• Office 365 users are being targeted by a phishing campaign that purports to notify them of a “missed chat” from Microsoft Teams.

    Researchers are warning of a phishing campaign that pretends to be an automated message from Microsoft Teams. In reality, the attack aims to steal Office 365 recipients’ login credentials.

    Teams is Microsoft’s popular collaboration tool, which has particularly risen in popularity among remote workforces during the pandemic – making it an attractive brand for attackers to impersonate. This particular campaign was sent to between 15,000 to 50,000 Office 365 users, according to researchers with Abnormal Security on Thursday.

    “Because Microsoft Teams is an instant-messaging service, recipients of this notification might be more apt to click on it so that they can respond quickly to whatever message they think they may have missed based on the notification,” said researchers in a Thursday analysis.

    The initial phishing email displays the name “There’s new activity in Teams,” making it appear like an automated notification from Microsoft Teams.

    As seen in the picture below, the email tells recipient that their teammates are trying to reach them, warning them they have missed Microsoft Team chats and showing an example of a teammate chat that asks them to submit something by Wednesday of next week.

    Erin Ludert, data scientist at Abnormal Security, told researchers suspect attackers are using more of a “spray” tactic here, as the employee referenced in the chats doesn’t appear to be an employee of the company that received the attack.

    To respond, the email urges the recipient to click on the "Reply in Teams" button - However, this leads to a phishing page.

    “Within the body of the email, there are three links appearing as ‘Microsoft Teams’, ‘(contact) sent a message in instant messenger’, and ‘Reply in Teams’,” according to researchers. “Clicking on any of these leads to a fake website that impersonates the Microsoft login page. The phishing page asks the recipient to enter their email and password.”

    Researchers said that the phishing landing page also looks convincingly like a Microsoft login page with the start of the URL containing “microsftteams.” If recipients are convinced to input their Microsoft credentials into the page, they are unwittingly handing them over to attackers, who can then use them for an array of malicious purposes – including account takeover.

    With the ongoing pandemic, worries about cyberattackers leveraging enterprise friendly collaboration brands like Microsoft Teams, Zoom and Skype have been piqued. In May, a convincing campaign that impersonated notifications from Microsoft Teams in order to steal the Office 365 credentials of employees circulated, with two separate attacks that targeted as many as 50,000 different Teams users.

    Microsoft is top of the heap when it comes to hacker impersonations – with Microsoft products and services featuring in nearly a fifth of all global brand phishing attacks in the third quarter of this year. Attackers are also using sophisticated tactics – including visual CAPTCHAS to target Office 365 users and token-based authorization methods.

    The easiest way for Office 365 users to avoid this phishing attacks is to subscribe for the Add-on service offered by Microsoft - Microsoft Office 365 Advanced Threat Protection (ATP). This is a cloud-based email filtering service that helps protect your organization against unknown malware and viruses by providing robust zero-day protection, and includes features to safeguard organizations from harmful links in real time. When enabled, it can scan every embedded url links in emails and all web redirection to phishing sites are automatically detected and blocked by the Microsoft Servers.




  • This article explain for laypeople what end-to-end encryption is and how it enables private, secure communication for us all.


    In recent years, communications services ranging from WhatsApp to Zoom have announced their implementation of end-to-end encryption. What does that mean? Well, the idea of encryption is pretty straightforward: It turns data into something that cannot be read. But what does end-to-end mean? What are its pros and cons? Without getting into the underlying math and technical terms, we’ll explain it as simply as we can.

    What end-to-end encryption is — and its alternatives

    End-to-end encryption is the act of applying encryption to messages on one device such that only the device to which it is sent can decrypt it. The message travels all the way from the sender to the recipient in encrypted form.

    What are the alternatives? One alternative is to transfer the data in clear text, that is, without encrypting the message at all. That is the least secure option. For example, data sent by SMS is not encrypted, meaning that in theory anyone can intercept it. Fortunately, in practice, doing so requires special equipment, which somewhat limits who can eavesdrop on your text messages.

