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posted by janrinok on Friday March 10 2023, @09:53PM   Printer-friendly
from the but-I-didn't-inhale dept.

Rather than obtaining a warrant, the bureau purchased sensitive data:

Federal Bureau of Investigation has acknowledged for the first time that it purchased US location data rather than obtaining a warrant. While the practice of buying people's location data has grown increasingly common since the US Supreme Court reined in the government's ability to warrantlessly track Americans' phones nearly five years ago, the FBI had not previously revealed ever making such purchases.

The disclosure came today during a US Senate hearing on global threats attended by five of the nation's intelligence chiefs. Senator Ron Wyden, an Oregon Democrat, put the question of the bureau's use of commercial data to its director, Christopher Wray: "Does the FBI purchase US phone-geolocation information?" Wray said his agency was not currently doing so, but he acknowledged that it had in the past. He also limited his response to data companies gathered specifically for advertising purposes.

"To my knowledge, we do not currently purchase commercial database information that includes location data derived from internet advertising," Wray said. "I understand that we previously—as in the past—purchased some such information for a specific national security pilot project. But that's not been active for some time." He added that the bureau now relies on a "court-authorized process" to obtain location data from companies.

It's not immediately clear whether Wray was referring to a warrant—that is, an order signed by a judge who is reasonably convinced that a crime has occurred—or another legal device. Nor did Wray indicate what motivated the FBI to end the practice.

In its landmark Carpenter v. United States decision, the Supreme Court held that government agencies accessing historical location data without a warrant were violating the Fourth Amendment's guarantee against unreasonable searches. But the ruling was narrowly construed. Privacy advocates say the decision left open a glaring loophole that allows the government to simply purchase whatever it cannot otherwise legally obtain. US Customs and Border Protection (CBP) and the Defense Intelligence Agency are among the list of federal agencies known to have taken advantage of this loophole.

[...] Last month, Demand Progress joined a coalition of privacy groups in urging the head of the US financial protection bureau to use the Fair Credit Report Act (FCRA)—the nation's first major privacy law—against data brokers commodifying Americans' information without their consent. Attorneys who signed on to the campaign, from organizations such as the National Consumer Law Center and Just Futures Law, said the privacy violations inherent to the data broker industry disproportionately impact society's most vulnerable, interfering with their ability to obtain jobs, housing, and government benefits.

While the 21st century's privacy problems may have been beyond the imaginings of the FCRA's authors 50 years ago, modern injustices tied to the sale of personal data may, they argue, still fall under its purview.


Original Submission

posted by janrinok on Friday March 10 2023, @07:09PM   Printer-friendly
from the look-ma-no-hands dept.

https://arstechnica.com/cars/2023/03/tesla-under-new-federal-investigation-for-steering-wheels-that-detach/

Tesla has yet another federal headache to contend with. On March 4, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration's Office of Defects Investigation opened a preliminary investigation after two reports of Tesla Model Y steering wheels detaching in drivers' hands while driving.

NHTSA's ODI says that in both cases, the model year 2023 Model Ys each required repairs on the production line that involved removing their steering wheels. The wheels were refitted but were only held in place by friction—Tesla workers never replaced the retaining bolt that affixes the steering wheel to the steering column. In 2018, Ford had to recall more than 1.3 million vehicles after an incorrectly sized bolt resulted in a similar problem.

The ODI document states that "sudden separation occurred when the force exerted on the steering wheel overcame the resistance of the friction fit while the vehicles were in motion" and that both incidents occurred while the electric vehicles still had low mileage.

