Uber introduces shared rides in Toronto, Montreal and Vancouver

Posted in Commentary with tags on February 5, 2023 by itnerd

Today Uber is announcing that shared rides are officially coming back to Uber with the launch of UberX Share in Toronto, Vancouver, and Montreal this week.

Since pausing UberPool in Toronto in 2020 due to the pandemic, Uber have been working tirelessly to revamp the experience. And after months of listening to driver and rider feedback, redesigning, testing, and troubleshooting through various pilots around the globe, the new UberX Share will allow riders to:

  • Always save 💲: As their most affordable option, riders will receive an upfront discount of up to 20% if they choose UberX Share. With an Uber One membership, riders get an additional 5% discount.
  • Make a sustainable choice 🌎: UberX Share provides a greener way to get from A to B, by moving more people with fewer cars to help your city avoid extra emissions and car travel by sharing your ride. 
  • Stay on schedule ⏰: Look out the window, not at your watch. On average UberX Share only adds around 6 minutes to your trip when matched. 

Shared rides have long been a rider favourite, from the spontaneous singalongs to meeting new friends and other fun chance encounters. To help make the most of the UberX Share experience, Uber is also sharing our top 5 Do’s and Don’ts for riders below:

  1. Best driver, for real – DO thank and tip your driver for their excellent service. Spread the love!
  2. No drama, it’s all about the vibe – DO respect your co-rider and driver. Kind people are the best kind of people. Be friendly and open to conversation. You never know if you’ll meet someone new, your next BFF or maybe even a love interest. 
  3. Gotta ride solo – DON’T bring a buddy. One trip request equals one seat.
  4. No take backs – DON’T ask your driver to change your destination. This helps Uber be mindful of everyone’s ride experience.
  5. Bestie, you’re not always the main character – DON’T be annoyed if your co-rider—who joined the trip after you—gets dropped off first. It’s about an efficient route; trust the process.

You can find the full news release here. 

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Don’t Use Google To Download Software…. Here’s Why

Posted in Commentary with tags on February 4, 2023 by itnerd

If you’re the type to use Google to search for downloads of popular software is a really bad idea. But over the past few months, it has been downright dangerous. Here’s why:

“Threat researchers are used to seeing a moderate flow of malvertising via Google Ads,” volunteers at Spamhaus wrote on Thursday. “However, over the past few days, researchers have witnessed a massive spike affecting numerous famous brands, with multiple malware being utilized. This is not “the norm.'” 

The surge is coming from numerous malware families, including AuroraStealer, IcedID, Meta Stealer, RedLine Stealer, Vidar, Formbook, and XLoader. In the past, these families typically relied on phishing and malicious spam that attached Microsoft Word documents with booby-trapped macros. Over the past month, Google Ads has become the go-to place for criminals to spread their malicious wares that are disguised as legitimate downloads by impersonating brands such as Adobe Reader, Gimp, Microsoft Teams, OBS, Slack, Tor, and Thunderbird. 

On the same day that Spamhaus published its report, researchers from security firm Sentinel One documented an advanced Google malvertising campaign pushing multiple malicious loaders implemented in .NET. Sentinel One has dubbed these loaders MalVirt. At the moment, the MalVirt loaders are being used to distribute malware most commonly known as XLoader, available for both Windows and macOS. XLoader is a successor to malware also known as Formbook. Threat actors use XLoader to steal contacts’ data and other sensitive information from infected devices. The MalVirt loaders use obfuscated virtualization to evade end-point protection and analysis. To disguise real C2 traffic and evade network detections, MalVirt beacons to decoy command and control servers hosted at providers including Azure, Tucows, Choopa, and Namecheap.

That’s not trivial and this is true for Windows and Mac users. And the challenge is that I have had to come to the rescue of people who just think that this behaviour is okay. Which it isn’t. So I would strongly suggest that you exercise good computing habits and only download software from reputable sources. Seriously, don’t do it.

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TELUS ranks highest among North American telecoms on Corporate Knights Global 100 Most Sustainable Corporations

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

TELUS has been recognized by Corporate Knights in its Global 100 Most Sustainable Corporations as the top North American telecommunications company, ranking 37th overall for its global leadership and commitment to building a better, more sustainable future. This improved placement is an increase from 49th in 2022 and 54th in 2021, recognizing TELUS’ ongoing commitment to make sustainability a core part of its business and allocating meaningful resources to reduce its carbon footprint. The Corporate Knights ranking is based on a rigorous assessment of nearly 7,000 public companies with more than US$1 billion in revenues and is one of the world’s most valued and transparent rules-based sustainability ratings. TELUS was also recently recognized on the Dow Jones Sustainability Index for the 22nd year in a row, leading the Canadian telecommunication industry in environmental, social and governance (ESG) performance.

