Archive for March 1, 2022

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Apple FINALLY Joins Tech Companies In Taking Action Against Russia

Posted in Commentary with tags , on March 1, 2022 by itnerd

It took pretty much all day, and Apple was the last to join tech companies in taking action against Russia in regards to their invasion of Ukraine. But this finally happened:

So in some ways this kind of sort of matches things that companies like Google and Facebook have done. Not to mention Twitter. But in other ways they’ve gone a bit further. As in stopping sales in the company as I reported earlier today. Apple really was late to the party here. And it doesn’t reflect well on them. But at least they showed up and did something. And I hope Apple and everyone else who have taken action against Russia are prepared to do more if required.

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Apple Appears To Have Stopped Selling Online In Russia…. And Perhaps More

Posted in Commentary with tags , , on March 1, 2022 by itnerd

Earlier today I said this in an article about various companies fighting Russian disinformation:

Who’s missing from this list? Apple. One has to wonder why a company who preaches that it has such high ideals isn’t rushing to join this? As I type this, apps from RT and Sputnik which are two of the biggest mouthpieces for the Russians are still available on the App Store. Why isn’t Apple taking action? That’s a very interesting question that Apple will need to answer ASAP as they really stand out for not having taken action unlike all the companies above. And I should also say, it looks really bad on them.

I guess they are taking a tentative step in terms of doing something by stopping online sales in the country. Not that I want to link to a Russian newspaper, but The Moscow Times broke the story:

And this was verified by Kevin Rothrock who is an editor at Russia-focused, Latvia-based newspaper Meduza.

This is likely to be only temporary. But it may be the start of something for Apple. Here’s another sign that this may be the start of something:

You have to think that this is related to the sanctions. Assuming that’s the case, it suggests that things are starting to bite for the Russians.

Oh by the way, as I type this RT and Sputnik are still on the App Store. That really reflects poorly on Apple.

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Imply Announces Polaris

Posted in Commentary with tags on March 1, 2022 by itnerd

Imply, the company founded by the original creators of Apache Druid®, today unveiled at a virtual event the first milestone in Project Shapeshift, the 12-month initiative designed to solve the most pressing issues developers face when building analytics applications. The announcement includes a cloud database service built from Apache Druid and the private preview of a multi-stage query engine for Druid. Together, these innovations show how Imply delivers the most developer-friendly and capable database for analytics applications.

Developers are increasingly at the forefront of analytics innovation, driving an evolution in analytics beyond traditional BI and reporting to modern analytics applications. These applications—fueled by the digitization of businesses—are being built for real-time observability at scale for cloud products and services, next-gen operational visibility for security and IT, revenue-impacting insights and recommendations and for extending analytics to external customers. Apache Druid has been the database-of-choice for analytics applications trusted by developers of 1000+ companies including Netflix, Confluent and Salesforce.

As developers turned to Apache Druid to power interactive data experiences on streaming and batch data with limitless scale, Imply saw tremendous opportunity to simplify the end-to-end developer experience and extend the Druid architecture to power more analytics use cases for applications from a single database.  

Real-Time Database as a Service Built from Apache Druid

Building analytics applications involves operational work for software development and engineering teams across deployment, database operations, lifecycle management and ecosystem integration. For databases, cloud database services have become the norm as they remove the burden of infrastructure from cluster sizing to scaling and shift the consumption model to pay-as-you-use. 

Imply Polaris, however, is a cloud database service reimagined from the ground up to simplify the developer experience for analytics applications end-to-end. Much more than cloudifying Apache Druid, Polaris drives automation and intelligence that delivers the performance of Druid without needing expertise, and it provides a complete, integrated experience that simplifies everything from streaming to visualization. Specifically Polaris introduces:

  • Fully-Managed Cloud Service – Developers can build modern analytics applications without needing to think about the underlying infrastructure. No more sizing and planning required to deploy and scale the database. Developers can start ingesting data and building applications in just a few minutes.
  • Database Optimization – Developers get all the performance of Druid they need without turning knobs. The service automates configurations and tuning parameters and includes built-in performance monitoring that ensures the database is optimized for every query in the application. 
  • Single Development Experience – Developers get a seamless, integrated experience to build analytics applications. A built-in, push-based streaming service via Confluent Cloud and visualization engine integrated into a single UI makes it simple to connect to data sources and build rich, interactive applications. 

