Month: February 2024

Like so many others, I adored the 1996 film Twister, now a classic in the "disaster porn" genre and still in frequent weekend and holiday rotation on broadcast and cable networks nearly 30 years later. We're finally getting a follow-up with Twisters, directed by Lee Isaac Chung (Minari). Universal Pictures dropped the official trailer during the Super Bowl on Sunday.

(Some spoilers for the original film below.)

Twister rocked the 1996 box office, racking up $495 million worldwide and snagging an Oscar nomination for special effects. Critics' reactions were more mixed. The film earned well-deserved  praise for its special effects and sheer entertainment value.  Who can forget the flying cows, the jaw-dropping CGI twisters, and that classic scene when a tornado suddenly rips through a drive-in movie screen right in the middle of The Shining? But others criticized the thin character development and dismissed the film as "loud," "dumb," and "a triumph of technology over storytelling and the actor's craft."

Enlarge (credit: Getty Images)

Hundreds of Microsoft Azure accounts, some belonging to senior executives, are being targeted by unknown attackers in an ongoing campaign that's aiming to steal sensitive data and financial assets from dozens of organizations, researchers with security firm Proofpoint said Monday.

The campaign attempts to compromise targeted Azure environments by sending account owners emails that integrate techniques for credential phishing and account takeovers. The threat actors are doing so by combining individualized phishing lures with shared documents. Some of the documents embed links that, when clicked, redirect users to a phishing webpage. The wide breadth of roles targeted indicates the threat actors’ strategy of compromising accounts with access to various resources and responsibilities across affected organizations.

“Threat actors seemingly direct their focus toward a wide range of individuals holding diverse titles across different organizations, impacting hundreds of users globally,” a Proofpoint advisory stated. “The affected user base encompasses a wide spectrum of positions, with frequent targets including Sales Directors, Account Managers, and Finance Managers. Individuals holding executive positions such as “Vice President, Operations,” "Chief Financial Officer & Treasurer," and "President & CEO" were also among those targeted.”