PossibleThreat Articles

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ComputerWorld

ComputerWorld Independent 

June's Patch Tuesday updates focus on Windows, Office

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Microsoft released 73 updates to its Windows, Office, and Visual Studio platforms on Patch Tuesday, with many of them dealing with core, but not urgent, security vulnerabilities. That’s a welcome respite from the previous six months of urgent zero-days and public disclosures. With that in mind, the Readiness testing team suggests a focus on printing and backup/recovery processes to make sure they’re not affected by this update cycle.

For the first time, we see a (non-Adobe) third-party vendor added to a Patch Tuesday release, with three minor plugin updates to Visual Studio for AutoDesk. Expect to see more such vendors added to Microsoft’s updates in the near future. The team at Readiness has created a useful infographic that outlines the risks associated with each of the updates.

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ComputerWorld Independent 

How and why to use FIDO Security Keys for Apple ID

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In a world that needs Apple’s recently-improved Lockdown Mode to protect good people against bad ones, high-risk individuals should consider using physical security keys to protect their Apple ID.

What are Security Keys and what do they do?

Security keys are small devices that look a little like thumb drives. Apple at WWDC 2020 confirmed plans to support FIDO authentication beginning with iOS 14 and macOS 11; now, with the release of iOS 16.3, iPadOS 16.3, and macOS Ventura 13.2, Apple lets you use them to verify your Apple ID, replacing a passcode. They become one of the two forms of identification you require with two-factor authentication (2FA).

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ComputerWorld Independent 

WWDC: 18+ ways Apple plans to make you more secure

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Vision Pro, Apple Silicon, Macs, new enterprise tools — and privacy protection were all among the many WWDC announcements Apple made this week.

Introducing these protections, Craig Federighi, Apple’s senior vice president for  software engineering said: “We are focused on keeping our users in the driver’s seat when it comes to their data by continuing to provide industry-leading privacy features and the best data security in the world.

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ComputerWorld Independent 

Cisco brings generative AI to Webex and Cisco Security Cloud

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Cisco is adding new generative AI capabilities to its Webex collaboration platform, aimed at increasing productivity through automated meeting and conversation summaries.

The new offerings, announced at the Cisco Live! customer event in Las Vegas on Wednesday, include summarization capabilities that allow users to catch up on missed meetings or focus on the most important action items from a call. The capabilities also extend to Cisco’s asynchronous Vidcast tool and the Webex Contact Center.

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ComputerWorld Independent 

Governments worldwide grapple with regulation to rein in AI dangers

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Ever since generative AI exploded into public consciousness with the launch of ChatGPT at the end of last year, calls to regulate the technology to stop it from causing undue harm have risen to fever pitch around the world. The stakes are high — just last week, technology leaders signed an open public letter saying that if government officials get it wrong, the consequence could be the extinction of the human race.

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ComputerWorld Independent 

ChatGPT creators and others plead to reduce risk of global extinction from their tech

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Hundreds of tech industry leaders, academics, and others public figures signed an open letter warning that artificial intelligence (AI) evolution could lead to an extinction event and saying that controlling the tech should be a top global priority.

“Mitigating the risk of extinction from AI should be a global priority alongside other societal-scale risks such as pandemics and nuclear war,” read the statement published by San Francisco-based Center for AI Safety.

The brief statement in the letter reads almost like a mea culpa for the technology about which its creators are now joining together to warn the world.

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ComputerWorld Independent 

OpenAI’s ChatGPT app for iPad, iPhone hits 500K downloads

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OpenAI shipped its ChatGPT app for iPads and iPhones just a week ago, but it has already become one of the most popular applications in the last two years, with over half a million downloads in the first six days. That’s a real achievement, but also a challenge — that’s half a million potential data vulnerabilities.

Not to rest on its laurels, this year’s favorite smart assistant (so far) is now also available in 41 additional nations. There’s little doubt that this has been one of the most successful software/service introductions of all time, but that doesn’t change the inherent risk of these technologies.

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ComputerWorld Independent 

Addigy promises a fix for Apple devices stuck on OSUpdateScan

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Enterprise admins handling fleets of Macs take note: there’s a new security management tool from Apple device management firm Addigy.

The MDM Watchdog Utility monitors the MDM framework on devices and automatically forces software patches to be installed if they’re not already in place. This is designed to help solve a specific problem in which some (not all) managed Macs do not properly install Apple’s Rapid Security Response updates.

When security isn’t

In today’s fast-moving threat environment, Apple has introduced Rapid Security Response (RSR) as a key front line against new threats. The defense is intended to be distributed and installed across Apple’s platforms as swiftly as possible once new threats are identified. The idea is that by expediting distribution and making installation a quicker process, it will be easier to maintain security across Mac fleets. That’s important as the scale of Apple deployments grows and enterprises move to support employee choice.

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ComputerWorld Independent 

Google killer, killed: Neeva and the limits of privacy as a philosophy

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Well, that was fast.

Just under two years after splashing into the world with all sorts of provocative promises, a search startup that was set on convincing people to pay for a privacy-centric Google alternative is shutting its doors.

Neeva, founded by a pair of former Google executives and the subject of intense fascination within the tech universe, quietly announced over the weekend that its service will be winding down next week. From the announcement:

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ComputerWorld Independent 

G7 leaders warn of AI dangers, say the time to act is now

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Leaders of the Group of Seven (G7) nations on Saturday called for the creation of technical standards to keep artificial intelligence (AI) in check, saying AI has outpaced oversight for safety and security.

Meeting in Hiroshima, Japan, the leaders said nations must come together on a common vision and goal of trustworthy AI, even while those solutions may vary. But any solution for digital technologies such as AI should be “in line with our shared democratic values,” they said in a statement.

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