Businesses around the world are getting back into the normal groove of things this week after last Friday’s global CrowdStrike / Microsoft outage caused by faulty code in a routine update sent out to Microsoft systems in what is being labeled as the biggest IT incident in history. This week, we’re shifting gears back into typical tech scene news with AI and hackers being big topics. Let’s dive in, first with a quick recap of last week’s outage:
As you may remember, last Friday, July 19th, Microsoft experienced global outage due to a faulty update sent out by CrowdStrike which affected 8.5 million Microsoft devices around the world. This outage affected air traffic, supermarkets, banks, and other businesses around the world as CrowdStrike worked on pushing out another update to fix the error in the previous version. The fix was deployed by CrowdStrike on Friday afternoon and was able to restore most systems to normal, but some ripple effects were felt throughout the weekend.
(–Source: USA Today
Read More: Global Microsoft outage latest news: Updates on major IT crash (usatoday.com) )
Meta has released it’s latest open source AI model, Llama 3.1, free of charge. This AI model differs from the closed approach that most AI companies favor using in their models in the way that Meta is training Llama to prevent harmful output by default. These safeguards can be modified and removed in the future if Meta sees fit. Meta is claiming that this new AI model is the smartest AI model on Earth and provides the best commercial offerings from OpenAI, Google, and others. Llama 3.1 is too big to run on regular computers, but many cloud providers will offer hosting options to allow developers to run custom versions of the model.
(–Source: Wired
Read More: MetaVs New Llama 3.1 AI Model Is Free, Powerful, and Risky | WIRED )
It’s been revealed that a Minnesota company called Spytech’s spyware has been used to compromise more than 10,000 devices (Mac and Windows included) worldwide since as early as 2013. Spytech makes remote access apps that it advertises as a way to monitor your childrens’ online activity and also spy on spouses and domestic partners. The data leaked during the hack includes logs of all devices being monitored by Spytech and activity logs of these devices. While this kind of monitoring is not illegal, it is unlawful to monitor devices without consent, and many spyware companies have been criticized and prosecuted for selling this kind of spyware. Spytech is the fourth spyware company to experience a hack in 2024.
(–Source: TechCrunch
Read More: Data breach exposes US spyware maker behind Windows, Mac, Android and Chromebook malware | TechCrunch )
Leading cybersecurity firm KnowBe4 was recently deceived by a North Korean hacker pretending to be an ordinary IT worker looking for a job. Using an AI-enhanced picture and a stolen US-based identity, the hacker made it through KnowBe4’s remote engineer hiring process including background checks and was issued a company MacBook. However, once the hacker received the MacBook, malware began loading on the system, which alerted KnowBe4’s security systems, allowing the company to stop the attacks before data was compromised.
(–Source: The Cyber Security Hub
Read More: (1) Leading Cybersecurity Awareness Company Unknowingly Hires Remote North Korean Hacker | LinkedIn )