Configure Windows telemetry in your organization (Windows 10)

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Microsoft does not intend to gather sensitive information, such as credit card numbers, usernames and passwords, email addresses, or other similarly sensitive information for Linguistic Data Collection. We guard against such events by using technologies to identify and remove sensitive information before linguistic data is sent from the user’s device. If we determine that sensitive information has been inadvertently received, we delete the information.

Source: Configure Windows telemetry in your organization (Windows 10)

Cyanogen Inc shutting down CyanogenMod nightly builds and other services, CM will live on as Lineage

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The CyanogenMod team has posted an update of their own, confirming the shutdown of the CM infrastructure and outlining a plan to continue the open-source initiative as Lineage, which we suspected was going to be the case last week.

Source: Cyanogen Inc shutting down CyanogenMod nightly builds and other services, CM will live on as Lineage [Updated]

0-days hitting Fedora and Ubuntu open desktops to a world of hurt

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The exploit ending in .flac works as a drive-by attack when a Fedora 25 user visits a booby-trapped webpage. With nothing more than a click required, the file will open the desktop calculator. With modification, it could load any code an attacker chooses and execute it with the same system privileges afforded to the user. While users typically don’t have the same unfettered system privileges granted to root, the ones they do have are plenty powerful.

Source: 0-days hitting Fedora and Ubuntu open desktops to a world of hurt

Here’s a blurb from the researcher’s blog post about this:

Resolving all the above, I present here a full, working, reliable, 0day exploit for current Linux distributions (Ubuntu 16.04 LTS and Fedora 25). It’s a full drive-by download in the context of Fedora. It abuses cascading subtle side effects of an emulation misstep that at first appears extremely difficult to exploit but ends up presenting beautiful and 100% reliable exploitation possibilities.

Source: Redux: compromising Linux using… SNES Ricoh 5A22 processor opcodes?!

Wall Street Ponders Verizon, Comcast Merger Under Trump

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For example, the elimination of Verizon would result in significantly less competition for Comcast in the Northeast United States. Currently, the Northeast is becoming one of the last places in the country Comcast hasn’t deployed usage caps, thanks in large part to Verizon’s FiOS domination of the coast. The end result of most of Hodulik’s scenarios would be higher rates and worse service for most consumers as Comcast gained a total monopoly in many east coast markets. Then again, Trump telecom advisor and former Sprint lobbyist Mark Jamison doesn’t believe telecom monopolies are real.

Source: Wall Street Ponders Verizon, Comcast Merger Under Trump | DSLReports, ISP Information

PC market shows signs of recovery

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IDC expects PC vendors to ship a total of 258.2 million units this year, a figure which would be 6.4 percent lower than last year. The previous estimate was a 7.2 percent fall, which IDC announced in August. Growth will still be negative in 2017, but shipments are expected to decrease by just 2.6 percent compared to this year.

Source: PC market shows signs of recovery

Trump Telecom Advisor Doesn’t Think Telecom Monopolies Are Real

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Former Sprint lobbyist Mark Jamison was named this week as one of two telecom consultants guiding the Trump administration’s telecom policy. Alongside telecom-tied think tanker Jeffrey Eisenach, Jamison is tasked with choosing the next FCC boss, and the direction of the new Trump FCC.

But in an October blog post, Jamison indicates he doesn’t believe that telecom monopolies are even real, while making it very clear (as Eisenach has) that the over-arching goal is to gut the FCC completely:

Source: Trump Telecom Advisor Doesn’t Think Telecom Monopolies Are Real

Japan plans supercomputer to leap into technology future

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In the area of supercomputing, Japan’s aim is to use ultra-fast calculations to accelerate advances in artificial intelligence (AI), such as “deep learning” technology that works off algorithms which mimic the human brain’s neural pathways, to help computers perform new tasks and analyze scores of data.

Source: Japan plans supercomputer to leap into technology future

Wedge-tailed eagles winning war of the skies against drones

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Unmanned aerial vehciles become unlikely prey for wedge-tailed eagles in Western Australia’s Goldfields.

Source: Wedge-tailed eagles winning war of the skies against drones

“People couldn’t believe I was able to get such a good photo of an eagle airborne, but I didn’t … another eagle took that photo,” he said.

“I was flying the tailings dam out at St Ives and I was getting attacked by two eagles simultaneously.

Me Too! – You Had Me At EHLO…

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First off, the original mail went to 13,000 users.  Assuming that 1,000 of those 13,000 users replied, that means that there are 1,000 replies being sent to those 13,000 users.  And it turns out that a number of these people had their email client set to request read receipts and delivery receipts.  Each read and delivery receipt causes ANOTHER email to be sent from the recipient back to the sender (all 13,000 recipients).  Assuming that 20% of the 1,000 users replying had read receipts or delivery receipts set, that meant that every one of the message that they sent caused another message to be sent for every one of the 13,000 recipients. So how many messages were sent?

Source: Me Too! – You Had Me At EHLO…