PM says a sophisticated state based cyber actor is lurking around Australia’s computer networks
Yet another large chunk of Chrome browser extensions shown to steal your data
Twitter brands another Trump tweet as misleading and Facebook remove 80+ Trump ads for using Nazi imagery
Sizzle Subscriber Project - GoDutch
Cheap Dell 27" USB-C monitor, Ubiquiti UAP-AC-LITE, SanDisk 400gb microSD
Scott Morrison gave a weird press conference this morning to tell us that "Australian organisations are currently being targeted by a sophisticated state based cyber actor". There wasn't much more detail than the attacks being "malicious" and are against "organisations across a range of sectors, including all levels of government, industry, political organisations, education, health, essential service providers and operators of other critical infrastructure". Basically everyone's getting hacked, everywhere, all the time by someone we can't name (probably China) and the point of the press conference was to raise awareness of the issue so people and businesses get their IT security sorted. Here's the entire 16 min press conference and an article by Stilgherrian that gives the PM's press conference a bit more context. There’s never been a better time to stimulate the economy by purchasing a shiny security appliance.
Researchers at Awake Security found that browser extensions downloaded about 33 million times, verified and available to download off Chrome's Web Store "actively siphoned data such as screenshots, contents in device clipboards, browser cookies used to log in to websites, and keystrokes such as passwords". All 111 of these extensions, mostly to do with were linked to a company called GalComm, which had thousands of domain names registered as command and control infrastructure and where these extensions would send their data back to. The fact so many extensions were able to access so much privileged information and remain on the Chrome Web Store for so long is a poor indictment on Google's extension verification process. Be careful of what you let have access to your browser!
Twitter labelled another one of Trump's tweets as bullshit. Here's the tweet in question. If you've never soaked yourself in Trump's Twitter feed, welcome to the madhouse. For regular followers - what the fuck. Twitter marked it as "manipulated media" because well, it is manipulated media as the video he posted is a meme of a different story. Facebook finally got in on the action as well, removing over 80 Trump campaign ads for using an inverted red triangle - a symbol Nazis placed on political prisoners in concentration camps. Meanwhile, the Justice Department has come up with laws it wants Congress to implement regarding social media moderation. Actual laws about who and what can be banned/limited on the internet. I never thought I'd see the day an internet troll had the ear of law makers, let alone be the law maker.
I love seeing the projects of Sizzle subscribers and one such project is GoDutch. It's a very simple expense splitter that whilst really designed for group holidays (not happening any time soon, thanks rona), can be used to track and split expenses for all kinds of group activities. Let's say I had a Plex server people paid me for access to in order to cover the costs of running it - I can enter in an "expense" each month, add in a list of people who owe money then view who owes what and tick off when each person pays. As Paul, one of the creators of GoDutch told me, it's basically a fancy spreadsheet but in a nice wrapper. GoDutch is free to use for one "trip" and only $15/yr if you want multiple trips. I hope they add a way for people to reimburse each other via the website, that would make chasing up people for money (the hardest part of being the person in a group that pays for stuff) wayyy easier I reckon.
If you have a project you reckon I’d be into, let me know! Jump in The Sizzle’s Slack or shoot me an email. If I like it, I might share it with the other Sizzle subscribers.
Dell S2719DC 27" USB-C 1440p monitor - $629.30 from Dell
Ubiquiti UAP-AC-LITE - $139 at Centrecom
SanDisk Extreme Pro microSDXC 400GB - $149 from Amazon AU
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