Archive for August 28, 2023

Elon Musk Booed By Gamers Over Twitter Rebrand To X… LOL

Posted in Commentary with tags on August 28, 2023 by itnerd

Elon Musk was briefly shown on camera at the Valorant World Championship Final on Saturday. And well, I’ll let this New York Post story tell you what happened next:

The crowd of gamers immediately began booing, prompting a surprised reaction from the event’s announcers, who did not address Musk’s roughly four-second appearance on camera.“

Where is that from? That can’t be from in here, surely,” one announcer said. Moments later, the broadcasters could be heard chuckling as the crowd began chanting for Musk to go back to X’s old brand name.

A video of the embarrassing moment shared by user Jake Lucky quickly went viral on Musk’s own social media platform, racking up nearly 12 million views and more than 80,000 likes as of Monday afternoon.

Here’s the video in question:

Elon has a huge ego. So the fact that he got booed, then had the crowd chant for the return of the Twitter name, and then had a video go viral on Twitter must have really crushed his ego. I’m sure he’ll try to brush it off like nothing happened or that it doesn’t affect him. But I’m sure it affected him. It’s almost enough for you to feel sorry for him. But before you do, remember that this is a self inflicted gunshot wound to the foot for Elon. Thus it’s all on him.

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TELUS expands Community Boards in Alberta and Ontario to support more than 13.3  million people across the provinces

Posted in Commentary with tags on August 28, 2023 by itnerd

Today, TELUS announced it has expanded its community boards in Ontario and Alberta, continuing to help youth reach their full potential by opening up new opportunities that help facilitate life-changing connections, nurture a sense of belonging, and empower them to thrive. 

Leveraging a unique model of philanthropy, the TELUS Community Boards bring together local business and community leaders, empowering them to make decisions on where TELUS’ charitable funding will make the most meaningful difference in their own communities. 

With 57 per cent of Canadian parents worried their children have fallen behind in their education, TELUS Community Boards have a longstanding history of helping ensure every child and youth has an equal opportunity to learn, develop skills, and build confidence. 

Formally changing their names to  TELUS Calgary and Southern Alberta Community Board, TELUS Edmonton and Northern Alberta Community Board and TELUS Ottawa and Eastern Ontario Community Board, TELUS Barrie and Central Ontario Community Board, and TELUS Greater Toronto and Hamilton Area Community Board, these expansions will now support more than 4.7 million Albertans and 8.6 million Ontarians, providing life-changing grants to Canadian registered charities and qualified donees focusing on local, grassroots community-based health, education or technology programs for children and youth. 

The boards are now accepting the final funding intake for 2023 with grant application deadlines closing on September 15. Organizations must be a Canadian registered charity and meet the eligibility funding criteria requirements.

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Canadian Workforce’s Surging Interest in AI Skills Revealed by LinkedIn’s Latest Reports

Posted in Commentary with tags on August 28, 2023 by itnerd

 LinkedIn’s latest Workforce Confidence Index explores the growing presence of AI in Canada’s workforce. The report reveals that 50 per cent of Canadian workers express a strong interest in acquiring AI-related skills to advance their careers, highlighting a strong appetite for technical expertise that aligns with AI. Other key takeaways from the report include: 

  • Generational disparities in digital skills: Millennials and Gen Z show stronger interest in AI and machine learning skills (35 per cent and 29 per cent respectively) compared to the broader workforce (26 per cent), highlighting younger professionals’ leadership in adopting digital skills.  
  • Balanced mix of expertise: 61 per cent of respondents emphasize the increasing importance of soft skills like problem-solving, time management, and teamwork in conjunction with AI’s growth.   
  • Increasing AI integration: Over a quarter of professionals report a 25 per cent growth in AI’s role over the past year.  

 Unsurprisingly, AI is also top of mind for Canadian leaders as LinkedIn’s Executive Confidence Index found that 43 per cent of Canadian Executives are planning to elevate their organization’s AI integration within the next year. These insights are included in LinkedIn’s first global Future of Work Report: AI at Work, which looks at the emerging trends within AI in the workplace. Based on insights from over 950 million professionals worldwide, the report emphasizes how AI is accelerating significant shifts within the workforce. Some other key Canadian takeaways from the Executive Confidence Index include:   

  • Soft skills surge: A staggering 90 per cent of Canadian executives recognize the surge in importance of soft skills. Notably, 66 per cent assert that soft skills now outshine even the brightest AI skills in their organizations.  
  • Mixed sentiments on AI impact: While 27 per cent of Canadian executives believe AI won’t significantly impact their workforce and 15 per cent are uncertain, a proactive stance emerges. 30 per cent are gearing up to upskill or hire for AI skills, compared to 17 per cent for soft skills.  
  • Emphasis on human element: Only 5 per cent of Canadian executives intend to assess roles and reduce headcount due to AI. This shared commitment to growth and innovation underscores the importance of the human element in driving organizations forward.  

 The full report can be found here.