Related:
Tesla recalls all cars with FSD (full self driving) option (Elon Tweet:"Definitely. The word "recall" for an over-the-air software update is anachronistic and just flat wrong!")
Feds Open Criminal Investigation Into Tesla Autopilot Claims
NHTSA Investigation Into Telsa Autopilot Intensifies
Tesla's Radar-less Cars Investigated by NHTSA After Complaints Spike
Tesla Under Federal Investigation Over Video Games That Drivers Can Play
Tesla Must Tell NHTSA How Autopilot Sees Emergency Vehicles
NHTSA Opens Investigation into Tesla Autopilot after Crashes with Parked Emergency Vehicles
Tesla Recall is Due to Failing Flash Memory
Tesla Crash Likely Caused by Video Game Distraction
Autopilot Was Engaged In The Crash Of A Tesla Model S Into A Firetruck In LA, NTSB Says
Tesla to Update Battery Software after Recent Car Fires
Tesla Facing Criminal Probe
Former Tesla Employee's Lawyer Claims His Client Was Effectively "SWATted"
NHTSA Finishes Investigation, Declares Tesla Has No Fault in Deadly Crash
Tesla Says Autopilot System Not to Blame for Dutch Crash


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posted by hubie on Friday March 10 2023, @04:27PM   Printer-friendly
from the business-as-usual dept.

https://arstechnica.com/science/2023/03/moderna-ceo-says-private-investors-funded-covid-vaccine-not-billions-from-govt/

Moderna CEO Stéphane Bancel on Monday pushed back on criticism of the company's plans to raise the price of its mRNA-based COVID-19 vaccines by 400 percent, arguing that the billions of dollars in federal funding the company received played little role in the vaccine's development.

Speaking at the Wall Street Journal Health Forum, Bancel suggested that the vaccine's development is thanks to private investors and that the federal funding merely hastened development that would have occurred regardless.
[...]
While the government most recently paid $26 per dose of Moderna's updated booster, the company is planning to raise the price of its shots to $110 to $130 per dose.

Related:
"Pure and Deadly Greed": Lawmakers Slam Pfizer's 400% Price Hike on COVID Shots


Original Submission

posted by hubie on Friday March 10 2023, @01:43PM   Printer-friendly

Hiatus hacking campaign has infected roughly 100 Draytek routers:

Researchers have uncovered advanced malware that's turning business-grade routers into attacker-controlled listening posts that can sniff email and steal files in an ongoing campaign hitting North and South America and Europe.

Besides passively capturing IMAP, SMTP, and POP email, the malware also backdoors routers with a remote-access Trojan that allows the attackers to download files and run commands of their choice. The backdoor also enables attackers to funnel data from other servers through the router, turning the device into a covert proxy for concealing the true origin of malicious activity.

"This type of agent demonstrates that anyone with a router who uses the Internet can potentially be a target—and they can be used as proxy for another campaign—even if the entity that owns the router does not view themselves as an intelligence target," researchers from security firm Lumen's Black Lotus Labs wrote. "We suspect that threat actors are going to continue to utilize multiple compromised assets in conjunction with one another to avoid detection."

[...] Black Lotus still doesn't know how devices are getting hacked in the first place. Once (and however) that happens, the malware gets installed through a bash script that's deployed post-exploitation. It downloads and installs the two main binaries.

[...] Hiatus is mainly targeting DrayTek routers running an i386 architecture. The researchers, however, have uncovered prebuilt binaries compiled for ARM, MIPS64 big endian, and MIPS32 little endian platforms.

The packet-capture ability of the HiatusRAT should serve as a major wake-up call for anyone still sending email that isn't encrypted. In recent years, email services have improved at automatically configuring accounts to use protocols such as SSL/TLS over port 993 or STARTTLS on port 143. Anyone still sending email in plaintext will likely regret it sooner rather than later.

It's also a good idea to remember that routers are Internet-connected computers, and as such, they require regular attention to ensure updates and other measures, such as changing all default passwords, are adhered to. For businesses, it may also make sense to use dedicated router monitoring.


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posted by hubie on Friday March 10 2023, @10:56AM   Printer-friendly
from the extra-CRISPR dept.

