U.S. employers are optimistic about the second quarter, with the vast majority planning to increase hiring or maintain current headcounts, according to the ManpowerGroup Employment Outlook Survey 2017, released on March 14.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here(Insider Story)
You may have run into these bots a few times. What looks like an actual human being could have been a bot sending you Twitter spam...or even worse.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here(Insider Story)
Many of us have experienced that moment of terror when clicking on a potentially risky link: Will it all be fine or will I start a torrent of bad outcomes from my action?But bad stuff sometimes happens and, sad as it sounds, sometimes the links we click on take us to dark places with bad outcomes. Authentic8 wants to limit those impacts by reducing the blast area of bad content.RELATED: Machine learning offers new hope against cyber attacks
Authentic8, the vendor that created the secure, virtual browser Silo, today announced that its browser will enable organizations to selectively redirect particular URLs for safe rendering within an isolated browser. The idea of this approach is that rather than trying to block any suspect content, organizations can let it through, secure in the knowledge that it can do no widespread harm. Authentic8 was founded by the team from Postini (an email security product acquired by Google).To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
It was only a handful of years ago that the only time the topic of containers came up were at obscure open source conferences or, more usually, when someone was looking for a place to put the bulk load of gourmet kale they’d just opened for their on-site employer-supplied kitchen. Containers were plastic things with lids and, while handy, didn’t generate much excitement.But then Solomon Hykes, looking to pivot away from his ultimately unsuccessful platform as a service (PaaS) play, dotCloud, happened upon an existing technology that was in need of both some tech and some marketing luster. Docker (the project and the business) was borne, and Hykes went from being suave, motorcycle-jacket-wearing technologist to something of a playboy who was defining a new approach towards technology. (OK, playboy is a relative term. But given the dearth of sex symbols in the technology infrastructure space, Hykes will just have to do.)To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
I can’t justify the vigilantism, but someone is bricking vulnerable IoT devices. I ponder the morality of it all. It’s called BrickerBot. It finds IoT devices with dubious security and simply bricks/disables them.Insecure dishwashers, teapots, refrigerators, security cameras—all become part of vast botnets. The botnets can do many things, and we’ve seen them become the armies behind the largest internet attacks in history. How to cleanse these devices has become the crux of many cries, including numerous ones in this space.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
New and innovative security tools seem to be emerging all the time, but the frontline defense for just about every network in operation today remains the trusty firewall. They aren’t perfect, but if configured correctly and working as intended, firewalls can do a solid job of blocking threats from entering a network, while restricting unauthorized traffic from leaving.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here(Insider Story)
DeepMind’s AlphaGo program will test its artificial intelligence capabilities in May against top Go player Ke Jie.The match of three games in Wuzhen, China between AlphaGo and the Chinese player comes about a year after the computer program beat by 4-1 a key player, the South Korean Lee Se-dol, in a game that is regarded as involving more complex strategy than even chess.During the game, players take turns to place black or white pieces, called “stones,” on the 19-by-19 line grid. The aim is to capture the opponent's stones by surrounding them and encircling more empty space as territory. AlphaGo has been seen as a major contender because of its ability to learn from its experience, sometimes resulting in far-from-human but nevertheless successful moves.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
New products of the weekImage by Illusive NetworksOur roundup of intriguing new products. Read how to submit an entry to Network World's products of the week slideshow.VM Backup version 7Image by altaroTo read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
We’ve been fond of Linux Mint for its ability to present a friendly interface to the average end user, while having a stable foundation of Debian and Ubuntu underneath. In this review, we looked at LinuxMint 18.1, dubbed Serena. We found a solid operating system that can run into problems in edge case scenarios.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here(Insider Story)
Annoyed with the U.S. missile strike last week on an airfield in Syria, among other things, hacker group Shadow Brokers resurfaced on Saturday and released what they said was the password to files containing suspected National Security Agency tools they had earlier tried to sell.“Is appearing you are abandoning ‘your base’, ‘the movement’, and the peoples who getting you elected,” the group wrote in broken English in a letter to U.S. President Donald Trump posted online on Saturday.The hacker group, believed by some security experts to have Russian links, released in January an arsenal of tools that appeared designed to spy on Windows systems, after trying to to sell these and other supposedly Windows and Unix hacking tools for bitcoin.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Apple's upcoming iPhone 8 is poised to be a complete game-changer. After years of keeping the iPhone form factor more or less unchanged, the iPhone 8 will likely feature an edgeless OLED display with a Touch ID sensor embedded into the screen itself. Additionally, it's widely believed that the iPhone 8 will offer up improved water resistance, faster internals, wireless charging, facial recognition software and much more.While nothing is ever a guarantee until Apple makes it official, there's good reason to believe that the iPhone 8 will represent one of the biggest leap forwards in iPhone technology we've seen in years. Having said that, there have been a number of interesting rumors regarding the iPhone 8's retail price over the past few weeks.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