    Another option is encryption-in-transit, whereby messages are encrypted on the sender’s end, delivered to the server, decrypted there, re-encrypted, and then delivered to the recipient and decrypted on their end. Encryption-in-transit protects information during transmission, but using it allows the intermediate link in the chain — the server — to see the content. Depending on how trustworthy its owners are, that can be an issue.

    At the same time, using encryption-in-transit includes the server in the communication, which opens up a range of services that go beyond simple data transfer. For example, a server can store message history, connect additional participants using alternative channels to a conversation (such as joining a video conference by phone), use automatic moderation, and more.

    Encryption-in-transit does solve the most important problem: the interception of data en route from user to server and from server to user, which is the most dangerous part of a message’s journey. That’s why not all services rush toward end-to-end encryption: For users gaining convenience and additional services may be more important than adding even more data security.

    What end-to-end encryption protects against



    The main advantage of end-to-end encryption is its restriction of transmitted data from anyone but the recipient. It is as if when you mailed a letter you put it in a box that was physically impossible to open — immune to any sledgehammer, saw, lockpick, and so forth — except by the addressee. End-to-end encryption ensures the privacy of your communication.

    Creating an invincible box isn’t really possible in the physical world, but in the world of information it is. Expert mathematicians are constantly developing new encryption systems and improving the strength of old ones.

    Another advantage follows from end-to-end encrypted messages being undecryptable by anyone other than the recipient: No one can change the message. Modern encryption methods work in such a way that if someone changes the encrypted data, the message becomes garbled on decryption, making the problem instantly clear. There is no way to make predictable changes to an encrypted message — that is, it’s impossible to replace the text.

    That ensures the integrity of your communication. If you receive a successfully decrypted message, you can be sure it’s the same message that was sent to you and that it wasn’t somehow tampered with in transit (in fact, a messaging app will do that for you automatically).

    What end-to-end encryption doesn’t protect against

    After learning about the benefits of end-to-end encryption, readers might get the impression that it’s the solution to every information-transfer problem. It isn’t, though; end-to-end encryption has limitations.

    First, although the use of end-to-end encryption lets you hide the content of your message, that you sent a message to a certain person (or received one from them) will be apparent. The server can’t read the messages, but it is definitely aware that you exchanged messages on a certain day and at a certain time. In some cases, merely communicating with particular people may draw unwanted attention.

    Second, if someone gains access to the device you use to communicate, they will be able to read all of your messages, as well as write and send messages on your behalf. Therefore, protecting end-to-end encryption requires the protection of devices and application access — even if only with a PIN code — so that if the device is lost or stolen, your correspondence, along with the ability to impersonate you, does not fall into the wrong hands.

    For that reason, devices need to be protected with antivirus software. Malware on a smartphone can read the correspondence on it just as if a living person had physical possession of your phone. That is true regardless of what kind of encryption you use to send and receive messages.

    Third and finally, even if you take perfect care of protecting all your devices, and you know for sure no one has access to the messages on them, you can’t be certain about your conversation partner’s device. End-to-end encryption is no help there.

    Despite its limitations, end-to-end encryption is currently the most secure way to transfer confidential data, and that’s why more and more communication services are switching to it. That’s a good thing.


  • Wi-Fi 6 is here to stay

    Given the massive and continually increasing traffic volumes, Wi-Fi is clearly the dominant indoor organizational (and residential) connectivity option. It also has a strong presence in commercial (such as retail) settings and in many high-population-density outdoor locales as well.

     Over the years, our homes have filled up with more and more devices, small and large, simple and complex, IOTs, all connected to Wi-Fi. Each device demands some of your router’s time and bandwidth, and that’s increasingly becoming a problem — the more devices you have, the more your router’s capacity is spread thin. If this continues, speeds could slow to a drag.

     WI-FI 6, the newest generation standard in WI-FI technology is here to stay and help with these challenges. It is faster than the previous generation – WI-FI 5 802.11 ac; more than speed, it also provides better performance. Emphasizing quality connectivity in locations with hundreds or thousands of connected devices such as stadiums and other public venues, as well as corporate networks utilizing time-sensitive, high bandwidth applications, Wi-Fi 6 networks ensure each connected device performs at an optimum level. Wi-Fi 6 devices meet the highest standards for security and interoperability, and enable lower battery consumption, making it a solid choice for any environment, including the Internet of Things (IoT).

