Weekend Edition 5: Ungodly Surveillance, Musk & Twitter and More

Musk & Twitter

Hackers Ransom LAUSD

Ungodly Surveillance of Anti-Porn Apps

Next Silicon Valley Will Be in US Heartland

Linux Tool to Defend Against Supply Chain Attacks

#weekendedtition #TechFreedom #technews #currentevents #musk #twitter #lausdhacked #ungodlysurveillance #supplychain

WE 5-1: What’s the latest in the saga?

Musk tried to delay the trial again, but the judge smacked his attempt down, believing that Twiter would be irreparably harmed by any further delay. His latest delay tactic had to do with the whistleblower who came out recently. He had been the head of security for Twitter before he was let go in April. He claimed that Zatko’s (the whistleblower) revelations about the number of bots, spam, and the kind of security in place on Twitter seem to support Musk’s claims that Twitter lied to him in April. Of course, Twitter batted that aside, saying that all of these allegations are a “false narrative” wait, they cried “Fake news”? That is a laugh, being that they gatekeep for the American Uniparty as proudly as they do. Musk also subpoenaed Dorsey, among many other tech “luminaries”. All this while he quietly sold off another $6.9 Billion worth of his Tesla stock to support his takeover bid, just in case this lawsuit doesn’t free him of his commitment to purchase Twitter. This sounds like he knows that the judge is likely to side with Twitter and makes me wonder how much of this is really just theater. Time will tell.

https://www.theverge.com/23026874/elon-musk-twitter-buyout-news-updates

#weekendedition #tech #government #technews #bigtech #musk #twitter #TechFreedom

WE 5-2: LA Unified School District Gets Hacked… Student Data at Risk

You may have heard about this last month, as the attack actually occurred just as students were returning for the 2022-23 school year. Group called Vice Society is the likely culprit, and may have accessed some student names and other limited data, but it is not believed that they were able to get their hands on any other personally identifiable data. The district was able to recover the data from backups and it caused very limited disruption. However, the new wrinkle in the story is that there has now been a demand made of the district, though the district is not releasing those details now. CISA calls the group an “intrusion, exfiltration, and extortion hacking group”. This is the first time that a successful attack was carried out against LAUSD, but where there is one, there is bound to be more. If you can manage to get your kids out of school and homeschool them, it would be greatly beneficial to the privacy and mental/emotional stability of your children.

https://www.theverge.com/2022/9/22/23366602/hacking-gang-la-school-district-ransom-vice-society

#weekendedition #news #technews #privacy #security #LAUSD #hack #TechFreedom

WE 5-3: Founder of AOL Believes that Silicon Valley Will Be Replaced by Midwestern Startups

He has been working on an initiative with his VC fund, Revolution, to promote and fund new tech startups in Middle America, called Rise of the Rest, eponymous with his new book. Why does he believe that the hegemony of the coasts in Aerica will be broken? He has been criscrossing America for years, only stopped by the plandemic. He’s been putting his money where is mouth is on this as well, so maybe he is right. The writer of this Wired article is a bit skeptical that the status quo could shift that radically in the next 10 years, but seems open minded about it. There are deep concerns about funding, attracting talent, retaining talent, attracting customers and partners, not to mention media attention. Something tells me that the new media that has come up over the last 5 years or so, and holds far more sway than an establisment rag like Wired would want to admit to. I like the concept of investing in Middle America, even though I’m sitting out here in LA. I like the idea of Big Tech being split up, as the false unity that it has promoted over the last decade or two is completely unhelpful, as it only falls in line with the Uniparty’s interests in maintaining their own power over the rest of us. Let’s vote with our dollars to support companies who are legit in their constitutional stances, first in terms of 1A, then 2A stuff, and on down the Bill of Rights.

https://www.wired.com/story/the-next-silicon-valley-will-be-in-the-us-heartlands/

#weekendedition #technews #bigtech #middleamerica #midwest #innovation #decentralization #TechFreedom

WE 5-4: Ungodly Surveillance from Covenant Eyes and Accountable2You…

I have used both of these apps over the years, I knew what I was getting into because I knew what it would take to break my porn issue (I haven’t used them in years, and I’m not saying that my issue is solved), but I didn’t have my activities sent to a pastor, but rather my uncle (whom I was close with at the time) my wife, and a mentor. That is how these apps are supposed to work. You visit some site that is questionable, then it logs that visit and sends it in a periodic email to your partners. Placing a pastor in that position, particularly if they are not close with you, is a recipe for shaming people, which will only dig a person’s hole deeper. Wired found that both of these apps actually violate Google’s policies on the PlayStore. This class of apps exploit the Accessibility API to do things as invasive as taking a screenshot per second for records’ sake, as well as reading the titles or installed apps, not just snooping on search activity or keystrokes. As someone who values privacy, if these things are not spelled out clearly somewhere where it is easy for a person to access and read before they sign up for the service, and each one has a monthly subscription for the honor of mining all of your usage data. Wired actually got Accountable2You suspended from the PlayStore due to their findings. I don’t think that when I was using these apps in the past, they were quite so invasive. It seems to me that they didn’t used to take screenshots or anything like that 6 or 7 years ago. Come on, you guys. Get your act together and stop with being legit spyware.

https://www.wired.com/story/covenant-eyes-anti-porn-accountability-monitoring-apps/

#weekendedition #news #porn #accountability #shame #church #spyware #TechFreedom

WE 5-5: Protect Yourself from Software Supply Chain Attacks with Wolfi from Chainguard

This distro will examine every piece of software in your system to show you what may be weak or vulnerable so that you can correct the issue before you get your system hit with some attack, exploiting bad code somewhere in your stack. Even the feds have taken notice in this area, with the pResident issuing an executive order covering that over a year ago. The truth is that if you are a developer working on a project, you need to redo your foundation with secure code and a secure environment, so that as you add things in, you can see, using a tool like Wolfi, what is good and what isn’t. All so you make sure that your projects are as solid as possible, so that attacks like SolarWinds and NotPetya don’t hit you or your organization with any kind of effectiveness. Make sure that you know what code you are utilizing, rather than just grabbing bits and pieces from everywhere without making sure that they are clean. The illustration used is one of packing up things for longterm storage, if you don’t know what’s in the box, you could be in for a nasty surprise when you open it in the future. Most environments these days are containerized, more or less systems-in-a-box, and we trust these boxes to not be full of malicious code. This is a problem which Wolfi seeks to solve for you. It will inspect each container, down to source code, and give you a readout of what is in there. I’d love to see what an auditor would have to say about this, whether it would be as helpful in real life as this marketing piece seems to make it appear.

https://www.wired.com/story/chainguard-wolfi-linux-distribution/

#weekendedition #security #auditing #wolfi #chainguard #TechFreedom

Music: Pray by Anno Domini Beats