Uber files: Dirty lobbying campaign in Europe

Posted on 2022-07-11 by guenni

Stop - Pixabay[German]More than 124,000 confidential documents have been leaked to the British Guardian. The analysis of this data by journalists reveal that the ride service provider Uber has tried to influence politicians such as Joe Biden and has exerted powerful pressure. The texts also reveal that todays France President, Emmanuel Macron. secretly supported Uber's lobbying efforts in France. The company also used a "kill switch" during raids to prevent police from viewing data. Addendum: The identity of the whistle-blower, a former top executive, is now known.

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Outlook search in Windows 11 broken again (July 2022))

Posted on 2022-07-10 by guenni

[English]Quick note to people with Windows 11 who use Outlook and are wondering why search doesn't work. It's not you, Microsoft broke Outlook search again and is investigating how that could happen. At least there's confirmation that this is a bug.

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Sandboxie fork with version 1.0.22 Final – new features in the Plus version

Posted on 2022-07-10 by guenni

[German]David Xanatos informed me back in June 2022 that he had completed an update for Sandboxie in version v1.0.22 / 5.55.22 and released it on Githib. Thus, this version is so "really final", as he put it. There is also a Sandboxie Plus with some new features. Here is some information about it.

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Microsoft Office 365 version 2206 fixes cloud access crash bug

Posted on 2022-07-09 by guenni

[German]Microsoft has released a new version 2206 (build 16.0.15330.20230) in the Current Channel. This version is intended to fix crashes in Office applications that caused crashes in Word, Excel and PowerPoint when accessing cloud documents in the old Office 365 version 2205.

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Defense: Windows task scheduling as an attack vector

Posted on 2022-07-09 by guenni

Windows[German]Attackers use Windows task scheduling as a technique and create tasks (scheduled tasks) there to infiltrate a victim's machine. The Qualys research team has investigated a number of ways attackers can hide such scheduled tasks. This paper describes three new techniques for hiding and deleting scheduled tasks in a Microsoft Windows environment. This is not theoretical work "in a vacuum," as the technique has been used by suspected Chinese attacker (APT) Hafnium.

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Why ISL Online: Critical factors when choosing a remote desktop solution

[Sponsored Post]In the rapidly evolving IT world, choosing the right remote desktop software is critical for organizations that value security, ease of use and reliability. One provider of secure remote access that has been on the market since 2001 is ISL Online, which presents some considerations for choosing such software below. More ...

QNAP warns of Checkmate ransomware attacks on its NAS (July 2022)

Posted on 2022-07-08 by guenni

Sicherheit (Pexels, allgemeine Nutzung)[German]Taiwanese manufacturer QNAP has issued a warning as of July 7, 2022 that a new Checkmate ransomware attacks its NAS units via SMB services accessible via the Internet. Presumably, weak passwords will then have their credentials cracked via brute-force attack and the volumes will then be encrypted. The first cases seem to have occurred as early as June 2022.

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Microsoft does not want to block macros in Office by default after all

Posted on 2022-07-08 by guenni

[German]Macros in Office are a gateway for malware like Dridex, Emotet, Trickbot, Qbot, etc. Microsoft had plans to disable macros in Office 365 by default. Now this idea seems to have been scrapped again, macros will not be blocked by default in Office in the future either. At least, that's what Microsoft's told us recently within a few sentences.

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PowerToys 0.60 released

Posted on 2022-07-08 by guenni

Windows[German]Microsoft has released version 0.6 of its free PowerToys for Windows 10 and Windows 11 on July 7, 2022. I haven't reported about these tools and the weekly water levels here on the blog for a while, especially since the software often came along with bugs and then caused problems. With version 0.6, Clint Rutkas, the developer of the tools, promises quantities of bug fixes and some new features.

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Bug in Adaptec ASR-72405 driver for Windows 11/Server 2022

Posted on 2022-07-08 by guenni

Windows[German]Users of Windows 11 (22H2) as well as Windows Server 2022 should pay attention if they run a RAID system and use the Adaptec ASR-71605 RAID controller for it. A blog reader pointed out to me a nasty bug in the driver in question from Microsoft that seems not to have been fixed yet. Here is some information about it.

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Ransomware group ALPHV (Blackcat) with new extortion techniques (searchable database)

Posted on 2022-07-07 by guenni

Sicherheit (Pexels, allgemeine Nutzung)[German]The ransomware group ALPHV (also known as Blackcat) seems to be breaking new ground in extortion techniques. In the past, victims have already been threatened with the publication of captured data in order to get them to pay a ransom. Now, the ALPHV ransomware group seems to have set up a searchable database where victims' data can be searched. This poses the risk of data from these documents being misused for further abuse (supply chain attacks, identity theft, phishing).

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