    Before going further, let’s look at the history of WI-FI.

    PHY Standard
    Year
    Throughput
    Bands
    Improvements Over Previous Generation
    802.11 (Wi-Fi 1)
    1997
    1-2 Mbps
    900, 2.4, IR
    Initial Standard
    802.11b (Wi-Fi 2)
    1999
    11 Mbps
    2.4
    More than 5X improvement in raw throughput
    802.11a
    1999
    54 Mbps
    5
    Initial use of 5 GHz. band; not commercially successful
    802.11g (Wi-Fi 3)
    2003
    54 Mbps
    2.4
    5X improvement in throughput
    802.11n (Wi-Fi 4)
    2009
    300-600 Mbps
    2.4, 5
    MIMO/OFDM, 40 MHz. channels, 6X+ improvement in throughput
    802.11ac (Wi-Fi 5)
    2013
    433-1270 Mbps
    5
    80-MHz. channels
    802.11ac (Wave 2)
    2015
    2167 Mbps
    5
    160 MHz-channels, more than 3 MIMO streams, multi-user MIMO
    802.11ad
    2012
    7 Gbps
    60
    3+ Gbps effective throughput
    802.11ax (Wi-Fi 6)
    2019
    10 Gbps
    2.4, 5
    10 Gbps, bi-directional MU-MIMO; likely Wave 2
    802.11ay
    2020
    20+ Gbps
    45+
    Potentially 100+ Gbps


    Opportunities and Benefits

    Achieving optimal capacity is particularly important when the nature of demand seen in Wi-Fi installations today is examined. First, we’ve got a growing base of users, each often equipped with multiple BYOD handsets, tablets, and notebooks. These numbers keep growing daily and it is expected that by 2022, the number of mobile devices used in business will reach 12.3 billion. Each of these devices is often running multiple simultaneous applications, with many, like voice telephony and video streaming, representing time-bounded traffic that demands minimal network latency. Media capabilities are also a core driver of traffic volume – while streaming video might require as little as two Mbps, up to the order of 40-80 Mbps for full frame 4K traffic, any delay due to congestion, RF interference, or ineffective Wi-Fi deployments resulting from under-provisioning or configuration errors, will result in a poor QoE, and thus disappointed and less-than-optimally-productive users. And if any network isn’t assuring end-user productivity, then it’s clearly not delivering the value required.

     And when we add in the growing demand from an as-yet underappreciated source, the Internet of Things (IoT) and the rapidly emerging, high-traffic-demand applications like augmented and virtual reality (AR/VR), it’s easy to see how simply meeting application demands alone will drive the adoption of W-Fi 6 at a very significant pace.

     WI-FI 6 has been developed to deliver 40% high peak data rates using a single client device. Average throughput per user is improved by at least 4 times in dense environments. It offers four times increase in network efficiency when compared to WI-FI 5 (802.11ac) and is backward compatible with 802.11n and 802.11ac devices.

     With Wi-Fi 6 (802.11ax), multiple APs deployed in dense device environments can collectively deliver required quality-of-service (QoS) to more clients. This is made possible by a range of technologies, such as the Wi-Fi 6 (802.11ax) iteration of MU-MIMO, (Multi-User Multiple Inputs Multiple Output) which enables simultaneous data transmissions on the same frequency. The technology allows a router to communicate with multiple devices at the same time, rather than broadcasting to one device, and then the next, and the next. Right now, MU-MIMO allows routers to communicate with four devices at a time. Wi-Fi 6 allows devices to communicate with up to eight.

     We can say Wi-Fi 6 (802.11ax) is playing a critical role in helping Wi-Fi evolve into a collision-free, deterministic wireless technology that dramatically increases aggregate network throughput to address high-density venues and beyond. Last, but certainly not least, Wi-Fi 6 (802.11ax) access points are also expected to enhance the overall Wi-Fi experience by providing tangible performance benefits for legacy wireless devices.


    How fast is it?

    The short but incomplete answer: 9.6 Gbps. That’s up from 3.5 Gbps on Wi-Fi 5.

