Month: December 2020

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The hackers behind the supply chain attack that compromised public and private organizations have devised a clever way to bypass multi-factor-authentication systems protecting the networks they target.

Researchers from security firm Volexity said on Monday that it had encountered the same attackers in late 2019 and early 2020 as they penetrated deep inside of a think tank organization no fewer than three times.

During one of the intrusions, Volexity researchers noticed the hackers using a novel technique to bypass MFA protections provided by Duo. After having gained administrator privileges on the infected network, the hackers used those unfettered rights to steal a Duo secret known as an akey from a server running Outlook Web App, which enterprises use to provide account authentication for various network services.

Enlarge / Here's to hoping Wizards of the Coast leans into Chris Pine's casting in the upcoming Dungeons & Dragons film and slaps him into an official rulebook. (credit: Aurich Lawson / Getty Images / Wizards of the Coast)

The next Dungeons & Dragons film appears to still be alive—and has rolled a crit on its first major casting decision, ahead of plans to finally start filming early next year.

According to Deadline, the combined powers at Paramount Pictures and D&D owner Hasbro have landed Chris Pine (Wonder Woman, Star Trek) for the film's lead role. This follows reports from 2019 that a solid writer-director duo was attached to the project: Jonathan Goldstein and John Francis Daley, who co-directed the surprisingly solid dark comedy Game Night (which revolves around Hasbro board games, but in a far-from-family-friendly way) and co-wrote the Ars-approved film Spider-Man: Homecoming.

If Daley's name rings a nerdy bell, that might be because one of his breakout acting roles—on NBC's short-lived, critically acclaimed Freaks & Geeks—included one of TV's all-time best takes on Dungeons & Dragons. In a pop-culture era when D&D references were usually derogatory or one-note, Freaks & Geeks' D&D episode took special care to frame the game accurately and amusingly—and it showed how ridiculous ideas like "Carlos the Dwarf" fit perfectly into Wizards of the Coast's classic tabletop series.

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The Federal Trade Commission is stepping up its digital privacy work and has asked just about every major social media platform you can think of to explain what personal data it collects from users and why.

The requests for information went out today to nine platforms (or their parent companies, where applicable), including Discord, Facebook, Reddit, Snapchat, TikTok, Twitch, Twitter, WhatsApp, and YouTube, according to the press release. The companies that receive the orders have 45 days to explain to the FTC:

• How social media and video streaming services collect, use, track, estimate, or derive personal and demographic information
• How they determine which ads and other content are shown to consumers
• Whether they apply algorithms or data analytics to personal information
• How they measure, promote, and research user engagement
• How their practices affect children and teens

A sample order (PDF) shows the depth and specificity of the information the FTC is requesting from each firm, including extremely granular data about monthly and daily active users, business and advertising strategies, and potential plans for acquisitions or divestments. Interestingly, each firm is also required to say how many users it has inaccurate demographic information for and how it accounts for targeted advertising, including inaccurately targeted advertising. In other words, among other things the FTC wants to know: do you give advertisers their money back if you don't actually target the groups they're trying to reach?

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The Federal Communications Commission last week awarded $9.2 billion to 180 broadband providers, saying the money will bring Internet access to 5.2 million "unserved" homes and businesses in rural areas across the United States. But consumer advocates say they've found major problems in the FCC's funding choices, such as sending money to wealthy urban areas that are adjacent to high-speed networks. SpaceX is among the biggest beneficiaries of the funding decisions that have drawn criticism.

FCC Chairman Ajit Pai is "subsidiz[ing] broadband for the rich," according to the title of an analysis last week by Derek Turner, research director at advocacy group Free Press. Turner has a strong track record analyzing FCC broadband data and last year found major errors in Pai's broadband-deployment claims.

Pai's priority seems to be "closing the golf-course and parking-lot digital divide," Turner wrote. The FCC's Rural Digital Opportunity Fund—despite its name—is devoting a significant portion of its money to urban and suburban areas, he wrote. While there are broadband shortages in urban areas, Turner argues that some of the FCC money is going to urban areas that existing cable or fiber ISPs could serve with just minor extensions of their existing networks.