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SolarWinds hack victims: From tech companies to a hospital and university

SolarWinds hack victims: From tech companies to a hospital and university

The Wall Street Journal reports: The suspected Russian hackers behind breaches at U.S. government agencies also gained access to major U.S. technology and accounting companies, at least one hospital and a university, a Wall Street Journal analysis of internet records found. The Journal identified infected computers at two dozen organizations that installed tainted network monitoring software called SolarWinds Orion that allowed the hackers in via a covertly inserted backdoor. It gave them potential access to much sensitive corporate and personal…

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Hacked networks will need to be burned ‘down to the ground’

Hacked networks will need to be burned ‘down to the ground’

The Associated Press reports: It’s going to take months to kick elite hackers widely believed to be Russian out of the U.S. government networks they have been quietly rifling through since as far back as March in Washington’s worst cyberespionage failure on record. Experts say there simply are not enough skilled threat-hunting teams to duly identify all the government and private-sector systems that may have been hacked. FireEye, the cybersecurity company that discovered the intrusion into U.S. agencies and was…

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Big Tech’s stealth push to influence the Biden administration

Big Tech’s stealth push to influence the Biden administration

Reuters reports: Silicon Valley is working behind the scenes to secure senior roles for tech allies in lesser-known but still vital parts of president-elect Joe Biden’s administration, even as the pushback against Big Tech from progressive groups and regulators grows. The Biden transition team has already stacked its agency review teams with more tech executives than tech critics. It has also added to its staff several officials from Big Tech companies, which emerged as top donors to the campaign. Now,…

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She called police over a neo-Nazi threat. But the neo-Nazis were inside the police

She called police over a neo-Nazi threat. But the neo-Nazis were inside the police

The New York Times reports: Traveling for work and far from home, Seda Basay-Yildiz received a chilling fax at her hotel: “You filthy Turkish sow,” it read. “We will slaughter your daughter.” A German defense lawyer of Turkish descent who specializes in Islamist terrorism cases, Ms. Basay-Yildiz was used to threats from the far right. But this one, which arrived late one night in August 2018, was different. Signed with the initials of a former neo-Nazi terrorist group, it contained…

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Ex-cop hits truck thinking it held 750,000 fraudulent ballots, police say. It held air conditioning parts

Ex-cop hits truck thinking it held 750,000 fraudulent ballots, police say. It held air conditioning parts

The Washington Post reports: David Lopez-Zuniga, an air-conditioner installer, had just left his mobile home for his typical predawn commute when he noticed an SUV’s headlights closely trailing his small cargo truck. Within seconds, the SUV swerved alongside the passenger’s side, striking the truck and forcing Lopez-Zuniga to the side of a highway. There, he said, the SUV’s driver feigned an injury before ordering Lopez-Zuniga to the ground at gunpoint. “I was very scared,” Lopez-Zuniga, said in an interview with…

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Is the U.S. facing a Cyber Pearl Harbor?

Is the U.S. facing a Cyber Pearl Harbor?

Thomas P. Bossert writes: At the worst possible time, when the United States is at its most vulnerable — during a presidential transition and a devastating public health crisis — the networks of the federal government and much of corporate America are compromised by a foreign nation. We need to understand the scale and significance of what is happening. Last week, the cybersecurity firm FireEye said it had been hacked and that its clients, which include the United States government,…

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The first decade of the Arab revolutionary process

The first decade of the Arab revolutionary process

Gilbert Achcar writes: The initial months of that ‘spring’ were euphoric, while a wave of massive protests engulfed the region, culminating in six major uprisings in total, as Egypt, Yemen, Bahrain, Libya, and Syria followed Tunisia’s example. Soon after that initial upsurge, however, the revolutionary wave receded, giving way to a counter-revolutionary onslaught. The Bahraini revolution was besieged and suppressed. The Syrian regime managed to withstand the popular uprising, which turned into civil war, until Iran came to its rescue…

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America’s war on Syrian civilians

