If you’re doing security right, you probably already take many of these recommended actions.
What Every Enterprise Can Learn from Russia’s Cyber Assault on Ukraine
Based on its observations of Russia’s cyber assault on Ukraine, Microsoft has developed these strategic steps for global organizations to take to safeguard their operations.
… From February 23 to April 8, 2022, Microsoft saw evidence of nearly 40 discrete destructive attacks that permanently destroyed files in hundreds of systems across dozens of organizations in Ukraine.
… Based on our observations in Ukraine so far, we recommend taking the following steps to safeguard your organization:
(Related)
Russia launched cyber espionage campaigns against Ukraine allies: Microsoft
Russia has levied dozens of cyber espionage campaigns in 42 countries since it invaded Ukraine in February, according to a new Microsoft report.
Strategy or a short attention span?
https://newslogic.in/technology/mark-zuckerberg-meta-midterm-elections-html/
As Midterms Loom, Meta C.E.O. Shifts Focus Away From Elections
Mark Zuckerberg, Facebook’s chief executive, made securing the 2020 U.S. election a top priority. He met regularly with an election team, which included more than 300 people from across his company, to prevent misinformation from spreading on the social network. He asked civil rights leaders for advice on upholding voter rights.
The core election team at Facebook, which was renamed Meta last year, has since been dispersed. Roughly 60 people are now focused primarily on elections, while others split their time on other projects. They meet with another executive, not Mr. Zuckerberg. And the chief executive has not talked recently with civil rights groups, even as some have asked him to pay more attention to the midterm elections in November.
Safeguarding elections is no longer Mr. Zuckerberg’s top concern, said four Meta employees with knowledge of the situation. Instead, he is focused on transforming his company into a provider of the immersive world of the metaverse, which he sees as the next frontier of growth, said the people, who were not authorized to speak publicly.
Just as we will sell the rope used to hang us, we will buy the cameras used to surveil us.
https://www.technologyreview.com/2022/06/22/1054586/hikvision-worlds-biggest-surveillance-company/
The world’s biggest surveillance company you’ve never heard of
You may never have heard of Hikvision, but chances are you’ve already been captured by one of its millions of cameras. The Chinese company’s products can be found anywhere from police surveillance systems to baby monitors in more than 190 countries. Its ability to make decent-quality products at cheap prices (as well as its ties with the Chinese state) has helped make Hikvision the largest manufacturer of video surveillance equipment in the world.
But while Hikvision’s close links with the Chinese government have helped it grow, it is these links that may now be its undoing. The firm has helped build China’s massive police surveillance system and tailored it to oppress the Muslim minority groups in Xinjiang. As a result, the US government has imposed several sanctions on it in the last three years. This year, the US Treasury is reportedly considering adding Hikvision to the Specially Designated Nationals and Blocked Persons (SDN) List, usually reserved for countries like North Korea or Iran.
… With over 600,000 Hikvision networks, the United States has the second-highest number of the company’s cameras, just after Vietnam (The research couldn’t identify most camera networks in China.) Each of these detected IP networks can support up to 24 Hikvision cameras, meaning the total numbers of cameras will be even higher. And that is only a conservative estimate, because not all the cameras appear in Shodan scans.
A minor hack and I can be 39 again…
https://www.theverge.com/2022/6/23/23179752/instagram-age-verification-ai-social-vouching-methods
Instagram is testing an AI tool that verifies your age by scanning your face
You can try it out yourself — how old does the computer think you are?
Instagram is testing new methods for users to verify their age, including an AI tool built by a third-party company, Yoti, that estimates how old you are just by scanning your face.
… Currently, Instagram asks users to verify their age only when teenagers try to edit their birth date to show them as 18 or older. To verify their age, users can send in pictures of various ID cards, and, from today, users in the US will have two additional options: social vouching and AI estimation.
For the first method, social vouching, Instagram will ask three mutual followers of the user to confirm how old they are. The mutual followers will have to be over the age of 18 themselves, and will have three days to respond to Instagram’s request. The second method, AI estimation, involves sending a video selfie to a third-party company, Yoti, which uses machine learning to estimate a person’s age.
… You can actually try Yoti’s system on the web right here (the company says it doesn’t retain any data you share with it) and see its accuracy rates below. The numbers show, in years, the error rate of Yoti’s age estimations for different age ranges, skin tones, and genders.
This seems strange to my “I-am-not-an-economist” brain. Aside from countries buying Russia’s gas, who is buying and holding Rubles? Does a large rebound equal strength?
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/russia-ukraine-ruble-currency-russian-economy-2022/
Russia's ruble is the strongest currency in the world this year
The Russian ruble continues to rise against the dollar, making it the best-performing currency in the world this year.
Three months after the ruble's value fell to less than a U.S. penny amid the toughest economic sanctions imposed on a country in modern history, Russia's currency has mounted a stunning turnaround. The ruble has jumped 40% against the dollar since January.
(Related)
International Attitudes Toward the U.S., NATO and Russia in a Time of Crisis
“Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has brought war to Europe at a scale unseen since the 1940s. In response, the United States and its NATO allies have supplied Ukrainian defense forces with weapons and training, while millions of refugees have fled into neighboring countries. The war has been the center of international attention for months, and as a new 18-nation Pew Research Center survey shows, it has had an impact on public opinion. Ratings for Russia, which were already negative in most of the nations surveyed, have plummeted further following the invasion. In 10 countries, 10% or less of those polled express a favorable opinion of Russia. Positive views of Russian President Vladimir Putin are in single digits in more than half of the nations polled. Attitudes toward NATO, in contrast, are largely positive, and ratings for the alliance have improved in several nations since last year, including Germany and the U.S., as well as nonmember Sweden. Swedish attitudes toward NATO grew increasingly positive over the course of the survey’s field dates. Meanwhile, overall ratings for the U.S. are largely positive and stable. A median of 61% across 17 nations (not including the U.S.) express a favorable view of the U.S. Still, there have been some changes since last year, with favorable opinions increasing significantly in South Korea, Sweden and Australia, while declining significantly in Greece, Italy and France. Over the past couple of years, our surveys have found strong concerns in advanced economies about the health of American democracy. In 2021, more than half in most nations surveyed said democracy in the U.S. used to be a good example for other nations to follow, but that it no longer is. This year’s survey reveals a consensus about America’s divisive politics: Large majorities in nearly all the nations polled say there are strong conflicts between people who support different political parties in the U.S…”
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