Evolving the Druid Architecture

From its inception, Druid has uniquely enabled developers to build highly interactive and concurrent applications at scale, powered by a query engine built for always-on applications with sub-second performance at TB to PB+ scale. Increasingly, however, developers need data exports, reporting and advanced alerting included with their applications, requiring additional data processing systems to deploy and manage.

Today, Imply introduces a private preview of a multi-stage query engine, a technical evolution for Druid that reinforces its leadership as the most capable database for analytics applications. The multi-stage query engine—in conjunction with the core Druid query engine—will extend Druid beyond interactivity to support the following new use cases in a single database platform:

  • Druid for Reporting – Improved ability to handle long-running, heavyweight queries to give developers a single database for powering applications that require both interactivity and complex reports or data exports. Cost-control capabilities make these heavyweight queries affordable.
  • Druid for Alerting – Building on Druid’s longstanding capability to combine streaming and historical data, the multi-stage query engine enables alerting across a large number of entities with complex conditions at scale.
  • Simplified and More Capable Ingestion – Druid has always provided very high concurrency—very fast queries across large data sets. Using the same SQL language that Druid already supports for queries, the new multi-stage query engine enables simplified ingestion from object stores, including HDFS, Amazon S3, Azure Blob and Google GCS with in-database transformation, making data ingestion easy without giving up any of Druid’s power to enable interactive conversations in modern data analytics applications. 

Learn More

Product Availability:

Imply Polaris is Generally Available and can be accessed via imply.io/polaris-signup

The new multi-stage query engine is in private preview and can be requested via contact@imply.io 

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eBike Phishing Campaign Abuses Google Ads and SEO

Posted in Commentary with tags on March 1, 2022 by itnerd

Singaporean security firm CloudSEK has uncovered a large phishing campaign in which hundreds of eBike phishing sites have abused Google Ads to trick users into giving their personal data to fake investment schemes that are impersonating genuine brands. With large-scale postings of fraudulent websites, the attackers are leveraging Google Ads and SEO to target the Indian audience. 

Saryu Nayyar, CEO and Founder, Gurucul had this comment:

“Phishing attacks have proven to be the #1 threat vector for compromising organizations but also luring users into gaining access to credentials or personal data. This is a very sophisticated attack in how the attackers leveraged Google Ads to reroute users to fake websites that looked perfectly legitimate. It also shows why phishing attacks are almost impossible to prevent. Organizations must employ new and advanced analytics that includes a well-crafted set of behavioral analytics and machine learning (ML) models to identify suspicious activity and escalate when appropriate to classify this activity as an actual malicious threat. Detection of redirection to illegitimate sites is one area where this be beneficial above and beyond traditional XDR and SIEM solutions.”

Hopefully Google gets on top of this to stop this attack as this seems like a pretty nasty one.

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Blue Hexagon Wins the 18th Annual Globee Cyber Security Global Excellence Awards

Posted in Commentary with tags on March 1, 2022 by itnerd

Blue Hexagon, the world’s only multi-cloud agentless CNAPP powered by Deep Learning solution company, received the Silver Globee Cyber Security Global Excellence Awards for Hot Security Technology of the Year for Artificial Intelligence in Security. Created in 2003, the Cyber Security Global Excellence Awards are one of the world’s most coveted prizes for business achievements to individuals and organizations of every size and form all over the world. 

Blue Hexagon received the Silver Award for its Agentless Cloud-Native AI Security Platform. Blue Hexagon Agentless AI Security provides Real-Time Threat Defense for all workloads including against zero-day threats, without impacting performance and privacy. The solution allows mid to large cloud-enabled organizations to get actionable visibility and control for cloud compute, network and storage across multi-cloud and multi-platform deployments. 