A group of hackers who claimed to hold millions of iCloud accounts for ransom said on Friday they'd been paid. But one bitcoin expert says that's bogus. The Turkish Crime Family grabbed headlines last month by claiming they had the stolen login credentials for more than 700 million icloud.com, me.com and mac.com accounts. They demanded increasing ransoms from Apple while threatening to wipe the data from devices connected to the affected accounts if it did not.On Friday, the hackers tweeted that they had been paid US$480,000 in bitcoin. As proof, the group posted a link showing a transaction on Blockchain.info, a popular bitcoin wallet. To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
The U.S. Department of Labor says Google discriminates against female employees in pay at a level that's even worse than the tech industry as a whole.The department has found "systemic compensation disparities against women pretty much across the entire workforce," Labor Department Regional Director Janette Wipper testified in a court in San Francisco on Friday, according to a report by The Guardian. Janet Herold, the department's regional solicitor, told the Guardian that pay discrimination against women was extreme.Wipper said that the DoL found pay disparities in a snapshot of salaries from 2015, according to the Guardian.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Intel's large-capacity Optane is like the Ferrari of storage: It's super fast, it's cool and it's expensive.Also, it isn't for everyone yet. That was reiterated by Intel when it introduced its first large capacity SSD, the Optane SSD DC P4800X, last month.The 375GB DC P4800X is aimed at high-end applications. Optane is also available as low-capacity cache storage on motherboards, allowing Windows 10 and other applications to load faster.Before release, Intel gave Optane SSDs to a select few customers who had a chance to get their hands dirty with the new technology for longer than a year. The testers included Facebook, IBM, Lenovo, and database company Aerospike, which believes Optane could unite DRAM and SSDs. To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Business users get access to their own version of the Windows 10 beta program this week. On Friday, Microsoft unveiled the Windows Insider Program for Business, alongside its first post-Creators Update Windows 10 beta.The program will let business users sign up for beta updates with their Azure Active Directory credentials, rather than a personal Microsoft account. The new feature is designed to provide IT professionals with a path for giving Microsoft business-specific feedback on Windows 10 features. That, in turn, should help business users shape feature development.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
This Amazon #1 best selling solar security light is super bright and easy to install wherever you need it. It features 3 modes: (1) Always on, (2) Dim until motion is detected, and (3) Off until motion is detected. It's designed with a large sensor that will detect motion over a larger distance, and 20 LED lights that the company claims are larger and more powerful than the competition offers. Being weatherproof, this is a light you can mount anywhere you need it outdoors. The Liton outdoor motion sensing light averages 4.5 out of 5 stars from over 1,800 people (see reviews), and a 2-pack is currently being offered at $31.99, a 20% discount over its typical list price of $39.99. See it now on Amazon.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
This Amazon #1 best selling solar security light is super bright and easy to install wherever you need it. It features 3 modes: (1) Always on, (2) Dim until motion is detected, and (3) Off until motion is detected. It's designed with a large sensor that will detect motion over a larger distance, and 20 LED lights that the company claims are larger and more powerful than the competition offers. Being weatherproof, this is a light you can mount anywhere you need it outdoors. The Liton outdoor motion sensing light averages 4.5 out of 5 stars from over 1,800 people (see reviews), and a 2-pack is currently being offered at $31.95, a 20% discount over its typical list price of $49.99. See it now on Amazon.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
When the source code to a suspected Russian-made malware leaked online in 2013, guess who used it? A new release from WikiLeaks claims the U.S. CIA borrowed some of the code to bolster its own hacking operations.On Friday, WikiLeaks released 27 documents that allegedly detail how the CIA customized its malware for Windows systems.The CIA borrowed a few elements from the Carberp financial malware when developing its own hacking tool known as Grasshopper, according to those documents.Carberp gained infamy as a Trojan program that can steal online banking credentials and other financial information from its victims' computers. The malware, which likely came from the criminal underground, was particularly problematic in Russia and other former Soviet states.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Twitter has withdrawn a lawsuit against the U.S. government after the Customs and Border Protection backed down on a demand that the social media outlet reveal details about a user account critical of the agency.The lawsuit, filed Thursday, contended that the customs agency was abusing its investigative power. The customs agency has the ability to get private user data from Twitter when investigating cases in areas such as illegal imports, but this case was far from that.The target of the request was the @alt_uscis account, one of a number of "alt" accounts that have sprung up on Twitter since the inauguration of President Donald Trump. The accounts are critical of the new administration and most claim to be run by current or former staff members of government agencies.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Hackers have started adding data-wiping routines to malware that's designed to infect internet-of-things and other embedded devices. Two attacks observed recently displayed this behavior but likely for different purposes.Researchers from Palo Alto Networks found a new malware program dubbed Amnesia that infects digital video recorders through a year-old vulnerability. Amnesia is a variation of an older IoT botnet client called Tsunami, but what makes it interesting is that it attempts to detect whether it's running inside a virtualized environment.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here