Here we go again.
Researchers have found a new CPU flaw that is similar to the Spectre CPU flaw. This one is called BranchScope and was found by researchers from the College of William and Mary, Carnegie Mellon, the University of California Riverside and Binghamton University. A report on the flaw indicates that the attack uses some of the same predictive execution vulnerabilities as Spectre, exploiting the branch predictors of chips by using them to inadvertently leak sensitive information.
The folks at Ars Technica got this comment from Intel on this new CPU flaw:
We have been working with these researchers and we have determined the method they describe is similar to previously known side channel exploits. We anticipate that existing software mitigations for previously known side channel exploits, such as the use of side channel resistant cryptography, will be similarly effective against the method described in this paper. We believe close partnership with the research community is one of the best ways to protect customers and their data, and we are appreciative of the work from these researchers.
In other words, nothing to see here, move along. We’ll find out if there’s nothing to see here as now that this is public, hackers will be looking at this to see if they can utilize it to pwn computes all over hell’s half acre.
Facebook Outlines Beefed Up Privacy Tools So You Won’t #DeleteFacebook
Posted in Commentary with tags Facebook on March 28, 2018 by itnerdFacebook is clearly still feeling the heat because they can’t or won’t keep users data safe. To try and crank down the heat, they’ve announced that they’ve beefed up their privacy tools:
Last week showed how much more work we need to do to enforce our policies and help people understand how Facebook works and the choices they have over their data. We’ve heard loud and clear that privacy settings and other important tools are too hard to find and that we must do more to keep people informed. So in addition to Mark Zuckerberg’s announcements last week – cracking down on abuse of the Facebook platform, strengthening our policies, and making it easier for people to revoke apps’ ability to use your data – we’re taking additional steps in the coming weeks to put people more in control of their privacy. Most of these updates have been in the works for some time, but the events of the past several days underscore their importance.
Now if you’re a Facebook user, you should go through this stuff to make sure your privacy is on point. Really, you should do this. Assuming that you’re not about to join the #DeleteFacebook camp of course. In the end, I am not sure if this helps as Facebook has been exposed as a company who doesn’t care about your privacy and about securing your personal data unless it’s forced to as it would affect their profitability if they actually took stuff like this seriously. Thus if it were me and I had the choice of running through their beefed up privacy tools, or joining the #DeleteFacebook crowd, I’d choose the latter.
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