Blue Hexagon has been recognized in Forbes AI 50 for Next Gen NDR innovation, included in the 2020 Gartner Market Guide for Network Detection and Response, named to CNBC’s Upstart 100 list of “World’s Most Promising Startups”, was tested by Miercomas the most effective of four leading security products against the most lethal zero-day malware, ransomware, worms, botnets and evasive malicious threats, was named to the 2021 CB Insights AI-100 list of “Most Innovative Artificial Intelligence Startups”, CRN’s “10 Hottest AI Security Companies You Need to Know”, Analytics Insights “Top 100 Artificial Intelligence Startups to Lookout for in 2021”, and most recently awarded the 2022 Silver Globee Cyber Security Global Excellence Awards for “Hot Security Technology of the year | Artificial Intelligence in Security.

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Guest Post: VPN demand in Russia surges by nearly 2,000% in a week

Posted in Commentary with tags on March 1, 2022 by itnerd

According to in-house aggregated Atlas VPN user data, Virtual Private Network (VPN) installs in Russia surged by 1,906% in the last few days. The interest in VPNs started to increase on February 16, 2022, after the first wave of cyberattacks against Ukraine occurred.

VPN installs reached record heights one day after another during the last week of the month.

On February 25, VPN installs rose by 241% above the average. The next day, on February 26, VPN installs originating from Russia sky-rocketed by 1,076% over the norm. Still, this was not the end, as the following day, VPN installs went off the charts, soaring 1,906% higher than the mean.   

The demand declined by a considerable margin but remained high on the last day of February. 

We predict that the interest in VPNs will remain at these heights for the upcoming weeks. However, if major events continue, we could see numbers ascending even higher. 

VPN use-cases in Russia

Internet restrictions in Russia are stringent, even if they are not at the same level as those in China. 

The mass media regulations in Russia have been introduced to restrict harmful content, mostly related to drug use and suicide. 

However, these regulations have been routinely abused to censor criticism of the government or local administrations.

In addition, they also restrict a range of social media and communication platforms.

The legality of VPNs

While the use of VPNs is legal in Russia, you will be hard-pressed to find a provider that offers servers in Russia. The federal government has been tightening its grip on VPN providers since 2017 when President Putin signed a bill outlawing the use of certain VPNs.

To see the full report, please head over to: https://atlasvpn.com/blog/vpn-demand-in-russia-surges-by-nearly-2-000-in-a-week

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Other Companies Are Fighting Russian Disinformation…. But Where’s Apple?

Posted in Commentary with tags , , , , on March 1, 2022 by itnerd

Earlier today, I wrote that Twitter was taking action to stop disinformation from spreading from Russian media. After some looking around, I found that other social media platforms are doing the same thing in whole or in part.

Let’s start with Facebook:

Facebook’s parent company Meta said Monday it will limit access to Russian state-controlled media outlets RT and Sputnik across the European Union, a move that will likely heighten tensions between the world’s largest social network and the Russian government.

“We have received requests from a number of governments and the EU to take further steps in relation to Russian state-controlled media. Given the exceptional nature of the current situation, we will be restricting access to RT and Sputnik across the EU at this time,” Nick Clegg, who oversees global affairs at Meta and is the former UK deputy prime minister, said in a tweet.

Now let’s go to TikTok:

TikTok has joined Facebook in blocking access to two Russian state media outlets in the European Union. Sputnik and RT are no longer able to post to audiences within the EU, and their pages and content will no longer be accessible to users in the bloc, a TikTok spokesperson confirmed.

Next up is YouTube:

Google’s YouTube said Tuesday that it would block Kremlin-backed media outlets RT and Sputnik from Europe following similar bans by Facebook and TikTok.

“It’ll take time for our systems to fully ramp up. Our teams continue to monitor the situation around the clock to take swift action,” Google’s video streaming service said in a statement.

