In a new directive from the US Congress, companies that are critical to the national interest will face new rules about whether or not they have been hacked or paid to remove ransomware. We discuss this story and more on this week’s Rundown.
Is Intel Dropping Optane? | 0:54
An interesting story appeared in Forbes that has people asking about the future for Intel Optane. The story discusses the various moves that Intel has made around offloading their NAND storage business to SK Hynix as well as the announcement from Micron last year that they were stopping development on 3D XPoint technology. Intel has also announced the end of Optane-only SSDs for consumers and hasn’t announced any new Optane products for over a year.
Read more: Is Intel Going To Drop Optane?
Read more: Intel: Third-gen Optane to be announced in the coming weeks
DDoS Attack Hits New Record | 3:43
There’s no kill quite like overkill. Akamai recently noticed a new amplified distributed detail of service (DDoS) attack that was able to achieve a ration of 4.3 billion to 1. This means that for every packet was generated to the affected systems there were over four billion that were returned and directed against the target. The attack appears to be related to a vulnerability in the Mitel VoIP drivers. Because this is a UDP service designed for stress testing it can be made to send massive amounts of traffic. No word on a fix yet but Akamai is keeping their eye on the active exploitation of the service.
Read more: DDoS attacks now use new record-breaking amplification vector
Intel Investing $19 Billion in Germany Chip | 6:40
Intel is moving into German to continue their chip making expansion. As reported in the New York Times, Magdeburg is the site of the latest semiconductor factories. Intel is planning on building at least two of the plants which will be worth at least $19 billion. Intel also hinted that there could be additional investments made in the area once the first plants are up and running. This move is part of a wider goal for Intel to relieve the pressure of the global chip shortage as well as increasing their share of chip production from 12% to 30%.
Read more on the NY Times website
NASA In Security Jeopardy | 9:34
NASA, as a government agency, is regularly audited for security purposes. In the most recent audit this week, the agency received high marks for their handling of classified data with combinations of insider threat raining and software designed to prevent data leakage. However, the auditing team found that sensitive but unclassified data was a bigger risk to the organization, with the amount of incidents of improper use of IT systems having gone up almost 500% in three years.
Read more: NASA in ‘serious jeopardy’ due to big black hole in security
Canonical Says OpenStack is Still Around | 13:18
Ubuntu Linux maker Canonical published an article this week about OpenStack. If you’re shaking your head wondering why someone is talking about the supposedly dead technology then you know why Canonical posted the news. The company is stil very excited about OpenStack even if almost every other proponent of the technology has abandoned it in favor of courting cloud providers. The new spin is that the solution is perfect for private cloud deployment where data sovereignty is an issue.
Read more: Canonical: OpenStack is dead, long live OpenStack
Hacked Companies Have New Reporting Rules | 17:02
In a new directive from the US Congress, companies that are critical to the national interest will face new rules about whether or not they have been hacked or paid to remove ransomware. This move allows the federal government to step in to help companies that have been attacked but my not have wanted to go to the FBI or other organizations for help. Sectors affected include finance, transportation, and energy companies. The requirements state that companies must disclose any substantial incidents to the feds within 3 days and any ransomware payments within 24 hours as part of their SEC 8-K reporting mandates. The rules come on the heels of increased fears of attacks from nation states ahead of potential hostilities or instability in the global political climate.
Read more: Hacked US companies to face new reporting requirements
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