The gene-editing tool is being tested in people, and the first treatment could be approved this year:

Forget about He Jiankui, the Chinese scientist who created gene-edited babies. Instead, when you think about gene editing you should think of Victoria Gray, the African-American woman who says she's been cured of her sickle-cell disease symptoms.

[...] But the designer-baby debate is a distraction from the real story of how gene editing is changing people's lives, through treatments used on adults with serious diseases.

In fact, there are now more than 50 experimental studies underway that use gene editing in human volunteers to treat everything from cancer to HIV and blood diseases, according to a tally shared with MIT Technology Review by David Liu, a gene-editing specialist at Harvard University.

Most of these studies—about 40 of them—involve CRISPR, the most versatile of the gene-editing methods, which was developed only 10 years ago.

[...] To scientists, CRISPR is a revelation because of how it can snip the genome at specific locations. It's made up of a cutting protein paired with a short gene sequence that acts like GPS, zipping to a predetermined spot in a person's chromosomes.

[...] The first generation of CRISPR treatments are also limited in another way. Most use the tool to damage DNA, essentially shutting off genes—a process famously described as "genome vandalism" by Harvard biologist George Church.

[...] Liu's lab is working on next-generation gene-editing approaches. These tools also employ the CRISPR protein, but it's engineered not to cut the DNA helix, but instead to deftly swap individual genetic letters or make larger edits. These are known as "base editors."

[...] Now that gene editing has had its first successes, Urnov says, there's an "urgent need" to open a "path to the clinic for all."


Original Submission

posted by hubie on Friday March 10 2023, @08:14AM   Printer-friendly
from the come-aboard-we're-expecting-you dept.

A large percentage of employees are dissatisfied with their experience of joining a company:

New employees who start a job feeling undertrained and disconnected from their work environment are far more likely to quit than those who have a good onboarding experience.

With the unemployment rate lower than it has been in decades — even more so in technology fields — job candidates more often than not field multiple offers. So, if the onramp to a new job is bumpy, they're far more likely to reconsider staying with the organization, even in the short term.

According to research firm Gartner, 63% of new hires are satisfied with their onboarding experience. A recent survey by payroll and human resources provider Paychex showed onboarding experience affected how quickly they would quit after taking a position.

The survey of about 1,000 Americans by Paychex, released last month, found half (50%) of newly hired employeesplan to quit soon.

[...] Among the percentage of remote workers who said they're likely to leave their current job soon, 88% described their latest onboarding experience as boring, 78% called it confusing, and 74% saw it as a failure. On-site and hybrid employees fare better; only 36% of them viewed the onboarding process as confusing.

Remote workers are most likely to feel disoriented (60%) and devalued (52%) after onboarding, the survey found.

[...] Without a streamlined and supportive process, employees can be left frustrated, she said, which can muddle a new hire's first experience in a new position and affect their morale.

[...] "You need a two-way connection where they're not only learning about the company, but the company [is] learning about the employee and tailoring the onboarding experience to them. In that, they're also learning what the new hire brings to the table," Kohn said. "It works a lot better when a new hire comes in and sees a manager and a team already recognizes [that the new hire] brings strengths to the table."


Original Submission

posted by hubie on Friday March 10 2023, @05:29AM   Printer-friendly

There's never enough time or staff to scan code repositories:

Software dependencies, or a piece of software that an application requires to function, are notoriously difficult to manage and constitute a major software supply chain risk. If you're not aware of what's in your software supply chain, an upstream vulnerability in one of your dependencies can be fatal.

A simple React-based Web application can have upward of 1,700 transitive NodeJS "npm" dependencies, and after a few months "npm audit" will reveal that a relatively large number of those dependencies have security vulnerabilities. The case is similar for Python, Rust, and every other programming language with a package manager.

I like to think of dependencies as decaying fruit in the unrefrigerated section of the code grocer, especially npm packages, which are often written by unpaid developers who have little motivation to put in more than the bare minimum of effort. They're often written for personal use and they're open sourced by chance, not by choice. They're not written to last.