YouTube’s ban — following an announcement from the European Commission that it wanted to remove these Russian media outlets from the EU — would apply within the European Union and the U.K.

While this is not meant to fight disinformation, Google is disabling live traffic in Ukraine:

The company said it had taken the action of globally disabling the Google Maps traffic layer and live information on how busy places like stores and restaurants are in Ukraine for the safety of local communities in the country, after consulting with sources including regional authorities.

Now over to Netflix:

Netflix was due to fall under a series of new obligations in Russia on March 1 after it was added to a register of “audiovisual services”overseen by the country’s communications regulator, Roskomnadzor, last year. 

The obligations mean that Netflix would have had to stream 20 Russian federal television stations, including the likes of Channel One, NTV and a channel run by the Russian Orthodox Church, Spas. Channel One in particular has close links to the Kremlin.

“Given the current situation, we have no plans to add these channels to our service,” a Netflix spokesperson said on Monday evening.

Finally, Microsoft has announced that they are going to de-rank Russian media outlets on Bing so that they don’t show up nearly as often as well as pulling apps from the Windows Store that are associated with Russian media:

We are moving swiftly to take new steps to reduce the exposure of Russian state propaganda, as well to ensure our own platforms do not inadvertently fund these operations. In accordance with the EU’s recent decision, the Microsoft Start platform (including MSN.com) will not display any state-sponsored RT and Sputnik content. We are removing RT news apps from our Windows app store and further de-ranking these sites’ search results on Bing so that it will only return RT and Sputnik links when a user clearly intends to navigate to those pages. Finally, we are banning all advertisements from RT and Sputnik across our ad network and will not place any ads from our ad network on these sites.

Who’s missing from this list? Apple. One has to wonder why a company who preaches that it has such high ideals isn’t rushing to join this? As I type this, apps from RT and Sputnik which are two of the biggest mouthpieces for the Russians are still available on the App Store. Why isn’t Apple taking action? That’s a very interesting question that Apple will need to answer ASAP as they really stand out for not having taken action unlike all the companies above. And I should also say, it looks really bad on them.

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Starbucks and TD Canada Expand Partnership

Posted in Commentary with tags , on March 1, 2022 by itnerd

Starbucks Canada and TD are revolutionizing rewards in Canada. Building on the partnership announced in 2020, Starbucks and TD are enabling millions of TD cardholders to earn accelerated Stars and TD Rewards or Aeroplan points with purchases made through the Starbucks® app, when they link their Starbucks Rewards account to an eligible TD debit or credit card.  In addition, once customers have linked their Starbucks Rewards to a TD debit or credit card, they have the ability to convert TD points into Starbucks Stars in real-time to use toward free food or beverages at Starbucks – an industry first in Canada.

The announcement is an evolution of Starbucks and TD’s first-of-its-kind partnership, which gave TD Aeroplan Visa cardholders the ability to earn accelerated Aeroplan points at Starbucks stores. Now, the program has been expanded to include millions of TD card holders, making rewards more accessible than ever.

Reaping the Rewards

A Loyalty Trends report revealed that 47 per cent of consumers believe reward incentives are more important now than they were pre-pandemic, with Gen Z and young millennials  valuing loyalty programs the most. As consumers continue to lean into loyalty programs, Starbucks and TD are making it even more rewarding for customers to purchase through the Starbucks app. 

By linking a Starbucks Rewards account to an eligible TD Access Card with Visa Debit or Credit Card, customers will:

  • Earn 50% more Stars on purchases or card re-loads made through the Starbucks® app.
  • TD Rewards or TD Aeroplan card holders can also earn 50% more TD Rewards or Aeroplan points on purchases through the Starbucks® app.
  • TD Rewards cardholders can convert TD Rewards points to Stars in real-time to use toward free food or beverages at Starbucks.

Some restrictions apply.  See terms and conditions. 

