Wednesday, January 18, 2023

Best Internet Speed Tests of 2023: Where to Test Your Internet Speed - CNET

Curious to see how your internet provider stacks up? Try out some of the best internet speed tests for free.

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Latest Tech News

IT leaders are worried about the security they currently have in place to defend against cyberattacks, but are willing to splash the cash to boost their protections, new research has claimed.

The fourth annual Veeam Data Protection Trends Report surveyed over 4,000 IT leaders and those involved with implementing cybersecurity strategies at various organizations, finding that the adoption of hybrid working has contributed to this feeling of unease.

It noted how new challenges are arising with the increasing shift of digital infrastructure away from premises, as organizations look to cloud document storage and cloud hosting providers, forcing them to raise their IT budgets in response.

'Gaps' to be filled

In setting goals for the rest of this year, the survey found that IT leaders wanted to prioritize their backup implementations, as well as making sure that Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) and Software as a Service (SaaS) are just as secure as their datacenter workloads.

As for the organizations themselves, a vast majority felt there was a gap in what they wanted and what their IT teams could deliver. More specifically, there was an 'availability gap' felt by 82% between the requested and actual speeds of recovering stored data. 

Nearly 80% of organizations also complained about a 'protection gap', with the amount of potential data loss being too great for the frequency at which data was protected by IT departments. 

Such gaps are the reason why over half of the organizations surveyed wished to change their protection for this year, and serve as the justification for increased data protection spending too, expected on average to be up by 8.3% for 85% of organizations, which is considerably higher than in other areas of IT spending.

Judging by recent years, such protection is sorely needed. Cyberattacks, especially ransomware, were the biggest disrupters for organizations' systems every year since 2020, with over 80% professing to have been attacked at least once in the last year, up by a huge 76% from Veeam's previous report. 

Data recovery was of the utmost importance to them, as only 55% of stolen data was able to be salvaged. Organizations highlighted “integration of data protection within a cyber preparedness strategy” as the main focus for protection solutions. 

A corollary of ransomware attacks, in addition to their initial damage, is the drain they have on the resources and budgets of IT teams, forcing them to postpone upgrades to the digital landscape of the organization and focus on recovery efforts and the fallout from such attacks instead. 

Containers such as Kubernettes are also growing in popularity - just over half of respondents are running them, and 40% said they planned to. But the report lamented the fact that the "same kinds of data protection strategy disparities as seen in early adopters of SaaS five years ago or virtualization 15 years ago" are being repeated. 

The issue is that only the storage is being protected, whilst an overarching approach to protecting workloads is being neglected. The report noted this is typical behavior following the adoption of new platforms.

"Legacy backup approaches won’t address modern workloads - from IaaS and SaaS to containers - and result in an unreliable and slow recovery for the business when it’s needed most", said Veeam CTO Danny Allan.

"This is what’s focusing the minds of IT leaders as they consider their cyber resiliency plan. They need Modern Data Protection."



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Tuesday, January 17, 2023

Latest Tech News

There are only two ‘Friday the 13th’s in 2023, and the first has already seen Microsoft scrambling to fix an issue that affected users’ Start menus and taskbars following a botched update to its Defender antivirus.

Following the mishap, Microsoft took to the Internet to confirm that many users had experienced “a series of false positive detections” for the “Block Win32 API calls from Office macro” Attack Surface Reduction (ASR) rule, leading to many program shortcuts (.lnk files) vanishing.

Among the initially suggested fixes from the company was to turn the “Block Win32 API calls from Office macro” rule into audit mode, however Microsoft has now issued a more comprehensive fix that, after deploying, will allow users to turn the ASR rule back into block mode.

Microsoft Defender problem

The company has told users to upgrade to security intelligence build 1.381.2164.0 or later. An extract from the help page reads:

“Microsoft has confirmed steps that customers can take to recreate start menu links for a significant sub-set of the affected applications that were deleted.”

