The IT Nerd

Slack has released new AI and search capabilities that deeply integrate AI across everything that makes up the Slack experience.

Built to harness institutional knowledge and conversational data that teams create daily, the new capabilities will also increase the user experience by cutting down the need to dig through threads, jump between apps, or rewrite content from scratch.

New features:

• AI writing assistance in canvas built directly into Slack canvas that allows users to draft project briefs, generate action items, refine content, and more with natural language prompts. 
• AI message explanations by hovering over any message to get instant, in-context explanations of unfamiliar concepts, terminology, or technical details. 
• AI action items enable users to stay on top of highest-priority tasks. AI will identify what’s most important and only notify users when it provides a meaningful update or adds more value than current activity.
• AI profile summaries give users quick context on another user’s role and recent contributions. This means teams can align faster and minimise unnecessary back-and-forth communication.

Slack is also announcing the general availability of:

• Translations to let teammates read and contribute in their preferred language. When users come across a message in a different language, they’ll see a button they can use to translate that message into any language they’d like.
• Enterprise search, which surfaces information across connected apps, data, and conversations from a single search bar. Teams can connect to systems like Salesforce, Microsoft Teams, Google Drive, Confluence, Box, and more, essentially making the Slack search bar the unified interface for all of the team’s structured and unstructured data.

More details can be found here: AI That Actually Works for You | Slack

If you’re a Slack user, you might have received a request to change your password in the last day or two. I’m here to tell you that this email isn’t a phishing attempt. It’s actually real and you should pay attention to it.

Here’s why.

Slack has admitted to accidentally exposing the hashed passwords of at least 50,000 users, roughly .5% of total Slack users. The workspace application began sending password reset links to affected users last week. While the passwords were not in plaintext and were not visible to any Slack clients, it appears that this issue has been going since 2017.

#Fail.

Sharon Nachshony, Security Researcher, Silverfort had this to say:

     “Hashes of salted passwords being leaked is not as dangerous as exposing them in plain-text, as an attacker would have to use brute-force methods – essentially automating a script to guess passwords – which takes some time.

While this makes exploitation less likely, a threat actor may still be motivated to do this because Slack is used by so many companies. Incidents like these are once again a clear argument for users to enable MFA. If implemented correctly, this would alert the legitimate user to any authentication attempt on their behalf, denying any malicious access attempt.”

MFA (Multi Factor Authentication) or even the new hot technology which is passwordless authentication is the way to go to reduce your attack surface. Companies should look at technologies like these to avoid being pwned because of a password exploit.

Slack is down on the first full work day of 2021. That’s a great way to start 2021 for many. Here’s what The Verge had to say:

The company said Monday morning “customers may have trouble loading channels or connecting to Slack at this time. Our team is investigating and we will follow up with more information as soon as we have it. We apologize for any disruption caused.” The company is reporting issues with connecting to the service and messaging.

Users took to Twitter to react:

Given how important Slack is to many companies, I truly hope that these issues are reminded ASAP. Otherwise, productivity in a lot of companies is about to nosedive.