TELUS’ recognition by the Corporate Knights and Dow Jones Sustainability Index follows a number of international accolades recognizing TELUS’ global leadership in sustainability, corporate citizenship, social purpose, and environmental and social reporting, including:

  • Received an A- rating from the Carbon Disclosure Project (CDP), placing in the top 10 per cent globally
  • Being named one of Canada’s Top 100 Greenest Employers
  • Recognized as the only telecommunications company listed in the Wall Street Journal’s top 100 Most Sustainably Managed Companies in the World
  • Awarded the Terra Carta Seal for leadership on climate change energy transition
  • Recipient of several 2022 Loyalty360 Awards including the Social Impact and Corporate Social Responsibility and CSR & Social Impact Awards
  • Featured in Sustainability Magazine’s Top 100 Companies in Sustainability, ranking 8th
  • Recognized by Corporate Knights as one of 2022’s Best 50 Corporate Citizens in Canada

To learn more about TELUS’ commitment to a more sustainable future, visit telus.com/sustainability.

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BlackFog Releases Its State Of Ransomware Report For January 2023

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

BlackFog has today released the State of Ransomware Report for January 2023. BlackFog issues these reports monthly to provide insight into the varying countries, threat groups, variants and more, by tracking both publicly disclosed and unreported ransomware attacks. 

Darren Williams, CEO and Cofounder, BlackFog had this comment:

“After a record-breaking 2022, we start January with yet another record, this time the highest January on record with 32 attacks, a 22% increase over 2022. We also start 2023 with new statistics and now include unreported attacks so we can see the scope of the problem. This month we see that 478% of attacks have gone unreported, a growing trend we have seen over the past year.

We also start 2023 with education leading the way with 10 attacks, 30% of the total for the month. This continues the trend we saw in 2022 followed closely by healthcare and government with 8 and 6 attacks respectively.

January also saw some big changes in data exfiltration, which is dominated by China, representing 36% compared to Russia at 9%. As of 2022, we see that exfiltration is now the dominant technique for ransomware and was involved in 88% of all attacks in January.

Lastly, we see that LockBit continues to be the dominant variant and expect this to increase further over the coming months and was involved in 18.8% of reported attacks, but crucially 32.6% of unreported attacks. We expect to see this reflected in next month’s statistics as we see some pull-through from unreported to reported.”

The full report can be found here.

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Elon Musk Has Temporarily Locked His Twitter Account…. Here’s Why

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

Something odd is happening over at Twitter. Elon Musk has locked his twitter account. Is he hiding something. Is he sick of hearing from people that Twitter sucks since he took over?

Actually, he is testing to see if the Twitter algorithm is broken. I’ll explain why this course of action seems odd to me. But here’s the sequence of events as best as I can figure out. Twitter users have noted that since Elon took over, their Twitter feeds have changed. All sorts of random tweets people’s “For You” feeds from accounts they weren’t following or had never interacted with. Elon acknowledged the issue and said that it was an algorithm update which had been fixed. But clearly that isn’t true as Elon’s friends complained that their engagement was down due to whatever he had done.

Then something weird was discovered. Users were seeing more engagement, such as likes and retweets, when they had locked their accounts. Now locking your account essentially makes tweets private and only visible to their current followers. So there should be less engagement not more based on that. But this was confirmed by one of Elon’s right wing friends:

Elon then responded with this:

Here’s why this is odd. The fact that Elon himself is testing this makes zero sense. Even with Twitter staff being decimated by Elon’s job cuts, surely he has programmers, engineers and developers who can test this stuff out and come up with a fix of some sort? I ask because by the time a CEO is in the trenches testing something himself, something is seriously wrong with the company. Another reason why this is an odd course of action by Elon is that he is essentially using a sample size of one, himself, to test this. Correct me if I am looking at this wrong, but that seems flawed. No?

In any case, I think that this highlights what is not only wrong with social media driven by algorithms, but it also illustrates that Elon’s changes have made Twitter worse and not better.