The steps have been provided as a PowerShell script on a GitHub page - a developer platform that Microsoft owns. There’s also a set of instructions for deploying the script using Intune, which many users were vocal about when it came to discussing the blunder on platforms like Reddit and Microsoft’s own Tech Community page.

One user asked Microsoft “why Defender did not record the lnk file deletions”.

As the problem continues to be an ongoing source of disruption among Microsoft users, it’s unclear whether the fix has been enough for the tech giant to restore some of its lost faith. Overall, user experiences remain a mixed bag, with some claiming successful restores, and others reporting errors.



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First National Bank of America: Banking Review 2023 - CNET

This bank offers competitive online CD rates -- but unless you live in Michigan, its other accounts aren't particularly noteworthy.

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Latest Tech News

Nvidia’s RTX 4090 and 4080 are debuting in laptops very soon, and we’ve caught another glimpse of pricing – underlining just how expensive notebooks boasting these GPUs will be, particularly the Lovelace flagship.

The new prices are from Micro Center, which is now listing MSI gaming laptops as Wccftech reports, with the top model being the MSI Titan 17 with the RTX 4090. This portable weighs in at a rather monstrous $4,700 (around £3,800, AU$6,800) in the US (also packing the mighty Core i9-13980HX processor, the Intel Raptor Lake flagship).

For the MSI Raider 17 with the RTX 4080 laptop graphics card (and same CPU), the version with 32GB of DDR5 system RAM plus 2TB SSD retails at $3,300 (around £2,700, AU$4,700), but you’ll pay $4,000 (around £3,300, AU$5,700) if you want 64GB of RAM (and the same 2TB SSD).

Remember, Nvidia said that RTX 4080 and 4090 laptops would start from $1,999 in the US, but looking at the pricing here, it’s considerably above that level if you want high-end gaming on the go with a Lovelace powerhouse GPU.

The good news, price-wise, is that for Lovelace GPUs underneath the top two – meaning RTX 4050 through to 4070 – Nvidia said pricing would start at $999, and it’s not too far off that. An MSI Katana 15 with an RTX 4060 (plus Core i7-12650H and 16GB of DDR5 RAM) sells for $1,200 (around £980, AU$1,720) at Micro Center.

The RTX 4050 spin of the new Katana 15 isn’t any cheaper, mainly because it peps up the CPU to a Raptor Lake Core i7 (and doubles the SSD size to 1TB); so the choice is GPU versus CPU plus more storage.


Analysis: MSI's pricing looks consistent with other early listings

This backs up what we’ve already seen in Europe showing the RTX 4090 as seriously pricey. If you recall, XMG’s Neo 16 gaming laptop with RTX 4090 is priced at €3,886 (around $4,200, £3,400, AU$6,000), with the GPU being €637 more expensive than the RTX 4080 as an upgrade.

So, with the 4090 being €637 dearer than the (already expensive) 4080 in Europe, and $700 more in the US, that looks pretty consistent. In short, this is likely the kind of pricing we can expect going forward from other laptop makers, at least in the near future anyway – and with those high-end cards, particularly the RTX 4090, you really are paying a huge premium.

That premium may well be worth it to some folks who simply want the most powerful laptop they can get their hands on for gaming or creative work, but it’s likely to be off-putting to some of the enthusiast community (top-end portables already being something of a niche by definition).

Particularly when, as we’ve discussed in the past, the RTX 4090 laptop GPU is only equivalent to a desktop RTX 4080 (or thereabouts). It’s simply not possible to jam the hefty, power-guzzling AD102 chip found in the desktop RTX 4090 into a notebook chassis, so Nvidia opted to use AD103 (the chip for the desktop 4080) in the laptop flagship.

At least the better news is the pricing on the lower-tier Lovelace models, with even the RTX 4070 coming in at a (relatively) much more reasonable level. The MSI Pulse 15 sporting the RTX 4070 is $1,700 (around £1,380, AU$2,440), which is not far off half the cost of the most affordable RTX 4080 model (albeit that has the top-end Core i9 Raptor Lake processor as well, compared to the Core i7 for the Pulse).

