Archive for April 3, 2023

Hisense To Bring The NBA To More Fans In North America

Posted in Commentary with tags on April 3, 2023 by itnerd

Hisense, a global leader in Consumer Electronics and Home Appliance industries, and the National Basketball Association (NBA) today announced a collaboration to bring the excitement of the NBA to more fans across North America. 

Hisense will serve as the exclusive partner of “X-Factor Moments,” a weekly content series on the NBA’s social media channels featuring the game changing plays and standout moments throughout the 2023 NBA postseason.  As the Official TV and Home Appliance Partner of the NBA, Hisense will also make NBA League Pass, the league’s premium live game subscription service available on the NBA App, accessible on Hisense TVs in North America beginning with the 2023-24 season.

Year to date through February, Hisense is the no. 2 TV brand in the North American market based on unit share and is the fastest growing TV brand in Canada. With its lineup earning 50+ awards in 2022, Hisense is taking its ULED technology even further with the limited edition release of ULED X – the first television in its lineup to carry the new designation of The Official Television of the NBA.  ULED X revolutionizes LED televisions, bringing viewers a vivid picture and sound quality that puts them right at center court.  This groundbreaking advancement pushes LED TV to its limit and creates the most realistic and immersive entertainment experience to date.

Fans will see milestones of the collaboration come to life around the league’s marquee events, at retailers, on packages and through point-of-sale promotions, trade shows and more, leveraging Hisense’s high-quality, premium products to connect fans with the sport they love most.

For more information, please visit hisense-canada.com. 

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Wages Dominate Cybercrime Groups’ Operating Expenses: Trend Micro

Posted in Commentary with tags on April 3, 2023 by itnerd

 Trend Micro Incorporated today published new research detailing how criminal groups start behaving like corporations as they grow bigger, but that this comes with its own attendant costs and challenges.

To read a full copy of the report, Inside the Halls of a Cybercrime Business, please visit:  

https://www.trendmicro.com/vinfo/us/security/news/cybercrime-and-digital-threats/inside-the-halls-of-a-cybercrime-business

A typical large organization allocates 80% of its operating expenses to wages, with the figure similarly high (78%) for small criminal organizations, according to the report. Other common expenses include infrastructure (servers/routers/VPNs), virtual machines, and software.

The study outlined three types of organizations based on size, using examples where Trend Micro collected the most data from law enforcement and insider information.

Small criminal businesses (e.g., Counter Anti-Virus service Scan4You):

  • Typically, one management layer, 1-5 staff members, and under $500K in annual turnover.
  • Their members often handle multiple tasks within the group and also have a day job on top of this work.
  • Comprise the majority of criminal businesses, often partnering with other criminal entities.

Medium-sized criminal businesses (e.g., bulletproof hoster MaxDedi):

  • Typically have two management layers, 6-49 employees, and up to $50m in annual turnover.
  • They usually have a pyramid-style hierarchical structure with a single person in charge.

Large criminal business (e.g., ransomware group Conti):

  • Typically have three management layers, 50+ staff, and $50m+ in annual turnover.
  • Feature relatively large numbers of lower management and supervisors.
  • Implement effective OPSEC and partner with other criminal organizations.
  •  Those in charge are seasoned cyber-criminals and hire multiple developers, administrators, and penetration testers – including short-term contractors.
  • They may have corporate-like departments (e.g., IT, HR) and even run employee programs, such as performance reviews.

According to the report, knowing the size and complexity of a criminal organization can provide critical clues to investigators, such as what types of data to hunt for. 

For example, larger criminal entities may store employee lists, financial statements, company guides/tutorials, M&A documents, employee crypto wallet details, and even shared calendars to probe.

Understanding the size of targeted criminal organizations can also allow law enforcers to prioritize better which groups should be pursued for maximum impact.

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Guest Post: It’s World Cloud Security Day – And Lookout Says That Remote Work Could Be Risky for Your Organization

Posted in Commentary with tags on April 3, 2023 by itnerd

Today, April 3rd, is World Cloud Security Day which raises awareness of the emerging threats individuals and organizations face when team members use their personal cell phones and computers to access corporate data remotely. These threats include malware, denial of service, and password attacks.

According to Lookout’s The State of Remote Work Security 2023 survey – a study of 3,000 remote and hybrid workers from enterprise companies in the United States, United Kingdom, France, and Germany — data results presented below highlight the behaviors of remote workers that put an organization at risk.

