FLASH: "Emergency Directive 21-01 calls on all federal civilian agencies to review their networks for indicators of compromise and disconnect or power down SolarWinds Orion products immediately."-@CISAgov Read more:

Whatsapp will start forcing users to share personal data with Facebook which is it's parent company. It doesn't come as a surprise since all the major giants of Silicon valley; Google, Amazon, Facebook, Microsoft etc are deeply integrated with US intelligence agencies.

THREAD

In 2013, Edward Snowden, an employee of National Security Agency, revealed that the US govt was running a vast Internet surveillance program and tapping every major Silicon Valley platform and company— Facebook, Google, Apple, Amazon including mobile games like Angry Birds.

[1]

The most astonishing program revealed by Snowden’s disclosures is called PRISM, which involves a sophisticated on-demand data tap housed within the datacenters of the biggest and most respected names in Silicon Valley: Google, Apple, Facebook, Yahoo!, and Microsoft.

[2]

These devices allow the National Security Agency (NSA) to extract whatever the agency requires, including emails, attachments, chats, address books, files, photographs, audio files, search activity, and mobile phone location history.

[3]

Edward Snowden also revealed the Mass Metadata Surveillance System of America's National Security Agency (NSA) in his documents. Let's suppose if NSA had found someone dialing number of an al Qaeda member, and assume that this person had phoned 100 other people over the...

[4]

A thread on teaching live lessons using @MicrosoftTeams Meet Now function where students follow their normal timetable except online - will go into more detail on every point in a blog post later. Have used Teams for live teaching have supported over 100 live lessons since March

1. If you are using the desktop app, check you have the latest version of Teams so that you should have Breakout rooms enabled. Check by clicking your profile picture, then About - I have version 1.3.00.28779. If you have 1.2..., click on check for updates to get the latest

2. Set your entry routine. I get my students to enter with their microphone muted - you can also not allow attendees to unmute by opening the participants list, clicking the ellipsis and selecting that option.

3. Make sure students arrive as attendees - some organisations have this set up to automatically happen that only meeting organizer is the presenter and others are attendees. Can change this in the manage permissions menu to only me if not already set (opens in a web browser).

4. Classroom routine and expectations - first lesson I share my screen and show the students the raise hand function for when they want to ask questions, how to access the chat function and how to react to questions as opposed to typing answers

Twas the night before Christmas and all over the ‘net,
Not a creature was stirring except a few cyber threats
The firewalls were configured at the egress with care,
But that wouldn’t stop us from being hit by ransomware. 1/

The children were nestled all snug in their beds,
While attackers hit the web server and established a beachhead
Mama with her EDR and I with my IDS
Were ready to tackle this hot infosec mess. /2

Down in the SOC there arose such a clatter,
I logged into my dashboard to see what was the matter.
This thing had better work, it cost so much cash.
How in 2020 can this thing STILL require Flash?! 3/

The alerts lit up the dashboard, it produced such a glow
But it’s because the threshold for alerting was configured so low.
When what to my wondering eyes did appear,
But 300 false positive alarms. I thought “I’ll be here all year.” 4/

Then a little old DLL, signed by SolarWinds,
Was really the Russians, masters of supply chain break-ins.
We need some new vendors said the CISO, and the salespeople came. 5/

time to get back to "repairing" old computers

The funny thing about making the 8-bit-guy into a meme about "repairing" computers with powertools is that the obvious heightening joke would, like, the "8 rounds guy", who fixes computers with firearms

but that would also be him, given that he's also a big gun enthusiast.

so it's inherently hard to satirize the repairing-computers-with-dremels guy, since they're also the guns-guy.

you'd have to go up to like a mythbusters level of overkill.

"this hard drive from 1986 won't spin up. We tried freezing it, tapping it with a rubber hammer, and opening the case to lower the friction... there's only one option left: GET OUT THE C4 EXPLOSIVES!"

*** THREAD ***

Three really useful Google Chrome extensions for Google Classroom.

1️⃣

Mote: voice notes and feedback.

This is an efficient tool for recording and posting verbal feedback. Mote is fully integrated into Google Docs, Slides, Sheets and Google Classroom. This makes it incredibly accessible and easy to use.

The mote icon (purple) appears in the 'private comments' box when you view submissions in GC. You simply click on the icon and record. With voice recording one click away, it is easy and quick to use. You only get 30 seconds but this encourages succinct, precise feedback.

It's great that you can view the document you are providing feedback on whilst recording. This helps to ensure specificity. For example, you can highlight specific examples from a student's work and then talk through them. This sort of thing prevents me from waffling, anyway.

There are other benefits too:
- Verbal feedback can be transcribed, with the option to review and change before posting.
- Mote supports transcription in more than 20 languages.