29 | June | 2023 | The IT Nerd

Archive for June 29, 2023

Reddit To Moderators: Your Subreddits Will Not Stay Private

Posted in Commentary with tags Reddit on June 29, 2023 by itnerd

Steve Huffman is clearly desperate as he’s now made it clear that subreddits that are set to private are going to reopen their communities this week:

The company has given moderators deadlines to lay out their plans for reopening but said that they can’t stay closed. The timeframes given generally indicate a deadline of sometime Thursday afternoon. Reddit was vague about the exact repercussions but seemed to suggest this was the final warning stage. “This community remaining closed to its [millions of] members cannot continue” beyond a the deadline, the admin (Reddit employee) account ModCodeofConduct wrote in a note to one of the biggest Reddit communities that’s still private.

I am guessing that the API protests have hurt Huffman and company. Thus they’re going to the nuclear option. Seeing as Minecraft has ditched Reddit, that’s not a smart plan as this move will push more people and communities to abandon Reddit. And then what will Huffman do? I seriously think that he believes that he can bend the will of others. But that’s not the case. And he’s going to find out soon enough.

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Cyware Gets $30 Million In Series C Financing

Posted in Commentary with tags Cyware on June 29, 2023 by itnerd

Cyware, the leading provider of AI-powered Cyber Fusion platforms for enterprises and MSSPs, and automated threat intelligence sharing for information sharing networks, today announced a $30 million Series C financing round led by Ten Eleven Ventures, a leading multi-stage investment firm specializing in cybersecurity. Also participating are previous investors including Advent International, Zscaler, Emerald Development Managers, Prelude (the venture practice at Mercato Partners) and Great Road Holdings.

The Series C financing comes as Cyware has experienced strong year-over-year growth propelled by robust market adoption, excellent customer retention, and extraordinarily large market access. Since Series A financing, Cyware has shown growth of 6x and consolidated its position as an industry leader for threat intelligence automation, security orchestration, and collaborative threat response solutions. Earlier this year, Cyware achieved FedRAMP Ready status for its Cyber Fusion platform and was named one of the most innovative and promising cybersecurity companies by JMP Cyber 66, as well as being recognized in the 2022 Deloitte Technology Fast 500 as one of the Fastest Growing Technology Firms in North America.

Cyware’s cloud-based platform is leveraged by top Fortune 1000 and MSSP security teams to transform their legacy SOCs into Cyber Fusion Centers. The platform seamlessly integrates the AI-powered threat intelligence platform (TIP) with data orchestration and workflow automation (SOAR), to facilitate and synchronize actions between cloud and on-premises security tools and technologies. This enables security teams to connect the dots on emerging threats by correlating actionable threat intelligence with detection, threat hunting, vulnerability management, and incident response operations. Cyware’s Cyber Fusion platform is modular, and the underlying TIP, SOAR, and Collaborative Threat Response components can be leveraged in combination or individually by security teams providing them greater flexibility in transforming conventional SOCs.

The Cyware platform has become the backbone of global Threat Sharing Networks. Almost all major ISACs (Information Sharing and Analysis Centers), ISAOs, and CERTs use Cyware’s platform to automate threat intelligence sharing, analysis, and actioning for more than 30,000 enterprise members and government entities. The platform also enables large conglomerates, industry groups, and private communities to activate and share threat intelligence with their distributed businesses, clients, and suppliers, and benefit from automated collective defense against ransomware, supply chain attacks, and zero-day vulnerabilities.

Cyware plans to leverage this new round of funding to fuel further growth and accelerate channel business and strategic alliances while expanding its global footprint.

Twitter CEO Calls For “Hand To Hand Combat” To Get Advertisers Back

Posted in Commentary with tags Twitter on June 29, 2023 by itnerd

Despite what Elon Musk says, advertisers are not returning to Twitter. Or put another way, he lied about advertisers returning to the platform when he said that here to the BBC. That’s going to be job number one for Twitter CEO Linda Yaccarino to fix. And here’s how she’s going to do that:

Linda Yaccarino told Twitter staff they need to deploy “hand-to-hand combat” to win back advertisers who abandoned the platform, the Financial Times reported.

The new Twitter CEO reportedly made these comments in a meeting with the global sales team earlier this month, where she spoke about the need for hard work to convince companies to advertise with the platform, per the FT.

“Hand-to-hand combat” apparently referred to persuading advertisers in person rather than from behind a desk, a person with knowledge of the matter told the newspaper.

