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September 28, 2022 by Vertical Axion
In June, Wiz engineers discovered and reported #AttachMe, a critical cloud isolation flaw in Oracle Cloud Infrastructure (OCI). Due to its potential to affect all OCI customers, the #AttachMe cloud vulnerability is one of the most severe vulnerabilities discovered to date. The majority of the time, cloud isolation flaws only impact a single cloud service. […]
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September 23, 2022 by Vertical Axion
Microsoft Teams is a part of the 365 product family and is used by more than 270 million people for exchanging text messages, videoconferencing, and file storage. In August of 2022, the team at Vectra Protect discovered a post-exploitation vulnerability in the plaintext storage disk used by Microsoft Teams while conducting research for a client. […]
September 16, 2022 by Vertical Axion
Recently Zoom, a popular, cloud-based communications platform used for online meetings and video conferencing, experienced an outage that impacted tens of thousands of users worldwide. The issue began shortly after 8:00 am PDT on Thursday, September 15, 2022, when users reported that they could not log in or join meetings. At 8:17 PDT, the company […]
September 15, 2022 by Vertical Axion
Even if you don’t consistently install Microsoft’s security patches as soon as they’re released, the September 2022 patch released this week deserves immediate attention. Dozens of bugs, flaws, and vulnerabilities were addressed in this iteration, including fixes for: *30 Remote Code Execution vulnerabilities 18 Elevation of Privilege vulnerabilities 16 Edge/Chromium vulnerabilities 7 Information Disclosure […]
March 31, 2022 by Vertical Axion
Are you a Windows Insider? If so, be aware that the company is testing a “hidden” new feature you’re probably going to love. It’s a small change but its impact is enormous. The feature is the Tabbed File Explorer! The experimental feature must be explicitly enabled but once it is it works a lot like […]
March 26, 2022 by Vertical Axion
Do you have a PC with an AMD Ryzen CPU? If so, be aware that AMD has found an issue which causes “temporary pauses in system interactivity or responsiveness.” The issue affects some Windows 10 and Windows 11 systems with the Firmware Trusted Platform Module (fTPM) enabled. If you’re not familiar with it, the fTPM […]
March 16, 2022 by Vertical Axion
We barely got to know Wi-Fi 6 but companies like Qualcomm are already making plans for the next generation of Wi-Fi technology. They are working on Wi-Fi 7 which is otherwise known as 802.11. Granted, the new standard is a long way from being ready to roll out, so don’t expect to see any equipment […]
October 23, 2021 by Vertical Axion
If you use Facebook then you are no doubt aware that recently the company experienced an outage that took the site offline for several hours. Many people initially assumed that the company had been hacked. However as the outage continued there were none of the telltale signs of an attack. The outage impacted all of […]
October 4, 2021 by Vertical Axion
You know you’ve hit the Big Time when you get a scam named after you. That’s exactly what has happened to Elon Musk. The latest scam that’s making the rounds is called the “Elon Musk Mutual Aid Club” or the “Elon Musk Club” for short. If you’re an experienced IT professional it is easy to […]
September 29, 2021 by Vertical Axion
Some malware strains are built with robust protections in order to avoid detection. Zloader goes a step further and actually disables Microsoft Defender AV (formerly known as Windows Defender). That’s significant because according to stats provided by Microsoft Defender AV is preinstalled on more than a billion PCs running Windows 10. The hackers behind the […]
September 28, 2021 by Vertical Axion
Not long ago Microsoft patched a critical MSHTML remote code execution security flaw being tracked as CVE-2021-40444. Beginning on August 18th of this year (2021) the company spotted hackers exploiting this flaw in the wild. So far there have been fewer than ten attacks made that exploit this flaw but it’s inevitable that the number […]
September 25, 2021 by Vertical Axion
Microsoft will be rolling out a new passwordless login scheme in the weeks ahead and that should make just about everyone happy. Passwords and having to remember endless multitudes of them are one of the most annoying aspects of using the web today. Anything that can be done to reduce the number of passwords you […]
September 13, 2021 by Vertical Axion
More and more social media platforms are taking steps to improve protections for younger folk. Instagram is the latest company to take steps in that direction with the recent announcement that the platform will soon require users to provide their date of birth if they have not already done so. The DOB prompts are already […]
July 29, 2021 by Vertical Axion
Do you have a Ring Doorbell? They are offered by Amazon and they’re a wildly popular smart device that allows you to keep tabs on who’s coming to or walking by your door. The doorbell’s camera records video and saves it to the cloud so you can review it at your leisure. Unfortunately there’s a […]
February 17, 2021 by Vertical Axion
Google’s Project Zero security team has an impressive track record when it comes to chasing down and addressing the most critical security flaws found. They’re tireless in their work, which has saved untold billions of dollars and hampered the efforts of hackers all over the world. The team has gathered some rather shocking statistics, however, […]
August 19, 2020 by Vertical Axion
The Coupa Business Spend Index (BSI) has been volatile over the past several months as the pandemic shredded business confidence and sent budgets into a downward spiral. Some business spending has barely been touched at all, and has even increased. It’s true that the nature of the spending has changed. Spending on travel has pretty […]
July 13, 2020 by Vertical Axion
The University of San Francisco (UCSF) is the latest organization to fall victim to hackers, running afoul of a group utilizing the Netwalker ransomware strain. UCSF is a research university whose recent efforts have been focused on health sciences generally and COVID-19-related research specifically. On June 3rd, 2020, Netwalker published a notice on a site […]
July 6, 2020 by Vertical Axion
Eleven years ago, Microsoft embarked on a bold experiment to emulate Apple. They opened a number of brick and mortar retail stores. Unfortunately, their stores never caught on quite the same way that the Apple Store did, and the rise of the global pandemic only made matters worse for the tech giant. In light of […]
June 20, 2020 by Vertical Axion
Recently, a number of Roku streaming channels mysteriously stopped working, leaving customers scratching their heads trying to figure out what went wrong. After some research, Roku’s support staff discovered that the issue stemmed from a global certificate expiration. They advised impacted customers to update their certificates manually by visiting the company’s website and following the […]
June 10, 2020 by Vertical Axion
Recently, Cisco disclosed the existence of four serious security flaws in their routers that use iOS and iOS XE software. One of the four, CVE-2020-3227 is rated at a severity of 9.8 out of 10. It allows a remote attacker without credentials to execute commands to the operating software without proper authorization, which in turn, […]
April 20, 2020 by Vertical Axion
It’s common knowledge that hackers are highly opportunistic and certainly not above targeting children, the sick and the dying if there’s money to be made. Even so, attacking a drug company currently doing research to find a vaccine for COVID-19 has to be counted as a new low, even for hackers. Sadly, that exact scenario […]
April 13, 2020 by Vertical Axion
Google is using the massive footprint in the smartphone ecosystem to help people understand the impacts that social distancing is having in the face of the global pandemic. Their new global Community Mobility Reports are both revealing and eye-opening. The graph was created from the first reports, which covers 131 countries and regions around the […]
March 2, 2020 by Vertical Axion
Are you ready for the world of 5G? Even if you are, the available storage you have on your favorite devices may not be as robust as you’d like it to be. Anticipating this problem, Western Digital has announced a new bit of technology that will be available on the next generation of devices. The […]