     The real answer: both of those speeds are theoretical maximums that you’re unlikely to ever reach in real-world Wi-Fi use. And even if you could reach those speeds, it’s not clear that you’d need them. The average download speed in most countries is around 80 Mbps, but the fact that Wi-Fi 6 has a much higher theoretical speed limit than its predecessor is still important. That 9.6 Gbps doesn’t have to go to a single computer. It can be split up across a whole network of devices. That means more potential speed for each device.

    WI-FI 6 isn’t just about top speeds. Instead of boosting the speed for individual devices, Wi-Fi 6 is all about improving the network when a bunch of devices are connected.

     That’s an important goal, and it arrives at an important time: when Wi-Fi 5 came out, the average household had about five Wi-Fi devices in it. Now, homes have nine Wi-Fi devices on average, and various firms have predicted we’ll hit 50 on average within several years.

     Those added devices take a toll on your network. Your router can only communicate with so many devices at once, so the more gadgets demanding Wi-Fi, the more the network overall is going to slow down.

     Wi-Fi 6 introduces some new technologies to help mitigate the issues that come with putting dozens of Wi-Fi devices on a single network. It lets routers communicate with more devices at once, lets routers send data to multiple devices in the same broadcast, and lets Wi-Fi devices schedule check-ins with the router. Together, those features should keep connections strong even as more and more devices start demanding data.

     At first, Wi-Fi 6 connections aren’t likely to be substantially faster. A single Wi-Fi 6 laptop connected to a Wi-Fi 6 router may only be slightly faster than a single Wi-Fi 5 laptop connected to a Wi-Fi 5 router.

     Devices are now more likely to maintain fast speeds on busy networks. However, the story starts to change as more and more devices get added onto your network. Where current routers might start to get overwhelmed by requests from a multitude of devices, Wi-Fi 6 routers are designed to more effectively keep all those devices up to date with the data they need.

     Each of those devices’ speeds won’t necessarily be faster than what they can reach today on a high-quality network, but they’re more likely to maintain those top speeds even in busier environments. You can imagine this being useful in a home where one person is streaming Netflix, another is playing a game, someone else is video chatting, and a whole bunch of smart gadgets — a door lock, temperature sensors, light switches, and so on — are all checking in at once.

     The top speeds of those devices won’t necessarily be boosted, but the speeds you see in typical, daily use likely will get an upgrade.

     Exactly how fast that upgrade is, though, will depend on how many devices are on your network, the size of your Internet bandwidth and just how demanding those devices are.
    The NETGEAR Nighthawk AX8 Wi-Fi 6 router sports speeds up to 6Gbps, along with 160MHz channel support for Gigabit WiFi speeds. The Nighthawk also includes six different Gigabit ports which allow for you to hard-wire in for the fastest speeds.

    What makes Wi-Fi 6 faster?

    There are two key technologies speeding up Wi-Fi 6 connections: MU-MIMO and OFDMA. MU-MIMO, which stands for “multi-user, multiple input, multiple output,” is already in use in modern routers and devices, but Wi-Fi 6 upgrades it.

     The technology allows a router to communicate with multiple devices at the same time, rather than broadcasting to one device, and then the next, and the next. Right now, MU-MIMO allows routers to communicate with four devices at a time. Wi-Fi 6 will allow devices to communicate with up to eight.

     You can think of adding MU-MIMO connections like adding delivery trucks to a fleet, says Kevin Robinson, marketing leader for the Wi-Fi Alliance, an internationally backed tech-industry group that oversees the implementation of Wi-Fi. “You can send each of those trucks in different directions to different customers,” Robinson says. “Before, you had four trucks to fill with goods and send to four customers. With Wi-Fi 6, you now have eight trucks.”

     The other new technology, OFDMA, which stands for “orthogonal frequency division multiple access,” allows one transmission to deliver data to multiple devices at once. Extending the truck metaphor, Robinson says that OFDMA essentially allows one truck to carry goods to be delivered to multiple locations. “With OFDMA, the network can look at a truck, see ‘I’m only allocating 75 percent of that truck and this other customer is kind of on the way,’” and then fill up that remaining space with a delivery for the second customer, he says.