In addition to earning Stars and the perks that come with being a Starbucks Rewards member – like the ability to mobile order; earn and redeem Stars for free food and beverages; a free birthday beverage; and more – now TD customers can also earn TD Rewards and easily convert them to Starbucks Stars in real-time through the new TD Rewards Hub.

Through Blockchain and other innovative technologies, Starbucks is exploring how to tokenize Starbucks Stars, creating the ability for other merchants to connect their loyalty programs to Starbucks Rewards. This will enable customers to exchange value across brands, engage in more personalized experiences, enhance digital services, and exchange other loyalty points for Stars at Starbucks.

This approach will serve as a foundation for a more aspirational concept for new, modern payment rails that align payment expenses with the value received by customers and merchants. Starbucks intends to be at the forefront of this disruptive innovation, which will unfold over the next few years.

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Jacksonville Transportation Authority Awards Balfour Beatty, Beep and V2R Team Country’s Largest-Ever Public Sector Autonomous Shuttle Project

Posted in Commentary with tags on March 1, 2022 by itnerd

The Jacksonville Transportation Authority (JTA) selected the Balfour Beatty Vision 2 Reality (V2R) Team and lead AV contractor Beep, a global leader in multi-passenger, electric, autonomous mobility solutions, to deliver Phase I of the Ultimate Urban Circulator (U2C) project, the Bay Street Innovation Corridor in Downtown Jacksonville.

The Bay Street Innovation Corridor is an approximately 3-mile, at-grade autonomous vehicle transportation solution that will run along East Bay Street in Downtown Jacksonville, from Hogan Street to the city’s Sports & Entertainment District, which includes TIAA Bank Field, 121 Financial Field and the Vystar Veterans Memorial Arena. The project is supported by a $12.5 million BUILD grant from the U.S. Department of Transportation, funding from the Florida Department of Transportation, North Florida Transportation Planning Organization, and local funds. Phase II of the U2C program includes a full conversion of the JTA’s elevated Skyway APM system. Phase III will expand street level extensions into neighboring communities to connect Downtown Jacksonville to nearby neighborhoods. 

The Belfour Beatty V2R team comprises Beep, Superior Construction Southeast, WGI Inc., Stantec Consulting Services, and Miller Electric. 

Beep’s partnership with the JTA began as the Authority launched its AV Test & Learn Program at its Armsdale Test & Learn Center. Since 2017, the JTA’s Automation & Innovation Division has tested seven AVs and four AV platforms, and engaged with community partners, local schools, first responders, and disability advocates to ensure the U2C is safe, sustainable and accessible to all. 

From April to June 2020, the JTA and Beep deployed a fleet of autonomous vehicles operating in Level 4 autonomy to support the Mayo Clinic’s COVID-19 testing efforts at its Jacksonville Campus.  Over the four-month period, AVs safely transported more than 30,000 COVID-19 samples collected from a drive-thru testing site to the hospital’s laboratories for testing. The Mayo Clinic project has since received national and international recognition from the American Public Transportation Association (APTA), and ITS World Congress.

For more information about the JTA’s U2C program, visit u2c.jtafla.com

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Twitter To Call Out Links In Tweets That Lead To Russia State Media

Posted in Commentary with tags , on March 1, 2022 by itnerd

Twitter it seems is going to try and fight any sort of disinformation campaign that the Russians may try to execute. It will now apparently call out links in Tweets that are connected to Russia state media:

Twitter’s head of site integrity, Yoel Roth, wrote that the platform has been seeing more than 45,000 tweets per day that are sharing links to state-affiliated media outlets. 

“Our product should make it easy to understand who’s behind the content you see, and what their motivations and intentions are,” he added.

In addition to adding labels that identify the sources of links, Roth said the platform is also “taking steps to significantly reduce the circulation of this content on Twitter.” 

I think that this is a good move as I’d rather them apply labels like this rather than outright banning media outlets on their platform. Because it basically calls out what they are up to. My question is will this be effective. Let’s watch and find out because it will be interesting to see.

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