[...] Not all hope is lost. For known (reported and accepted) vulnerabilities, tools exist, such as pip-audit, which scans a developer's Python working environment for vulnerabilities. Npm-audit does the same for nodeJS packages. Similar tools exist for every major programming language and, in fact, Google recently released OSV-Scanner, which attempts to be a Swiss Army knife for software dependency vulnerabilities. Whether developers are encouraged (or forced) to run these audits regularly is beyond the scope of this analysis, as is whether they actually take action to remediate these known vulnerabilities.

However, luckily for all of us, automated CI/CD tools like Dependabot exist to make these fixes as painless as possible. These tools will continually scan your code repositories for out-of-date packages and automatically submit a pull request (PR) to fix them. Searching for "dependabot[bot]" or "renovate[bot]" on GitHub and filtering to active PRs yields millions of results! However, 3 million dependency fixes versus hundreds of millions of active PRs at any given time is an impossible quantification to attempt to make outside of an in-depth analysis.

[...] Did you install your packages from the command line? If so, did you type them in properly? Now that you've installed your dependencies "correctly," did you verify that the code for each dependency does exactly what you think it does? Did you verify that each dependency was installed from the expected package repository? Did you ....

Probably not, and that's OK! It's inhumane to expect developers to do this for every single dependency. The best bet for software developers, software companies, and even individual tinkerers is to have some form of runtime protection/detection. Luckily for us all, there are detection and response tools that have relatively recently been created which are now part of a healthy and competitive ecosystem! Many of them, like Falco, Sysdig Open Source, and Osquery, even have free and open source components. Most even come with a default set of rules/protections.


Original Submission

posted by janrinok on Friday March 10 2023, @02:48AM   Printer-friendly
from the oops,-we've-done-it-again dept.

BlackLotus represents a major milestone in the continuing evolution of UEFI bootkits:

Researchers on Wednesday announced a major cybersecurity find—the world's first-known instance of real-world malware that can hijack a computer's boot process even when Secure Boot and other advanced protections are enabled and running on fully updated versions of Windows.

Dubbed BlackLotus, the malware is what's known as a UEFI bootkit. These sophisticated pieces of malware hijack the UEFI— short for Unified Extensible Firmware Interface—the low-level and complex chain of firmware responsible for booting up virtually every modern computer. As the mechanism that bridges a PC's device firmware with its operating system, the UEFI is an OS in its own right. It's located in an SPI-connected flash storage chip soldered onto the computer motherboard, making it difficult to inspect or patch.

[...] The second thing standing in the way of UEFI attacks is UEFI Secure Boot, an industry-wide standard that uses cryptographic signatures to ensure that each piece of software used during startup is trusted by a computer's manufacturer. Secure Boot is designed to create a chain of trust that will prevent attackers from replacing the intended bootup firmware with malicious firmware. If a single firmware link in that chain isn't recognized, Secure Boot will prevent the device from starting.

While researchers have found Secure Boot vulnerabilities in the past, there has been no indication that threat actors have ever been able to bypass the protection in the 12 years it has been in existence. Until now.

[...] To defeat Secure Boot, the bootkit exploits CVE-2022-21894, a vulnerability in all supported versions of Windows that Microsoft patched in January 2022. The logic flaw, referred to as Baton Drop by the researcher who discovered it, can be exploited to remove Secure Boot functions from the boot sequence during startup. Attackers can also abuse the flaw to obtain keys for BitLocker, a Windows feature for encrypting hard drives.

Previously:


Original Submission

posted by janrinok on Friday March 10 2023, @12:04AM   Printer-friendly

https://www.science.org/content/article/ai-re-creates-what-people-see-reading-their-brain-scans

As neuroscientists struggle to demystify how the human brain converts what our eyes see into mental images, artificial intelligence (AI) has been getting better at mimicking that feat. A recent study, scheduled to be presented at an upcoming computer vision conference, demonstrates that AI can read brain scans and re-create largely realistic versions of images a person has seen. As this technology develops, researchers say, it could have numerous applications, from exploring how various animal species perceive the world to perhaps one day recording human dreams and aiding communication in people with paralysis.

