to infuse everything we make with the values that define us — by inspiring a new generation of developers to learn to code, moving closer to our 2030 environment goal, and engaging in the urgent work of building a more equitable future....

Lockdown Mode will be available this fall with iOS 16, iPadOS 16, and macOS Ventura. The new feature is designed for the few users – such as journalists, activists, and government officials – who may be targets of NSO Group or other private companies developing state-sponsored mercenary spyware. SEE: The best 5G phones: Which flagship comes out on top? Turning on Lockdown Mode hardens defenses on your device and strictly limits certain functionalities, reducing the ways your device could be exploited by cyberattacks....

This announcement was widely expected in late 2022, and many of the rumored features have duly appeared, including Wi-Fi 6E and support for up to 96GB of unified memory in the M2 Max model – up from a 64GB ceiling in the M1 Max. Also: New Mac Mini with M2 chip is faster, more capable, and somehow cheaper The new MacBook Pros come with better battery life, and the 16-inch model duly offers up to 22 hours of Apple TV movie playback from its 100Wh battery – a record for a Mac, Apple claims....

The company this year was looking to settle a debate over whether HDDs or SSDs are more reliable. Backblaze provides a cloud-backup service for laptops and computers and offers its B2 cloud storage to enterprises. It uses a mix of SSDs and HDDs as storage server boot drives in the Backblaze Cloud Storage platform. Since 2018, it’s replaced failed HDD boot drives with mostly 2.5-inch SSDs (some are M.2 form factor drives)....

Presidents’ Day will take place on Monday, February 20. Also known as Washington’s Birthday and observed by most states, the federal holiday is also utilized to promote sales events by US retailers. Arlo, for example, has launched a Presidents’ Day sale with massive discounts on offer for security cameras and bundles. Arlo’s “salute to big savings” promotion includes a heavy discount on the Arlo wireless doorbell & Essential camera bundle....

Last year, Intel, in conjunction with Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Georgia Institute of Technology, announced the creation of an automated engine designed to learn what a piece of software intends to do by studying the structure of the code and analyzing syntactic differences of other code with similar behavior. The goal of the effort “is to democratize the creation of software,” said Justin Gottschlich, principal scientist at Intel. “When fully realized, machine programming will enable everyone to create software by expressing their intention in whatever fashion that’s best for them, whether that’s code, natural language or something else....

But due to Austrac’s remit only being financing activity within Australia’s banking system, the agency’s CEO said its scope for catching financing of terrorism activities could often be limited. “That’s why we rely so heavily on the banks if it’s going to the banking system, but of course, much of this doesn’t go through the banking system so that’s why we’re [trying to] enhance our capability,” Austrac CEO Nicole Rose said at Senate Estimates....

State-Based Cyber Actor Sadly, cyberattacks have become part of everyday life. A UN representative stated recently that there is a cyberattack happening every 39 seconds somewhere in the world. And in the current lockdown circumstances when people are working from home and are more reliant on their devices, hackers see new opportunities to misuse the situation. Australian prime minister Morrison said that the country has been targeted by hackers for a while; they have been a threat for months....

The investigation would focus on whether the Optus companies took “reasonable steps” to safeguard the personal data they held from misuse, interference, loss, unauthorised access, modification, or disclosure, said the Office of the Australian Information Commissioner (OAIC) in a statement Tuesday. It also would determine if the Singtel-owned entities had collected and retained only information necessary to facilitate their business. In addition, the investigation would assess whether the companies took reasonable steps to implement practices and systems to ensure compliance with the Australian Privacy Principles....

The new register comes in response to an uptick of election conspiracy theories circulating online in recent months due to it being a federal election year. According to the Australian Electoral Commission (AEC), the disinformation register is a regularly updated database containing examples of disinformation and misinformation that has circulated online from late 2021 onwards. The AEC explained that each piece of disinformation discovered by the commission would be presented in the register with information about which platform it was spread on, the timing, the factual information regarding the matter, and the actions taken by the commission to correct the record....

While Australia’s tech industry has welcomed the increased cybersecurity spending, it’s unclear whether those jobs can be filled due to Australia’s digital skills shortage, RMIT University cybersecurity professor Matt Warren told ZDNet. Due to the ASD being a government agency, only Australian citizens can be hired for these new jobs, which means the federal government and Australian organisations need to develop talent with sovereignty in mind to fill these roles....

First up, the company showed off its new AWS Skill Builder courses. This novel digital learning tool will be available to users in 200 countries and will provide more than 500 free, on-demand courses to start, with 60 more scheduled to be added this year. Content is available in 16 languages, with support for automatically generated recommendations from AWS on progression paths based around individualized job roles and technology areas....

The company abruptly rolled back the default block on internet macros earlier this month, surprising some because it was an effective obstacle to attackers tricking PC users into enabling macros in Office. Macros are already disabled by default but it was too easy for users to click to enable them, exposing networks to malware. A week later Microsoft confirmed that the rollback was only temporary as it made some changes to enhance usability....

Elk is a partner and the global leader of Operating Model practice at Bain & Company, as well as a core member of the Retail practice. With more than 20 years of consulting experience, Elk is passionate about transforming large companies, especially those experiencing technology or business model disruption. Elk has deep transformation experience at the intersection of organization, Agile, performance improvement, leadership, and change management. Throughout her career, Elk has advised business leaders across a wide range of industries, including retail, technology, healthcare, consumer products, automotive and aerospace and defense....