The Micro Center MSI laptop listings state that the ‘product [is] coming soon’ and indeed pre-orders are supposed to commence from February 1, so just a couple of weeks from now, before the RTX 4090 and 4080 notebooks go on sale February 8. Portables with the other lower-tier GPUs – RTX 4050, 4060, 4070 – will arrive slightly later in the month on February 22, or at least that’s what we’ve heard (add an appropriate dose of skepticism).

Of course, it makes sense that these laptops will be out soon given that we’re seeing multiple product listings pop up right now.



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Save 30% on the Gadget Wine Snobs Are Obsessed With - CNET

Coravin's preservation system allows you to taste wine without uncorking the bottle and it's down near an all-time low price.

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Latest Tech News

Following a recent update to Apple's terms and conditions, people are noticing that their Apple TV is now blocked in certain ways if they don't have an iPhone, because Apple is requiring you to approve the T&Cs on your phone, and not offering an alternative option.

One of the great things about the Apple TV 4K – and a huge part of why we're happy to rate it as the best streaming device around – is that it's never been too tied to the Apple ecosystem.

You need an Apple ID to use it, yes, but you need some kind of account for any other streaming box; more importantly, unlike the Apple Watch, you didn't need an iPhone to use it. And its best features aren't locked away if you don't have an iPhone, as is the case with the AirPods. You could sign in to your services and watch away, in some of the best quality any similar device offers.

But it appears that's started to change. You can see the least-aggressive version of this issue in the image at the top of this page – that's the message I received in the Settings app on my Apple TV 4K (2021) today on one of the user accounts, requiring the user to update their Apple ID by holding their iPhone or iPad close to their Apple TV before I can use a minor new feature.

Interestingly, I didn't see the same message on my own personal user account, which means I probably already accepted the new terms. I say "probably" because I have no memory of doing this, but I use my iPhone to control my Apple TV pretty often, so it likely popped up and I accepted without reading it, like most people do with T&C changes.

What happening there isn't stopping anyone from using the Apple TV at all right now, because it's just asking in the background and disabling a minor new feature after an update, so it's a relatively small problem – but some people report having much larger problems.

The user who posted the tweet below was prompted to accept the new T&Cs using "a device running iOS 16 or later, or iPadOS 16 or later" every time they turned on the Apple TV, and seemed to be unable to do anything else with it until they didn. Except, as they point out, then don't own any Apple devices other than their Apple TV.

See more

That's the worst-case scenario of an approach like this – an expensive device that people have paid for and rely on, rendered completely unusable. 

I called this new approach a step back in the headline, because the Apple TV finds a lot of favor with movie lovers who don't otherwise own Apple products. I've recommended it to people, and I know people who use one solely because of the quality of Apple's movie purchases and rentals. This change would be a regression, and would mean I could no longer recommend it so easily.

But if you already have an Apple TV, and are blocked from using it as in the image above, it's not a step back, it's a disaster.

However, that tweet has gone pretty viral, and has attracted the attention of an Apple Security Engineer as well as the Apple Support Twitter account, which has stepped in to respond to several people in the replies to the original tweet who are having different problems with their Apple TV.

So, it looks like Apple is paying attention to the problems this change is causing, and will hopefully provide another option in the future – of course, how long that will take is anybody's guess.

We've reached out to Apple for comment, but have yet to hear back at the time of publishing.

In the meantime, if you want more new Apple stuff, check out the 



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Monday, January 16, 2023

54 Best Star Wars Gifts for 2023: Top Picks From the Biggest Nerds in the Galaxy - CNET

Star Wars merch is everywhere, but finding the right gift to give can be a challenge. We're here to help.

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There's a Sriracha Shortage. Here Are 10 Excellent Alternatives to Try - CNET

Since Sriracha was in short supply this summer (sad news), grocery shelves have had less of the product stocked. But these excellent spicy sauce substitutes will tide you over.