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A Firmware Update For Bell’s HH4000 Seems To Have Broken Advanced DMZ Functionality

Posted in Commentary with tags on August 28, 2023 by itnerd

Those who have followed my journey with Bell Fibe will know that there are two ways to use your own router with Bell’s hardware, in my case an Home Hub 4000. There’s the PPPoE method and the Advanced DMZ method. The latter has worked for me more or less flawlessly for months. And that was despite an ASUS XT8 firmware update that caused some issues with Advanced DMZ for a bit. But that changed last week when Bell dropped this firmware update that seems to have made the Advanced DMZ functionality unusable:

This firmware appeared on my HH4000 sometime last week, and yesterday Bell forced a reboot on my HH4000 which took down my network. Despite my best efforts, I could not get Advanced DMZ to work. Thus I had to resort to going to a double NAT setup which is not ideal. But it works for me so far.

My theory is that a combination of the most recent ASUS firmware that I have on my XT8 router and this new Bell firmware is responsible for Advanced DMZ not working properly. There’s no way for me to test this from the Bell side of the fence as there’s no way to roll back firmware updates with Bell hardware. What I may do is roll back the firmware on the XT8 and test again. But that isn’t a today problem for me as I have other priorities at the moment, and things are working at the moment. When I do get around to doing this, I will post an update. But if you suddenly have issues with your Bell setup, you now know where to look in terms of where to start your troubleshooting.

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Guest Post: Cyberattacks against governments are on the rise in 2023

Posted in Commentary with tags on August 28, 2023 by itnerd

According to the data presented by the Atlas VPN team, in the first half of 2023, there were 49 significant cyber incidents concerning government agencies — a rise of 11% from the same time last year. The attacks affected government bodies in at least 27 countries across the world. 

The analysis is based on the information by the Center for Strategic and International Studies, which keeps track of significant cyber incidents. We focused only on cases involving government agencies, their representatives, or contractors. 

This year, government agencies in the United States encountered the greatest number of attacks, with 16% specifically aimed at the country. The extended conflict between Russia and Ukraine has also resulted in a number of cyber incidents against state government entities in the countries.

When it comes to potential perpetrators, Russian hackers are at the forefront, believed to be responsible for approximately 29% of these attacks. Following closely are cybercriminals associated with China, accounting for 18%, while Iran ranks third with 10%.

Government agencies accumulate and store a significant amount of sensitive data, such as personal information about individual citizens. This data can be sold on the dark web or held hostage until a ransom is paid, which makes these agencies an attractive target for cybercriminals.

Apart from monetary motives, roughly a quarter (12) of all cyberattacks targeting government agencies worldwide in 2023 can be attributed to state-linked threat actors engaged in cyberespionage campaigns. Additionally, hacktivist activity played a role, constituting approximately 10% of the recorded incidents within the government sector during the first half of 2023. 

Since 2005, government agencies worldwide have experienced a total of 616 significant cyberattacks. More than half of these — 56% — occurred just in the last five years, including the first half of 2023.

The full report is available here: https://atlasvpn.com/blog/cyberattacks-against-governments-are-on-the-rise-in-2023

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FBI Warns That Barracuda’s ESG Appliances Need To Be Ripped Out…. NOW

Posted in Commentary with tags on August 28, 2023 by itnerd

You might recall that I posted a story about Barracuda ESG appliances that require full unit replacements because of the the fact that they had an extremely serous flaw that is basically unpatchable.

I had forgotten about this story until I saw this from the FBI:

Through an investigation of the Barracuda ESG appliance compromise, the FBI discovered additional indicators of compromise as well as independently verified many of the indicators of compromise in the public domain. Barracuda customers should remove all ESG appliances immediately. The patches released by Barracuda in response to this CVE were ineffective. The FBI continues to observe active intrusions and considers all affected Barracuda ESG appliances to be compromised and vulnerable to this exploit. In addition, customers should further investigate for any further compromise by conducting scans for outgoing connections using the list of indicators provided as the malicious cyber actors have demonstrated the ability to compromise email accounts and computer networks, as well as maintain persistence in victim networks for continued future operations and data exfiltration. Customers who used enterprise privileged credentials for management of their Barracuda appliances (such as Active Directory Domain Admin) should immediately take incident investigation steps to verify the use and behavior of any credentials used on their devices. Investigation steps may include:

  • Review email logs to identify the initial point of exposure;
  • Revoke and rotate all domain-based and local credentials that were on the ESG at thetime of compromise;
  • Revoke and reissue all certificates that were on the ESG at the time of compromise
  • Monitor entire network for the use of credentials that were on the ESG at the time ofcompromise;
  • Review network logs for signs of data exfiltration and lateral movement;
  • Capture forensic image of the appliance and conduct a forensic analysis.

This is pretty bad. Both for Barracuda customers and for Barracuda’s reputation. The fact that the FBI is now saying to rip Barracuda appliances out of production isn’t good and illustrates how bad this flaw is. Thus if you have one of these appliances, and you didn’t rip it out in June, you need to do so now.

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