Month: January 2024

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Russia-state hackers exploited a weak password to compromise Microsoft’s corporate network and accessed emails and documents that belonged to senior executives and employees working in security and legal teams, Microsoft said late Friday.

The attack, which Microsoft attributed to a Kremlin-backed hacking group it tracks as Midnight Blizzard, is at least the second time in as many years that failures to follow basic security hygiene has resulted in a breach that has the potential to harm customers. One paragraph in Friday’s disclosure, filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission, was gobsmacking:

Beginning in late November 2023, the threat actor used a password spray attack to compromise a legacy non-production test tenant account and gain a foothold, and then used the account’s permissions to access a very small percentage of Microsoft corporate email accounts, including members of our senior leadership team and employees in our cybersecurity, legal, and other functions, and exfiltrated some emails and attached documents. The investigation indicates they were initially targeting email accounts for information related to Midnight Blizzard itself. We are in the process of notifying employees whose email was accessed.

Microsoft didn’t detect the breach until January 12, exactly a week before Friday’s disclosure. Microsoft's account raises the prospect that the Russian hackers had uninterrupted access to the accounts for as long as two months.

Theranos CEO and founder Elizabeth Holmes. (credit: Max Morse for TechCrunch)

Elizabeth Holmes—the disgraced and incarcerated founder of the infamous blood-testing startup Theranos—is barred from participating in federal health programs for nine decades, according to an announcement from the health department Friday.

The exclusion means that Holmes is barred from receiving payments from federal health programs for services or products, which significantly restricts her ability to work in the health care sector. It also prevents her from participating in Medicare, Medicaid, and other federal health care programs. With a 90-year term, the exclusion is lifelong for Holmes, who is currently 39.

The exclusion was announced by Inspector General Christi Grimm of the Department of Health and Human Services' Office of Inspector General.

Theranos CEO and founder Elizabeth Holmes. (credit: Max Morse for TechCrunch)

Elizabeth Holmes—the disgraced and incarcerated founder of the infamous blood-testing startup Theranos—is barred from participating in federal health programs for nine decades, according to an announcement from the health department Friday.

The exclusion means that Holmes is barred from receiving payments from federal health programs for services or products, which significantly restricts her ability to work in the health care sector. It also prevents her from participating in Medicare, Medicaid, and other federal health care programs. With a 90-year term, the exclusion is lifelong for Holmes, who is currently 39.

The exclusion was announced by Inspector General Christi Grimm of the Department of Health and Human Services' Office of Inspector General.

Enlarge (credit: kate_sept2004 via Getty)

Windows 11's big feature update in September included a long list of minor changes, plus the Copilot AI assistant; that update was followed by Windows 11 23H2 in late October, which reset the operating system's timeline for technical support and security updates but didn't add much else in and of itself. But Windows development never stops these days, and this month's Insider Preview builds have already shown us a few things that could end up in the stable version of the operating system in the next couple of months.

One major addition, which rolled out to Dev Channel builds on January 11 and Beta Channel builds today, is support for 80Gbps USB 4 ports. These speeds are part of the USB4 Version 2.0 spec—named with the USB-IF's typical flair for clarity and consistency—that was published in 2022. Full 80Gbps speeds are still rare and will be for the foreseeable future, but Microsoft says that they'll be included the Razer Blade 18 and a handful of other PCs with Intel's 14th-generation HX-series laptop processors. We'd expect the new speeds to proliferate slowly and mostly in high-end systems over the next few months and years.

Another addition to that January 11 Dev Channel build is a change in how the Copilot generative AI assistant works. Normally, Copilot is launched by the user manually, either by clicking the icon on the taskbar, hitting the Win+C key combo, or (in some new PCs) by using the dedicated Copilot button on the keyboard. In recent Dev Channel builds, the Copilot window will open automatically on certain PCs as soon as you log into Windows, becoming part of your default desktop unless you turn it off in Settings.

Enlarge (credit: kate_sept2004 via Getty)

Windows 11's big feature update in September included a long list of minor changes, plus the Copilot AI assistant; that update was followed by Windows 11 23H2 in late October, which reset the operating system's timeline for technical support and security updates but didn't add much else in and of itself. But Windows development never stops these days, and this month's Insider Preview builds have already shown us a few things that could end up in the stable version of the operating system in the next couple of months.

One major addition, which rolled out to Dev Channel builds on January 11 and Beta Channel builds today, is support for 80Gbps USB 4 ports. These speeds are part of the USB4 Version 2.0 spec—named with the USB-IF's typical flair for clarity and consistency—that was published in 2022. Full 80Gbps speeds are still rare and will be for the foreseeable future, but Microsoft says that they'll be included the Razer Blade 18 and a handful of other PCs with Intel's 14th-generation HX-series laptop processors. We'd expect the new speeds to proliferate slowly and mostly in high-end systems over the next few months and years.

Another addition to that January 11 Dev Channel build is a change in how the Copilot generative AI assistant works. Normally, Copilot is launched by the user manually, either by clicking the icon on the taskbar, hitting the Win+C key combo, or (in some new PCs) by using the dedicated Copilot button on the keyboard. In recent Dev Channel builds, the Copilot window will open automatically on certain PCs as soon as you log into Windows, becoming part of your default desktop unless you turn it off in Settings.

Enlarge / Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.). (credit: Getty | Chip Somodevilla /)

Pharmaceutical companies have raised the list prices of 775 brand-name drugs so far this year, with a median increase of 4.5 percent, exceeding the rate of inflation, according to an analysis conducted for the Wall Street Journal.

Drugmakers typically raise prices at the start of the year, and Ars reported on January 2 that companies had plans to raise the list prices of more than 500 prescription medications. The updated analysis, carried out by 46brooklyn Research, a nonprofit drug-pricing analytics group, gives a clearer picture of pharmaceutical companies' activities this month.

High-profile drugs Ozempic (made by Novo Nordisk) and Mounjaro (Eli Lilly), both used for Type II diabetes and weight loss, were among those that saw price increases. Ozempic's list price went up 3.5 percent to nearly $970 for a month’s supply, while Mounjaro went up 4.5 percent to almost $1,070 a month. The annual inflation rate in the US was 3.4 percent for 2023.