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Facebook explicitly bans white nationalism and white separatism

Facebook hate speech

The "praise, support and representation" of both white nationalism and white separatism are to be explicitly banned on Facebook and Instagram. The new policies will be enforced as of next week.

Facebook announced the change in policy as it and other social networks face increasing pressure to do more to counter hate speech. It also comes in the wake of the Christchurch, New Zealand mosque shooting, footage of which was shared on the platform.

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Vivaldi 2.4 expands customizability, introduces support for multiple user profiles

Opera R3 may be on the horizon, but the company’s ex-founder Jon von Tetzchner continues to reinvent the web browser for real with Vivaldi 2.4 for Windows, Mac and Linux.

Version 2.4’s main highlight is widened customization support for its toolbars in the form of being able to drag and drop selected buttons between Address and Status bars. Version 2.4 also introduces multi-user profile support to the GUI, improves its bookmark management tools and adds a calculator to the Quick Command tool.

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Hackers are exploiting critical WinRAR bug exposed last month

WinRAR

Towards the end of last month, security researchers revealed details of a critical bug in that stalwart of the compression world, WinRAR. The bug is many years old and although it relates to the rarely-used ACE format and has since been patched, it has been discovered hackers are actively exploiting it since it was made public.

The 19-year-old bug in the file UNACEV2.DLL (CVE-2018-20250) allows for an attacker to execute malicious files hidden in compressed archives. Over 100 exploits have been found that take advantage of people who are yet to update to a secure version of the software... and that number is growing. McAfee reports attackers using Ariana Grande's album "Thank U, Next" as a lure to encourage victims to extract dangerous archives, but other security researchers report the use of images.

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Google recommends upgrading to Windows 10 to avoid unpatched Windows 7 zero-day that's being actively exploited

Windows 7 sticker

Google is warning users of Windows 7 that they are at risk from a privilege escalation zero-day bug -- and the advice is to upgrade to Windows 10 as there is no patch currently available for the actively exploited vulnerability.

The problem stems from two vulnerabilities being exploited in combination -- one in Chrome, and one in Windows. Having pushed out a patch to its Chrome web browser, Google is warning that Windows 7 users are still exposed until such a time as Microsoft develops a patch.

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Microsoft releases Windows 10 19H1 Build 18342 with Timeline for Chrome and access to Linux files from File Explorer [Updated]

Windows 10 box

[Update] This build is now available on the Slow ring.

Microsoft has released a new Windows 10 build to insiders -- Windows 10 19H1 Build 18342. This new build sees improvements to gaming that fix problems with State of Decay. There is also the new and much-requested ability to access Linux files from Explorer, a host of bug fixes, and the launch of a Chrome extension for Timeline. But while this is a significant update with a lot to explore, it's not for everyone. Microsoft has disabled the rollout of the build for systems with certain processors.

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SD Association unveils microSD Express

microSD cards still blow my mind. It remains amazing to me that so much storage can be offered on a card smaller than a postage stamp. They come in very handy for devices like smartphones, tablets, and drones, to name a few.

The SD Association is continuing to push the envelope, however, making these diminutive cards even better. No, the cards are not getting physically smaller -- thank goodness. Actually, they are getting faster. Joining the existing SD Express, the micro cards are also getting the speedy "Express" treatment. Yes, microSD Express cards are on the way.

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83 percent of US organizations have accidentally exposed sensitive data

data magnifier

According to a new survey 83 percent of security professionals believe that employees have accidentally exposed sensitive customer or business data at their organization.

The study from data protection specialist Egress also finds that accidental data breaches are often compounded by a failure to encrypt data prior to it being shared -- both internally and externally.

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Employees and contractors expose information online in 98 percent of organizations

web threats

Employees and contractors are exposing confidential and sensitive information online and in the cloud in some 98 percent of organizations. This is found primarily in Dropbox, Google, and Microsoft SharePoint.

This is among the findings of a new report from insider threat specialist Dtex Systems which has analyzed information from work-issued endpoints and more than 300,000 employee and contractor accounts.