This has the smell of desperation. As in the type of desperation where things are so bad, that she has to resort to rhetoric like this to try and move the needle in any significant way. That to me validates that Twitter has really been wounded by the actions and behaviour of Elon Musk. And you have to wonder what will happen next if “hand to hand combat” doesn’t work.

Place your bets now.

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Researchers Discover A New GuLoader Malware Campaign

Posted in Commentary with tags Morphisec on June 29, 2023 by itnerd

Morphisec Threat Labs has discovered and documented a new GuLoader malware campaign. Here’s the key points that they found:

Since April, researchers have been tracking a campaign predominantly targeting legal, healthcare and finance organizations.
The analysis comes on the heels of dozens of confirmed attacks across Morphisec’s customer base where this GuLoader technique bypassed the customer’s EDR and next-gen A/V.
Researchers note that GuLoader is appearing more frequently as a malware loader in phishing campaigns and is now one of the most advanced downloaders in use.

You can read the full analysis here: https://blog.morphisec.com/guloader-campaign-targets-law-firms-in-the-us

Critical Insight Introduces PartnerFirst Program

Posted in Commentary with tags Critical Insight on June 29, 2023 by itnerd

Critical Insight, the Cybersecurity-as-a-Service provider specializing in helping critical organizations Prepare, Detect, and Respond in today’s threat environment, announced today the Critical Insight PartnerFirst Program, which has evolved with new features and significant enhancements to recognize and reward partners’ expertise ensuring partners feel supported and invested at each level of the program.

The cybersecurity landscape continually evolves, demanding organizations equip themselves with partners that invest in people, technology, and domain expertise to remain at the forefront of threat detection and management. Purpose-built for today’s security ecosystem, Critical Insight’s Cybersecurity-as-a-Service (CaaS) offers affordable, comprehensive cybersecurity services.

New features of the Critical Insight PartnerFirst Program include:

The updated pricing structure for Critical Insight’s Managed Services Providers (MSPs) channel.
Every partner is assigned a Sales Team, including an Account Director, Customer Service Manager, and Security Strategist, to help enable, train, and work through opportunities together.
Co-marketing opportunities.
Improved PartnerFirst Portal for registration, news, events, training, and co-branded documentation.

Agents, distributors, MSPs, MSSPs, system integrators, and Value Added Resellers (VARs) are included in the PartnerFirst program based on differing contract vehicles for Resellers versus Referral agreements across all industries, particularly healthcare, education, manufacturing, utilities, and the public sector.

The PartnerFirst program established an innovative tiering framework that provides partners access to various financial and business benefits. The program has evolved to ensure partners feel supported and invested, whereby every partner is assigned a sales support team directly responsible for helping partners increase opportunities and win deals.

Partners enter at the Base Tier and, based on aggregate licenses across their customer base, can achieve dramatic pricing discounts, and new incentives in the year’s second half.

Critical Insight is dedicated to partner success that is customer-centric, effortless to do business with, and provides compelling value to address cybersecurity best practices, proactively monitor, and enable fast remediation.

For more information on the Critical Insight PartnerFirst Program, please visit https://www.criticalinsight.com/about/partners.

Reddit Has A New Problem… Minecraft Makers Ditch Reddit

Posted in Commentary with tags Reddit on June 29, 2023 by itnerd

Steve Huffman must be rethinking his life choices at this point as his problems with the API protests that he started are growing. Today’s problem is that the makers of Minecraft have decided to ditch Reddit for greener pastures:

The makers of the popular game Minecraft say they will no longer share official content on Reddit following the changes being pushed through by the site’s management.

And:

Now it seems Mojang—the Microsoft-owned developer of Minecraft—is siding with the strikers. “As you have no doubt heard by now, Reddit management introduced changes recently that have led to rule and moderation changes across many subreddits,” reads a post made by Mojang’s Java Tech Lead.

“Because of these changes, we no longer feel that Reddit is an appropriate place to post official content or refer our players to.”

Mojang previously used to post technical detail such as game changelogs to Reddit, which list new features or bug fixes made during game updates. Mojang is now encouraging players to instead visit the Minecraft feedback site or pay attention to other social media channels.

Minecraft’s popularity is sure to make this a big story. Which means that this will be a big headache for Steve Huffman. The question is how Huffman will react to this. That will be interesting to watch as he doesn’t come across as a very rational person.