     In practice, this is all used to get more out of every transmission that carries a Wi-Fi signal from a router to your device.

    Wi-Fi 6 can also improve battery life


    Another new technology in Wi-Fi 6 allows devices to plan out communications with a router, reducing the amount of time they need to keep their antennas powered on to transmit and search for signals. That means less drain on batteries and improved battery life in turn.

     This is all possible because of a feature called Target Wake Time, which lets routers schedule check-in times with devices.

     It isn’t going to be helpful across the board, though. Your laptop needs constant internet access, so it’s unlikely to make heavy use of this feature (except, perhaps, when it moves into a sleep state).

     Instead, this feature is meant more for smaller, already low-power Wi-Fi devices that just need to update their status every now and then. (Think small sensors placed around a home to monitor things like leaks or smart home devices that sit unused most of the day.)

    Wi-Fi 6 also means better security


    Last year, Wi-Fi started getting its biggest security update in a decade, with a new security protocol called WPA3. WPA3 makes it harder for hackers to crack passwords by constantly guessing them, and it makes some data less useful even if hackers manage to obtain it.

     Current devices and routers can support WPA3, but it’s optional. For a Wi-Fi 6 device to receive certification from the Wi-Fi Alliance, WPA3 is required, so most Wi-Fi 6 devices are likely to include the stronger security once the certification program launches.

    And we are just getting started


    Devices supporting Wi-Fi 6 are just starting to trickle out. You can already buy Wi-Fi 6 routers, but so far, they’re expensive high-end devices. A handful of laptops include the new generation of Wi-Fi, too, but it’s not widespread just yet.

     Wi-Fi 6 will start arriving on high-end phones this year, though. Qualcomm’s latest flagship processor, the Snapdragon 855, includes support for Wi-Fi 6, and it’s destined for the next wave of top-of-the-line phones. The Snapdragon 855’s inclusion doesn’t guarantee that a phone will have Wi-Fi 6, but it’s a good sign: Samsung’s Galaxy S10 is one of the first phones with the new processor, and it supports the newest generation of Wi-Fi.

     The inclusion of Wi-Fi 6 is likely to become even more common next year. The Wi-Fi Alliance will launch its Wi-Fi 6 certification program this fall, which guarantees compatibility across Wi-Fi devices. Devices don’t need to pass that certification, but its launch will signify that the industry is ready for Wi-Fi 6’s arrival.

  • How to fight misinformation with the support of machine learning tools?