Many labs have used AI to read brain scans and re-create images a subject has recently seen, such as human faces and photos of landscapes. The new study marks the first time an AI algorithm called Stable Diffusion, developed by a German group and publicly released in 2022, has been used to do this. Stable Diffusion is similar to other text-to-image "generative" AIs such as DALL-E 2 and Midjourney, which produce new images from text prompts after being trained on billions of images associated with text descriptions.

For the new study, a group in Japan added additional training to the standard Stable Diffusion system, linking additional text descriptions about thousands of photos to brain patterns elicited when those photos were observed by participants in brain scan studies.

[...] Finally, the researchers tested their system on additional brain scans from the same participants when they viewed a separate set of photos, including a toy bear, airplane, clock, and train. By comparing the brain patterns from those images with those produced by the photos in the training data set, the AI system was able to produce convincing imitations of the novel photos. (The team posted a preprint of its work in December 2022.)

"The accuracy of this new method is impressive," says Iris Groen, a neuroscientist at the University of Amsterdam who was not involved with the work.

I'm wondering how this sort of ability will effect copyright, in the long term, when it becomes possible to extract high-enough fidelity copies of media from people's brains, which they have observed before and remember. If someone views an image, listens to a song, or watches a movie, and then downloads a copy from their brain to share, is that copyright infringement? Is the copy in their head infringement? Will the law determine a percentage fidelity limit?


Original Submission

posted by janrinok on Thursday March 09 2023, @09:18PM   Printer-friendly
from the american-gestapo dept.

Seems the DHS has a secret program to spy on American citizens

For years, the Department of Homeland Security has run a virtually unknown program gathering domestic intelligence, one of many revelations in a wide-ranging tranche of internal documents reviewed by POLITICO.

Those documents also reveal that a significant number of employees in DHS's intelligence office have raised concerns that the work they are doing could be illegal.

Under the domestic-intelligence program, officials are allowed to seek interviews with just about anyone in the United States. That includes people held in immigrant detention centers, local jails, and federal prison. DHS's intelligence professionals have to say they're conducting intelligence interviews, and they have to tell the people they seek to interview that their participation is voluntary. But the fact that they're allowed to go directly to incarcerated people — circumventing their lawyers — raises important civil liberties concerns, according to legal experts.

That specific element of the program, which has been in place for years, was paused last year because of internal concerns. DHS's Office of Intelligence and Analysis, which runs the program, uses it to gather information about threats to the U.S., including transnational drug trafficking and organized crime. But the fact that this low-profile office is collecting intelligence by questioning people in the U.S. is virtually unknown.

IMHO, when your own employees are afraid they're breaking the law by doing their jobs; and those same people fear punishment if they speak up, says a lot about the ethics of this bullshit.


Original Submission

posted by janrinok on Thursday March 09 2023, @06:35PM   Printer-friendly
from the self-driving-satellites dept.

Hubble In Trouble As Satellite Trails Start Affecting It Too

The idea that we can save astronomy from satellite interference by putting telescopes in space has run into an obstacle, or more precisely 8,500.

A study of images taken by the Hubble Space Telescope finds that more than one in 40 are crossed by satellite trails. In some cases these interfere with the science, wasting the exceptionally valuable time spent taking the image. Although the affected proportion is small, it's growing, refuting the claim we can solve the problems satellites are causing for astronomers by putting the large telescopes in space.

Spotting a satellite was once rare enough to be an exciting addition to a night under the stars away from the city lights. Today, it's become an annoying impediment to enjoying the beauty of everything else. It's not only wrong to wish on space hardware, if you start you'll never do anything else.