America’s war on Syrian civilians

Anand Gopal writes: For four months in 2017, an American-led coalition in Syria dropped some ten thousand bombs on Raqqa, the densely populated capital of the Islamic State. Nearly eighty per cent of the city, which has a population of three hundred thousand, was destroyed. I visited shortly after ISIS relinquished control, and found the scale of the devastation difficult to comprehend: the skeletal silhouettes of collapsed apartment buildings, the charred schools, the gaping craters. Clotheslines were webbed between stray…

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Inequality has increased since the Arab spring, say people across Middle East

Inequality has increased since the Arab spring, say people across Middle East

The Guardian reports: A majority in nine countries across the Arab world feel they are living in significantly more unequal societies today than before the Arab spring, an era of uprisings, civil wars and unsteady progress towards self-determination that commenced a decade ago, according to a Guardian-YouGov poll. Pluralities in almost every country agreed their living conditions had deteriorated since 2010, when the self-immolation of Tunisian fruit seller Mohamed Bouazizi is credited with kicking off mass demonstrations and revolutions that…

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A $7 trillion climate change warning to the stock market from its biggest shareholder

A $7 trillion climate change warning to the stock market from its biggest shareholder

CNBC reports: The evidence of climate change — from global temperature records to Arctic ice melt, wildfires, hurricanes and flooding — is accelerating. So is investment pressure on corporations. In the past week, Exxon Mobil was targeted by activist investors, as well as CalSTRS, one of the nation’s largest pension funds. New York State’s $226 billion pension fund announced a plan to potentially divest from oil and gas stocks in the years ahead. The world’s largest money manager, BlackRock, issued…

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Hang on for three more months before holding family gatherings

Hang on for three more months before holding family gatherings

Zeynep Tufekci writes: Hunkering down to wait out the coronavirus isn’t easy. The costs of isolation are steep. Quarantine fatigue is real. The chance to gather with extended family and friends this holiday season is particularly alluring to those of us battling loneliness. Ritual is the bedrock of human society, and forsaking it feels even more destabilizing in a year that has already thrown us all off-kilter. Even so, I have a simple suggestion for anyone contemplating a large gathering…

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Being kind to others is good for your health

Being kind to others is good for your health

Marta Zaraska writes: Newspapers started writing about Betty Lowe when she was 96 years old. Despite being long past retirement age, she was still volunteering at a cafe at Salford Royal Hospital in Greater Manchester, UK, serving coffee, washing dishes and chatting to patients. Then Lowe turned 100. “Still volunteers at hospital”, the headlines ran. Then she reached 102 and the headlines declared: “Still volunteering”. The same again when she turned 104. Even at 106, Lowe would work at the…

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Biden picks former EPA chief Gina McCarthy as White House climate czar

Biden picks former EPA chief Gina McCarthy as White House climate czar

The Washington Post reports: President-elect Joe Biden has tapped Gina McCarthy, who ran the Environmental Protection Agency under President Barack Obama and now leads a major advocacy group, to coordinate the new administration’s domestic climate agenda from a senior perch at the White House. Three individuals familiar with the matter, who asked not to be identified because the decision had not been publicly announced, confirmed that the final decision had been made to tap McCarthy for the post. McCarthy is…

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25% of global population may not get a Covid-19 vaccine until 2022, experts warn

25% of global population may not get a Covid-19 vaccine until 2022, experts warn

STAT reports: As wealthy governments race to lock in supplies of Covid-19 vaccines, nearly a quarter of the world’s population — mostly in low and middle-income countries — will not have access to a shot until 2022, according to a new analysis. As of mid-November, high income countries, including the European Union bloc, reserved 51% of nearly 7.5 billion doses of different Covid-19 vaccines, although these countries comprise just 14% of the world’s population. Meanwhile, only six of the 13…

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Trump’s Georgia fundraising scam antagonizes Republicans

Trump’s Georgia fundraising scam antagonizes Republicans

Politico reports: President Donald Trump couldn’t make it any clearer: He needs his supporters to fork over cash for the all-important Georgia Senate runoff elections. “We MUST defend Georgia from the Dems!” he wrote in one recent text message. “I need YOU to secure a WIN in Georgia,” he said in another. “Help us WIN both Senate races in Georgia & STOP Socialist Dems,” he pleaded a few days later. There’s just one hitch: Trump’s new political machine is pocketing…

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