    How good are we at telling fact from fiction on the Internet? Admittedly, it can be difficult at times – there’s a lot of misinformation floating out there. Some sites and blogs routinely present opinions as facts to score quick political points, others use misleading headlines to trick us into clicking and sharing content and yet, others will flat out lie to us, suggesting that goji berries, green coffee beans or some other “weird trick” will magically burn off 50 pounds of belly fat without us needing to exercise.
    The rise of social media has created a seemingly unstoppable force of misinformation. Propaganda pushed through state-sponsored channels is disinformation, but the content in our social media feeds shared by friends is misinformation. Misinformation can be described as information that is unintentionally false, i.e. the person who is disseminating it believes that it is true. While new technologies accelerate our ability to communicate with each other, they also accelerate the spread of misinformation.
    Contemporary social media platforms offer a rich ground for the spread of misinformation. Combatting its spread is difficult for two reasons: the profusion of information sources, and the generation of "echo chambers." The profusion of information sources makes the reader's task of weighing the reliability of information more challenging, heightened by the untrustworthy social signals that go with such information. The inclination of people to follow or support like-minded individuals leads to the formation of echo chambers and filter bubbles. With no differing information to counter the untruths or the general agreement within isolated social clusters, the outcome is a dearth, and worse, the absence of a collective reality, some writers argue.
    As the world gets ready to tackle fake news, technology has set the trend by showing us how to identify and tackle it. Here are some ways to mitigate the spread of misinformation with the power of machine learning.
    1. News Quality Scoring
    The powers of machine learning could be leveraged in combating misinformation by building a quality tag system capable of determining the trustworthiness of websites. To achieve this, a publisher presents its stories to the news quality scoring platform, which then assesses the content to come up with a global score for quality. This process would be done at scale, automatically, and using machine learning algorithm. A crucial part of the quality tag system is labeling the dataset, i.e., thousands of news articles. The process will be both automated and rely on collaborative filtering.
    The news quality scoring platform would rely on a combination of two models to carry out its task. The first model involves two sets of “signals” to assess the quality of journalistic work: Quantifiable Signals and Subjective Signals. Quantifiable Signals are collected automatically. These signals include the structure and patterns of the HTML page, advertising density, use of visual elements, bylines, word count, readability of the text, information density (number of quotes and named entities). Subjective Signals are based on criteria used by editors (and intuitively by readers) to assess the quality of a story: writing style, thoroughness, balance & fairness, timeliness, etc. (This set will be used only in the building phase of the model). — The second model is based on deep learning techniques, like "text-embedding" in which texts from large volumes of data (millions of articles) are converted into numerical values to be fed into a neural network. This neural network returns the probability of scoring, and with this score, a site’s factual accuracy could be determined.
    2. Automated Facts Checking
    To fight misinformation, it is imperative to weigh facts that the news in context purports to share. Automated facts checking initiatives generally focus on one or more of three overlapping objectives: to spot false or questionable claims circulating online and in other media; to authoritatively verify claims or stories that are in doubt, or to facilitate their verification by journalists and members of the public; and to deliver corrections instantaneously, across different media, to audiences exposed to misinformation. Using artificial intelligence and machine learning, the three elements – identification, verification, and correction can be addressed.
    Real-world automated facts checking efforts begin with systems to monitor various forms of public discourse – speeches, debates, commentary, news reports, and so on – online and in traditional media. Once monitoring is in place, the central research and design challenge revolves around the closely linked problems of identifying and verifying factual claims. The best approach to this would be the reliance on a combination of natural language processing and machine learning to identify and prioritize claims to be checked. The natural language processing algorithm would go through the subject of a story, headline, main body text and the geo-location. Further, artificial intelligence will find out if other sites are reporting the same facts. In this way, facts are weighed against reputed media sources using artificial intelligence. Probabilistically, using machine learning, the system would be able to analyze a news story against a database of information, facts or past events and give some indicator signals whether the published news/content needs to be double-checked or not.
    3. Predict Reputation
    Even before eyeballs capture news items, knowing the reputation of the source sharing the news will do a world of good to nip fake news problem in the bud. A reference to the Wall Street Journal would raise no doubt about the reputation of a news source. This becomes stronger when it is compared with another source that is unknown. By creating a machine learning model, it is possible to determine the authenticity of a website and predict a website’s reputation, considering features like domain name and Google/Alexa web rank.
    4. Discover Sensational Words
    When it comes to news items, the headline is the key to capture the attention of the audience. It is for this reason that sensational headlines become a handy tool to capture readers’ interest. When sensational words are used to spread fake news, it becomes a lure to attract more eyeballs and spread the news faster and wider. By using keyword analytics, machine learning can be instrumental in discovering and flagging fake news headlines.
    Misinformation can have devastating outcomes and the most unfortunate fact is that it spreads more quickly and widely and is more engaging or appealing to the viewers. This is because in the online world, content choices are saturated, and the users have a limited attention span. Spreading misinformation, thus, has become so prolific that it is now nearly impossible for humanity to dig itself out of the quagmire. The last resort is to devise machines to pull us out. Machine learning techniques with the support of Artificial Intelligence have the capability to separate the good from the bad through pattern recognition that facilitates learning behaviors from past occurrences. Algorithms can be devised around these patterns to help in weeding out the false from the truth. Thus, machine learning tools as listed above can be devised to fight the spread of misinformation.

    References
    https://aboutbadnews.com/about-fake-news
    Wikipedia/misinformation
    http://aclweb.org/anthology/W18-5502
    https://www.forbes.com/sites/charlestowersclark/2018/10/04/can-ai-put-an-end-to-fake-news- dont-be-so-sure/#18d9bdf72f84

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