For astronomers the problem is not just a loss of beauty. It's becoming increasingly common for satellite trails to destroy images, often ruining time precious time a scientist had to fight hard to get and holding up important research. Although this issue is getting considerable attention, a new paper in Nature Astronomy addresses an aspect that has been largely ignored.

Elon Musk, among others, has responded to concerns about satellites' effect on astronomy by saying, "We need to move telescopes to orbit anyway", but that's not necessarily a complete solution.

The Hubble Space Telescope orbits at 540 kilometers (340 miles), which is above the majority of objects humanity has put in orbit, but there are 8,460 objects more than 10 centimeters (4 inches) across above it. A team led by Dr Sandor Kruk of the Max Planck Institute for Extraterrestrial Physics recruited citizen scientists through the Hubble Asteroid Hunter project, to study Hubble's archive from 2002 to 2021 and distinguish satellite trails from asteroids.

Journal Reference:
Kruk, Sandor, García-Martín, Pablo, Popescu, Marcel, et al. The impact of satellite trails on Hubble Space Telescope observations [open], Nature Astronomy (DOI: 10.1038/s41550-023-01903-3)

Original Submission

posted by janrinok on Thursday March 09 2023, @03:51PM   Printer-friendly

Coastal city residents would like to do more to reduce their single-use plastic waste and they are trying to recycle more:

Coastal city residents would like to do more to reduce their single-use plastic waste and they are trying to recycle more, even trying to recycle items that simply can't be recycled, often called "wish-cycling".

But they feel unable to do so due to the current infrastructure challenges and accessibility barriers they face, a new report has found.

The study has also found that whilst young people are concerned about the use of plastic, their consumer behaviour often contradicts their beliefs.

[...] 90 per cent of people agreed it was important to recycle and 83 per cent felt that littering was a serious problem that needed addressing in Portsmouth. Results indicate that if there were more recycling options available, 79 per cent would recycle more.

However, there were obvious barriers to recycling, and people felt there was a lack of information and opportunity for recycling, with 65 per cent of people admitting they often did not know how or where to recycle plastic items.

[...] Another important finding was the impact of age on the results. The 31–50 years age group were found to be more regularly shopping in Portsmouth zero-waste shops than their counterparts, while the oldest age group (over 50 years) reported being less aware and less willing to shop in these retailers. Younger respondents (less than 30 years) were more concerned about plastic waste entering the ocean than their older counterparts (over 50 years).

Broadly speaking the younger residents were more concerned about the issue of single use plastic waste, however this was not backed up by their plastic purchase and use habits. Conversely, the older generation, who claimed not to be as concerned, often purchased fewer plastic items, particularly plastic bags. 85 per cent of respondents aged 51 years and above purchased zero plastic bags in an average week, compared to 39 per cent of the youngest age group (less than 30 years).

[...] Lead researcher, Stephanie Northen from Revolution Plastics at the University of Portsmouth, says: "Our findings show that although consumers have a role to play in plastic use and recycling, their behaviour is heavily influenced by factors which are largely out of their control, such as price and availability.

"Ultimately it is not consumers who should be responsible for systemic change. This responsibility lies with those who are in charge of plastic policy."

The report can be found here.


Original Submission

posted by hubie on Thursday March 09 2023, @01:04PM   Printer-friendly
from the eye-very-wide-open dept.

Roman Telescope Will Do in Months What Would Take Hubble a Lifetime:

NASA is still a few years away from launching the Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope, but a new study explores what this groundbreaking space observatory will be able to do. Unlike the Hubble and James Webb space telescopes, which zero in on small patches of the sky, the Roman Telescope will be designed to take a wider view of the cosmos. According to the researchers, it would take Hubble decades to see what Roman will be able to see in a few months.

The Roman Telescope passed a critical design review in 2021 and is currently under construction at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center with the aim of launching it aboard a SpaceX Falcon Heavy rocket in 2027. When complete, it will have two instruments: a coronagraph for visualizing exoplanets and a wide-field camera with a 300.8-megapixel resolution. It's the latter that will allow the Roman Telescope, which will use a 2.4-meter mirror similar to Hubble, to perform both wide and deep sky surveys.