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Microsoft reveals Russian hacking attacks as it expands AccountGuard protection across Europe

Angled Microsoft logo

Microsoft has revealed that it detected various attacks by Russian hackers targeting democratic groups in Europe. The company says that numerous attacks carried out between September and December 2018 can be linked to a group known as Strontium.

Also known as Fancy Bear, the group is a cyber espionage outfit with ties to Russian intelligence agencies. At the same time as revealing some details of the attacks, Microsoft also announced the expansion of its AccountGuard security program to more European countries ahead of European Parliament elections.

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User data exposed in 500px security breach... that happened in the middle of last year

500px

The photo sharing site 500px has revealed details of a security breach that took place in mid-2018.

The company says that its engineering team only became aware of the breach -- which is thought to have taken place around July 5, 2018 -- a few days ago. 500px launched an investigation in conjunction with a third party and police, and says that "an unauthorized party gained access to our systems and acquired partial user data".

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Health experts call on Facebook to close anti-vaxxer groups

Vaccination

Facebook is under pressure to stem the flow of pseudoscience among its users. The social network has faced criticism and pressure about many issues including the dissemination of fake news and disinformation, and false information spread by anti-vaxxers is the latest target of concerned experts.

There has been much concern about how Facebook could be used to influence elections, but there are growing calls for the social media giant to step in and prevent anti-vaccinations groups from being used to spread false information. Despite medical evidence pointing to not only the efficacy but also the safety of vaccinations, the anti-vaxxer movement has found a home on Facebook which experts say is dangerous.

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Spotify explicitly bans ad blockers on pain of account termination

Spotify Terminator

Spotify has updated its Terms of Service agreement, implementing an explicit ban on the use of ad blockers.

While the music streaming service has a decent number of paying users, a large percentage of the userbase stick with free, ad-supported accounts. A proportion of these free users turn to ad blockers, and this is something Spotify has been increasingly trying to clamp down on.

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KeySteal: huge macOS vulnerability can be exploited to reveal keychain passwords

KeySteal

A disgruntled security researcher has revealed a one-click exploit that takes advantage of a macOS vulnerability to reveal all of the passwords stored in a Mac's keychain.

Linus Henze developed an exploit tool called KeySteal that uses a 0-day bug to extract keychain passwords on macOS Mojave and older. He stresses that neither root access nor administrator privileges are required, and no password prompts are generated by the tool. Henze is not going to help Apple to fix the problem because the company does not offer a bug bounty program for macOS.

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Trust, transparency, and the rise of explainable AI

AI

Most organizations are currently in the process of investigating, planning, or deploying artificial intelligence (AI) implementations, but there’s a problem: businesses -- or even AI designers -- don’t understand how or why the AI arrived at a specific decision. This is a big hurdle for businesses who want to begin relying on AI-based dynamic systems for their decision making. In fact, a recent PwC survey found that 37 percent of executives said ensuring AI systems were trustworthy was their top priority, and 61 percent would like to create transparent, explainable, and provable AI models.

The need for transparent, explainable AI goes beyond individual business preferences. Interpretability, fairness, and transparency of data-driven decision support systems based on AI and machine learning are serious regulatory mandates in banking, insurance, healthcare, and other industries. In addition, regulations like GDPR’s right to explanation clause or the upcoming California Consumer Privacy Act will compel businesses to know what their AI algorithms are thinking. The solutions to these issues of trust and explainability typically have been to stick with simpler models, improving transparency at the expense of accuracy. From my perspective, understanding how to create trust -- more so than creating transparency -- in AI is going to be crucial to success.

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Mozilla has a new mobile web browsing experience for you to test: Reference Browser

Mozilla has launched a test version of a new mobile web browser -- sort of, anyway. Known as Reference Browser, Mozilla stresses that "this is NOT a new end product, it is a collection of parts".

Described as a "technology preview", Reference Browser sees the company seeking feedback about various components which may or may not be used together in the future. It is looking for Android users to provide "input, telemetry and feedback and bug reports" to shape the future of mobile web browsing.

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