  • 81% of CIOs report their company had experienced a Wi-Fi-related security incident in the last year, with 62% of Wi-Fi-related security incidents occurring in cafes and coffee shops.
  • 43% of remote workers have downloaded, saved, or sent work-related materials to a personal account for convenience; and
  • 57% of remote workers have sent an email from their work account to a personal one for convenience.
  • 56% say they often do work and personal tasks on the same device.
  • Fully remote workers (72%) are more likely to do personal tasks during work hours than hybrid workers (54%); and
  • 32% of remote workers use apps or software for convenience reasons, which are not approved by their IT department. 

Please download the the full report here to find out: 

  • What are the implications for IT security in the wake of the transition to remote work? 
  • What sort of employee practices increase the risk of sensitive data falling into an insecure environment?
  • How does an organization best protect its data when employees spend 20+ hours per week on their personal mobile devices. 

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Elon Musk Has Created A Real Mess With His Verification Scheme

Posted in Commentary with tags on April 3, 2023 by itnerd

Remember last year when Elon Musk rushed out Twitter Blue? And that became a train wreck next to a dumpster fire in short order with rampant occurrences of impersonation among other things that made Elon look like a loser, and forcing him to pull Twitter Blue for a few weeks? We might be seeing another round of that. There is now a lot of confusion over what being “verified” actually means on Twitter. Part of that is due to Elon being forced to backpedal pulling legacy verifications from people because of the epic backlash that this move has generated. In effect giving them more time to pay him, unless Elon doesn’t like you:

As I type this, the vast majority of legacy verified accounts still have their blue checkmark. On top of that there’s checkmarks for the few Twitter Blue subscribers that are out there. And if you click on any of the checkmarks, you get this message:

In the past, this message said “This account is verified because it’s notable in government, news, entertainment, or another designated category.” What that means is that it’s no longer possible to see whether the blue checkmark is for a notable account, or someone who has paid Elon. Which means anyone to pretend to be anyone yet again for $8 a month. Lovely.

What’s worse is that various people are saying that removing the legacy checkmarks is a manual process. Which means that this confusion might last weeks or months. That is another sign that Elon really didn’t think this through before pulling the trigger on this. Though he never thinks anything through before doing it because he not that guy. Not to mention that he’s desperate for cash.

And here’s the final part of this that is bad for Elon. I imagine a scenario where the continuation of Twitter’s policy of getting people to pay for blue checkmarks next to their name would make an account LESS valuable because it would be seen as less legitimate. Which I am sure is the exact opposite of what Elon would expect to happen. And further illustrates that Elon doesn’t really think these sorts of things through.

The bottom line is that Elon has really dropped himself in it again. And there’s no clear path that I can see to get himself out of it without having to eat some metaphorical crow in the process. And his ego is too fragile to eat some crow by saying that he got it wrong. Thus this situation is likely to be a gong show for a very long time.

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EQT And Context Labs Announce Strategic Partnership

Posted in Commentary with tags , on April 3, 2023 by itnerd

EQT Corporation and Context Labs today announced the establishment of a strategic partnership to advance the commercialization of verified low carbon intensity natural gas products and carbon credits. The partnership brings together EQT, the largest natural gas producer in the U.S., and Context Labs, an expert in distributed ledger technology, advanced climate data and analytics, machine learning and AI-capabilities. 

Through tracking, reporting and verification of critical emissions data, the strategic partnership will support EQT in achieving its industry-leading emissions reduction targets, which include a commitment to reach net zero greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions by 2025. With a focus on emissions quantification, operational analysis and the certification of natural gas production, the companies will work to scale emissions mitigation across the full energy value chain.

Context Labs will provide an enterprise-wide deployment of their Decarbonization-as-a-Service (DaaSTM) platform across EQT’s asset footprint, with the goal of achieving full digital integration of EQT’s emissions data. The resulting creation of certified low-carbon intensity products will add a next dimension to EQT’s already robust and digitally-enabled organization.

Context Labs’ enterprise data fabric platform, DaaSTM, will enable certification and verification of the carbon intensity of EQT’s operating assets, with certificates registered in Context Labs’ CLEAR PathTMRepository. Additionally, the relationship will afford EQT the opportunity to integrate carbon credit projects into CLEAR PathTM in support of generating asset-grade, data-backed carbon credits.

Find out more about these companies here:

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