Security News for the Week Ending December 16, 2022
Rackspace Tells Its 300,000 Customers That Impact of Ransomware was Limited Due to Their Great Incident Response (Not?)
In what can only be called an amazing expression of tone-deafness, Rackspace says that due to their great incident response program, only their exchange users were shut down due to a ransomware attack. Needless to say, the hundred of thousands of users who were shut down and then forced to instantly migrate to the web version of Office 365 probably don’t agree. I know that their spin doctors are trying to make the best of a really bad situation, but they need to hire a different crisis communications firm. Credit: Dark Reading
Twitter Dissolves Trust and Safety Council
Twitter’s Trust and Safety Council was, until this week, a group of about a hundred volunteers that advised Twitter on, well, trust and safety. They actually had no authority to do anything, even less authority than Facebook’s similar advisory board has, so I don’t think abolishing it will make much of a difference. Still, Musk has to figure out a way to get people to trust Twitter because right now there is very little of that in the Twitterverse. Credit: WaPo
Free Speech is Good – Sort of
In the continuing saga of Twitter, Musk banned a number of journalists who cover him for media like CNN and the Times. He also banned Mastodon’s Twitter account. That doesn’t seem a lot like free speech. First he said it was a permanent ban, then a temporary ban. He said they were doxing him. After he said that he would not ban people for publicizing @ElonJet. The uncertainty is what people don’t like. Stay tuned Credit: Vice
Microsoft to Disable Internet Explorer in February
Even though Internet Explorer has not been supported for months and Microsoft has been trying to get users to move to Edge for years, there are still companies that are using it, many because they developed proprietary applications that are incompatible with standard browsers. Now Microsoft is going to disable IE in the February update. Given how insecure IE is, this is a blessing, even if it is a painful one. Credit: Bleeping Computer
TikTok Could be Banned by New Bill
The continuing saga of US vs. TikTok took another turn this week. Legislation has been introduced in the House and the Senate that would ban companies like TikTok (over a million users, social media, controlled by a foreign power, etc.). A couple of thoughts. There are over a hundred million TikTok users in the United States. None will be happy if TikTok goes away. Some will decide to vote for someone else as a result. Politicians don’t like that concept. Some percentage, not clear how big, will just use a VPN to jump off the Internet in a country that allows TikTok. Problem solved – at least for the users. Also assume that there will be a whole raft of lawsuits and possibly an injunction suspending the law until the case works its way through the courts in five to ten years. Credit: The Register
by 