Greeting & salutations my friends,
As always, I hope all of you are doing splendid, and keeping the bad guys at bay online.
I also hope you’re taking the opportunity to play around with Passkeys whenever you are presented with the option to create one. There are numerous websites that allow you to replace your login password with a Passkey, and they are 10x stronger & easier to use than a password 🙂
Some of the popular websites recently supporting Passkeys, in various ways, are as follows:
Adobe, Amazon, Best Buy, CVS, DocuSign, Github, HomeDepot, Microsoft, Nintendo, Nvidia, PayPal, Shopify, Skype, TikTok, Hyatt, & Yahoo.
More info can be found at the link below – which keeps a running tally of the latest websites to sign up. Please create Passkeys when the opportunity arises. The faster we move off passwords altogether, the better…
https://passkeys.directory/
OK now for some good cyber security news:
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If you receive an “accidental” text messages, it’s VERY LIKELY a scam. Read about this fraudulent attempt here:
https://www.nbcnews.com/tech/security/wrong-number-text-scam-rcna39793
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For all of you in the US, you can now have free weekly credit report permanently by the 3 main credit agencies:
https://consumer.ftc.gov/consumer-alerts/2023/10/you-now-have-permanent-access-free-weekly-credit-reports
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Google has now made Passkeys the preferred method to log into their website, rather than passwords:
https://blog.google/technology/safety-security/passkeys-default-google-accounts/
Passkeys are also now supported in Windows 11, by setting them up in Windows Hello:
https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/passkeys-in-windows-301c8944-5ea2-452b-9886-97e4d2ef4422
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Google has rolled out something very controversial: in the efforts to get away from tracking cookies, Google Chrome will “ note topics of interest based on your recent browsing history. Also, sites you visit can determine what you like. Later, sites can ask for this information to show you personalized ads. You can choose which topics and sites are used to show you ads. The Privacy Sandbox is a new advertising platform created by Google designed to create a more private way of tracking a user’s interests for advertising. Instead of using third-party cookies placed by different advertisers and tracking companies, the Privacy Sandbox will locally compute a user’s interests directly within the browser, currently only used in Google Chrome. Advertisers using the new Privacy Sandbox can request visitors’ interests to show a relevant ad, with the browser replying with anonymous data that lists the categories the user is interested in. These interests are computed from the user’s browsing history, where are sites are associated with various subject categories, such as College sports, Razors & shavers, Ice skating, Comics, Bodybuilding, etc.
You can disable this feature if you don’t want Google tracking you like this, which the articles explains how to do:
https://www.bleepingcomputer.com/news/google/google-rolls-out-privacy-sandbox-to-use-chrome-browsing-history-for-ads/
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An easy illustration on the various ways to authenticate and which is are better/stronger than others:
https://danielmiessler.com/p/casmm-consumer-authentication-security-maturity-model/
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OK so THIS is very cool: Microsoft will be offering a work + personal Edge browser, that will essentially be split into 2, so you can do your personal browsing using the ‘personal’ side of the browser, and then do your work-related browsing on the work version, And the 2 are completely separate.
You can do your personal browsing in private (on your lunch break of course, and only to very reputable sites :))
According to the article: “Now, Microsoft has built all those tools directly into its Chromium-based Edge browser, with an updated Edge icon with a briefcase letting employees know they are in the work browser window, and passwords, favorites, and data currently associated with their work profile are maintained. Microsoft said limited personal-to-work browser window switching will be enabled by default. When users that have both work and personal profiles try to access a work site in the personal browser window, such as Microsoft 365 apps and services, the site will automatically open in the work browser window.”
https://www.securityweek.com/did-microsoft-just-upend-the-enterprise-browser-market/
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If you own a Google Pixel smartphone, there is a new security feature called Pixel Binary Transparency that will prevent your phone from being hacked:
https://www.wired.com/story/google-pixel-binary-transparency-security-feature/
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There is so much cool Ai stuff coming out, it’s hard to keep up with everything. I HIGHLY recommend a daily Ai newsletter that lets us know of all the latest & greatest news and tops in the industry
https://www.therundown.ai/
For example, here is Microsoft’s cool free test-to-image generator, and how to play around with it:
“OpenAI’s latest update to its text-to-image generator DALL-E 3 is available to try in Bing, with some seriously significant upgrades. Try it out for yourself (for free!) by following the steps below:”
1. Access DALL-E 3: Go to bing.com/images/create and sign in or create a Microsoft account.
2. Create images: Type a text prompt describing your desired image. DALL-E is great at understanding conversational prompts — and can also generate text outputs.
3. The prompt for our example below: “a Peanuts-style comic scene with a robot telling Charlie Brown to “Subscribe to the Rundown AI” in a quote bubble.”
4. Use your free credits: You get 100 free high-speed generations weekly. Once used up, you can keep creating at a slower rate. Keep iterating until you get your desired output!
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Here’s a bit of a technical article, but shows how sophisticated some of the bad guys are that we are up against: they are now hiding their malware on cryptocurrency blockchains, rather than on websites, and persuading you to download it using an old trick: showing a fake prompt telling you that your browser needs updating 🙁
As always, be very ware about popups telling you that something needs updating. Always validate this, dont just assume it’s legit.
https://krebsonsecurity.com/2023/10/the-fake-browser-update-scam-gets-a-makeover/
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#ClickGameOver