[...] "Roman will take around 100,000 pictures every year," said Jeffrey Kruk, a research astrophysicist at Goddard. "Given Roman's larger field of view, it would take longer than our lifetimes even for powerful telescopes like Hubble or Webb to cover as much sky." Specifically, the study says it would take Hubble 85 years to do what Roman will do in 63 days. However, Roman won't be ideal for precision observations of specific objects. Webb and Hubble will still be vital for that kind of work, but Roman can help nail down observational targets that could solve long-standing mysteries about galactic evolution.


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posted by hubie on Thursday March 09 2023, @10:20AM   Printer-friendly

AstroAccess is on a mission to make it possible for disabled people to live and work in space:

"I went silent," Dwayne Fernandes told me. "I shut the hell up." Fernandes, a double-amputee since the age of 11, was recounting his experience in weightlessness, having recently participated in a parabolic flight alongside a disabled research crew. The zero-g flight threw him into a deeply contemplative state, and as the crew celebrated its successful mission, he instead felt compelled to put pen to paper and write some poetry.

Speaking to me from his home in Australia, Fernandes told me that "disability is not just a wheelchair—we need to expand that thinking." Disability, he said, is "a condition plus barriers," which for wheelchair users includes barriers such as height or stairs. But gravity can also be a barrier, as he pointed out.

"On that zero-g flight, I had my condition—the condition stayed—but the barrier went," Fernandes explained. "That became a profound, weird feeling that caused me to re-identify myself. The social model of disability says I'm a person with a disability, but my condition changed in a zero-g environment." When in weightlessness, "I am not disabled—I am actually super enabled."

Elaborating on this point, Fernandes described himself as being "compact" and with "upgradeable parts." Legs "get in the way in space," he said, and, as extra weight, they only serve to increase launch costs. "There's no such thing as a spacewalk," he said. "Your feet aren't walking—your feet are just anchored." All he would need to live and work in space, he said, are "a couple of carabiners and some hooks."


Original Submission

posted by hubie on Thursday March 09 2023, @07:37AM   Printer-friendly
from the bang-zoom-to-the-Moon dept.

A couple of unrelated Zoom stories submitted by users:

Porn Zoom bomb forces cancellation of Fed's Waller event

https://www.reuters.com/world/us/feds-waller-virtual-event-canceled-after-zoom-hijack-2023-03-02/

A virtual event with Federal Reserve Governor Christopher Waller was canceled on Thursday after the Zoom video conference was "hijacked" by a participant who displayed pornographic images.

"We were a victim of a teleconference or Zoom hijacking and we are trying to understand what we need to do going forward to prevent this from ever happening again. It is an incident we deeply regret," said Brent Tjarks, executive director of the Mid-Size Bank Coalition of America (MBCA), which hosted the event via a Zoom link. "We have had various programs and this is something that we have never had happen to us."

Zoom Boss Greg Tomb Fired 'Without Cause'

Video conferencing platform Zoom has sacked its president, Greg Tomb, a former Google executive:

Mr Tomb's contract was abruptly terminated "without cause", according to the company in a regulatory filing.

The businessman had taken up the role in June 2022 and had been active on earnings calls and overseeing the company's sales.

A spokesperson for Zoom said the tech firm isn't looking for a replacement.

Mr Tomb reported directly to chief executive officer Eric Yuan, who started Zoom in 2011 and was at the helm as the company became one of the pandemic's biggest winners.

Zoom became a household name as people needed to stay at home, and screen time increased.

[...] "We didn't take as much time as we should have to thoroughly analyse our teams or assess if we were growing sustainably, toward the highest priorities," Mr Yuan said.

[...] Zoom is trying to diversify. Last year, it announced plans to integrate email and calendar features and a chatbot to help users with troubleshoot issues. Zoom Sports is also in the works.


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