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Public School In Massachusetts Gets Pwned In Ransomware Attack

Posted in Commentary with tags on February 2, 2023 by itnerd

On Tuesday, a public school in Nantucket Island, Massachusetts suffered a ransomware attack, forcing them to shut down:

“Together with outside data security experts, our Information Technology Department has been working very hard all day to restore our computers and internet service,” Superintendent Beth Hallett said Tuesday in a message to the the school community.

Students in the island’s five public schools were sent home at noon Tuesday and told not to use school-issued electronic devices. The district has nearly 1,700 students, according to state records.

“All student and staff devices have been shut down, and our safety and security systems, including phones and security cameras, are also disabled,” Hallett said in an email to parents.

Brian Johnson, CISO at Armorblox shared his thoughts on this topic:

Educational institutions have one of the largest attack surfaces of all industries. There are thousands of faculty, parents, students and even alumni all accessing the same network through their laptops, phones, and tablets on a daily basis. All it takes is for one of them to click a link or open an attachment in a phishing email to compromise the whole thing for financial gain, to disrupt classes, or for other potentially destructive purposes. We’ve seen every variation of phishing email possible—from “schools” asking alumni for donations to “teachers” asking students to login with their credentials and review an important document. There’s no amount of cybersecurity training or education that can cover such a broad user base. With limited budgets and staff, educational institutions need to automate their security operations as much as possible. And with ChatGPT making it easier than ever for cybercriminals to spin up legitimately looking phishing and business compromise emails, schools and universities need to invest in their own natural language-based AI defenses that are trained to spot even the most realistic looking and sounding phishing emails and stop that one person who would have clicked from having to even think about it.  

The challenge that schools have is that they are often cash strapped. So that makes them prime targets for being pwned. Hopefully they can scale up their defences so that they stop being targets.

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66% of Black Business Owners Paid Expenses And Employees With Personal Funds: Intuit QuickBook Study

Posted in Commentary with tags on February 2, 2023 by itnerd

In acknowledgement of Black History Month, Intuit QuickBooks released new small business survey findings, emphasizing the persistent economic and social hurdles the Black entrepreneurial community faces. 

The survey reveals that 55% of Black business owners have been denied a business loan at least once. Despite this, and the many barriers Black business owners face, they have the courage to take risks, show up for their community, and support future generations of business owners. In fact, 70% view their success as important for the success of future generations of Black entrepreneurs.

Key themes and findings from Black business owners in Canada for 2023 include:

  1. Financial struggles and disparities are barriers to success 
  • 66% have had to pay expenses and/or employees with personal funds in the last two years 
  • 58% needed $10,000 or more to start their businesses – compared to only 41% of non-Black business 
  • 56% of Black business owners were able to pay themselves in 2022 – compared to 71% of non-Black business owners
  1. Community is crucial 
  • 83% have volunteered their personal time to community service in the last year 
  • 70% feel a need for their business to give back to the Black community
  • 49% of Black business owners agree that successful Black businesses are critical for a thriving Black community
  1. Educate and inform future generations
  • 75% think mentorship of the next generation of Black business owners is important for the advancement of successful Black businesses  
  • 52% of Black business owners think the next generation will experience less hardships than they have

Methodology and Sample 

Intuit QuickBooks commissioned online surveys, completed in December 2022, of 1,000 (500 Black and 500 non-Black) business owner respondents in Canada (adults aged 18+). There were 432 small business owners out of 500 Black respondents and 456 small business owners out of 500 non-Black respondents. The approximate average annual revenues are $71,200 for Black business owners and $83,750 for non-Black business owners. The average number of employees per business is 36 for Black business owners and 35 for non-Black business owners. Among Black business owners, 35% have 1-10 employees. Among non-Black business owners, 41% have 1-10 employees. Percentages have been rounded to the nearest decimal place so values shown in charts and graphics may not add up to 100%. Responses were collected in online surveys using Pollfish audience pools and partner networks with double opt-ins, random device engagement sampling, and post-stratification based on local census data to ensure accurate targeting and results. Respondents received remuneration.

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New Cisco AppDynamics research reveals how a security approach for the full applications stack is now a priority for Canadian and global organizations

Posted in Commentary with tags on February 2, 2023 by itnerd

Cisco AppDynamics research called “The shift to a security approach for the full application stack.”  has just hit the streets. I’ve highlighted some Canadian specific findings.  

95% of Canadian technologists admit that the rush to rapidly innovate and respond to the changing needs of customers and users has come at the expense of robust application security during software development, according to new Cisco AppDynamics research, “The shift to a security approach for the full application stack.”  