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Latest Tech News

Russian cybercriminals have been discovered trying to circumvent the restrictions on  ChatGPT and use the advanced AI-powered chatbot for their nefarious purposes.

Check Point Research (CPR) said they spotted multiple discussions on underground forums where hackers discussed various methods, including using stolen payment cards to pay for upgraded user accounts on OpenAI, bypassing geofencing restrictions, and using a “Russian semi-legal online SMS service” to register ChatGPT.

ChatGPT is a new artificial intelligence (AI) chatbot that made huge headlines due to its versatility and ease of use. Cybersecurity researchers have already seen hackers use the tool to generate believable phishing emails, as well as code for malicious, macro-laden Office files.

Paper roadblocks

However, it’s not that easy to abuse the tool as OpenAI put a number of restrictions. Russian hackers, due to the invasion of Ukraine, have even more roadblocks to overcome.

For Sergey Shykevich, Threat Intelligence Group Manager at Check Point Software Technologies, the roadblocks aren’t good enough:

“It is not extremely difficult to bypass OpenAI’s restricting measures for specific countries to access ChatGPT. Right now, we are seeing Russian hackers already discussing and checking how to get past the geofencing to use ChatGPT for their malicious purposes. 

We believe these hackers are most likely trying to implement and test ChatGPT into their day-to-day criminal operations. Cybercriminals are growing more and more interested in ChatGPT, because the AI technology behind it can make a hacker more cost-efficient,” Shykevich said.

But hackers are not just looking to use ChatGPT - they’re also trying to cash in on the rising popularity of the tool to spread all kinds of malware and steal money. For example, Apple’s mobile app repository, the App Store, hosted an app pretending to be the chatbot, but with a monthly subscription costing roughly $10. Other apps (some of which were found on Google Play, as well), charged as much as $15 for the “service”.



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Best AirPods accessories for 2023 - CNET

The Apple AirPods are a super popular iPhone accessory that have spurred a cottage industry of more accessories. Here are some of our top picks.

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Latest Tech News

CircleCi has confirmed that a recent security incident it has been investigating was malware-powered grand theft data.

The company revealed the news in a blog post that described what recently happened, what it did to minimize the damage, and how it plans on keeping its users safe in the future.

In the blog, it was said that an employee with high privileges has had their laptop infected with token-stealing malware which gave the attackers keys to the kingdom.

Stealing data for weeks

The malware apparently managed to run on the endpoint despite the device having an antivirus program installed. The attackers used the tool to grab session tokens which kept the employee logged in to some applications. 

When a user logs into an app, even if they did so with a password and a multi-factor authentication (MFA) tool, some apps drop session tokens which allow the users to remain logged into the app for prolonged periods of time. In other words, by stealing session tokens, the attackers effectively bypassed any MFA the company had set up. 

After that, it was only a question of accessing the right production systems in order to compromise sensitive data.

“Because the targeted employee had privileges to generate production access tokens as part of the employee’s regular duties, the unauthorized third party was able to access and exfiltrate data from a subset of databases and stores, including customer environment variables, tokens, and keys,” the blog notes. 

The threat actors lingered around CircleCI’s infrastructure for roughly three weeks - from December 16, 2022, to January 4, 2023.

Even the fact that the stolen data was encrypted didn’t help much, as the attackers obtained encryption keys, too. 

“We encourage customers who have yet to take action to do so in order to prevent unauthorized access to third-party systems and stores,” the blog concluded.

CircleCi had asked its customers to rotate any and all secrets stored in its systems. “These may be stored in project environment variables or in contexts”. 

Via: TechCrunch



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The Biggest Toys From 2022 That You Need In 2023 - CNET

Just because it's a new year doesn't mean that last year's hottest toys are irrelevant.

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Sunday, January 15, 2023

Heat Domes and Surging Grid Demand Threaten US Power Grids with Blackouts

A new report shows a sharp increase in peak electricity demand, leading to blackout concerns in multiple states. Here's how experts say ...