The research reveals that 88% of Canadian technologists report that their organization has experienced an expansion in its attack surfaces over the last two years. As IT teams have accelerated release velocity and built more dynamic applications across more platforms, application security hasn’t kept pace. And 49% of Canadian technologists admit that their organization often ends up in “security limbo” because they don’t know what to focus on and prioritize. 

However, Canadian organizations are now looking ahead and are willing to break down the silos within the IT department and bridging the gap between IT operations and security. 45% have already started taking a DevSecOps approach, and 44% are currently considering making the shift. 

The shift to a security approach for the full application stack” research was conducted between July and August 2022 and includes finding from 1,150 IT professionals interviewed across 13 markets worldwide, including Canada.  

Key takeaways from the report include: 

  • Top global applications security challenges for 2023 include: lack of visibility into attacks surfaces and difficulty prioritizing threats 
  • 76% of Canadian technologists report that a lack of application security skills and resources is now an issue for their organizations 
  • 77% of Canadian technologists feel that their organization is vulnerable to a multi-staged security attack over the next 12 months  
  • 94% of Canadian technologists believe that it’s important to be able to contextualize security 
  • More than a third of technologists report that their ITOps teams only collaborate with security teams when there is a potential issue, if at all 
  • 75% of Canadian technologists state that the implementation of a security approach for the full application stack is now a priority for their organization

 
You’ll find the full story around the research here.

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Discord Voice Chat Coming Soon to PlayStation 5

Posted in Commentary with tags , on February 2, 2023 by itnerd

Today, Discord and PlayStation officially announced a new chapter in their partnership and another step forward for cross-platform gaming: Discord voice chat on the PlayStation 5 console. This highly anticipated integration is available now for PS5 beta participants and will be coming later this year for all PlayStation 5 console owners.

Discord has been the go-to place for gamers on PC, mobile, and console to talk together while playing their favorite games. Last year in January, Discord took that one step further with PlayStation by giving users the ability to link their PlayStation Network account from Discord and display their PlayStation 4 or PlayStation 5 game activity in their user profile. Now, with this newest integration, more players from all over the world will be able to connect with their friends and play the games they love, no matter where they play — including your PlayStation 5 console.

Using Discord voice chat on the PlayStation 5 console will be easy — to get started, users who are part of the beta test should:

  • From the PS5 console, connect their PlayStation Network account to their Discord account to grant Voice Access to their console.
    • Note: if you’ve linked your PSN and Discord accounts in the past to display what game you’re playing, you’ll need to link your accounts again on your PS5 console to grant the new permissions needed for Discord voice chat.
  • Join the desired voice channel on Discord.
  • From the Discord client (desktop, browser, or mobile app) select the option to Transfer to Console and choose the PlayStation 5 console associated with the PSN ID connected to their Discord account.
  • Press Transfer Voice and use Discord voice chat on their PlayStation 5 console.

You can learn more information on the integration in the blog post here. I also have a video for your viewing pleasure below:

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Guest Post: This is how much hacked streaming accounts cost on the dark web

Posted in Commentary with tags on February 2, 2023 by itnerd

With the rising popularity of streaming services, they have also become the prime target of cybercriminals. Some hackers may be after a free ride on your Netflix or Spotify account, others after your personal details, while a chunk of hackers try to profit by selling hacked streaming accounts on the dark web. 

The Atlas VPN team, using data from Whizcase, reports that dark web accounts for popular streaming services are sold for an average of $11.

The cheapest accounts belong to SoundCloud users. They are being sold for as little as $6. 

On the other side of the spectrum are Apple Music and Disney+. They have the biggest price tag among hacked streaming accounts on the dark web, around $15 and $14, respectively. 

Spotify and Netflix accounts are offered at $12 each, while Hulu and Twitch accounts are sold for $11, followed by HBO Max at $10. In the meantime, hacked accounts of Amazon Prime Video users are being offered for $9.

Streaming accounts typically contain not only the user’s name, surname, date of birth, and contact information but also often have linked payment methods, making them a valuable target for cybercriminals.

Fraudsters frequently gain unauthorized access to people’s streaming accounts using login credentials obtained from data breaches. This happens because many people use the same login information for multiple accounts. If one of the accounts gets compromised in a breach, others are also at risk. Hackers can also use phishing scams to trick people into giving away sensitive information that can then be used to access their accounts.

To read the full article, head over to: https://atlasvpn.com/blog/this-is-how-much-hacked-streaming-accounts-cost-on-the-dark-web

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