Cisco says Chinese hackers are exploiting its customers with a new zero-day and highly sophisticated tools

If confirmed, then this would be more evidence that hackers/criminals out of China are committing cyber crimes against companies, governments, and individuals in Western countries.

A benign interpretation would be that China is just negligent or very tolerant in its law enforcement and still lacks explicit laws to prosecute such crimes.

A more realistic interpretation is that the Communist Party of China conducts a hybrid warfare against the West.

"On Wednesday, Cisco announced hackers are exploiting a critical vulnerability in some of its most popular products that allows the full takeover of affected devices. Worse, there are no patches available at this time. ..."

"... We assess with moderate confidence that the adversary, who we are tracking as UAT-9686, is a Chinese-nexus advanced persistent threat (APT) actor whose tool use and infrastructure are consistent with other Chinese threat groups. ...

We have observed overlaps in tactics, techniques and procedures (TTPs), infrastructure, and victimology between UAT-9686 and other Chinese-nexus threat actors Talos tracks. Tooling used by UAT-9686, such as AquaTunnel (aka ReverseSSH), also aligns with previously disclosed Chinese-nexus APT groups such as APT41 and UNC5174. Additionally, the tactic of using a custom-made web-based implant such as AquaShell is increasingly being adopted by highly sophisticated Chinese-nexus APTs. ..."

Cisco says Chinese hackers are exploiting its customers with a new zero-day | TechCrunch

Reports About Cyberattacks Against Cisco Secure Email Gateway And Cisco Secure Email and Web Manager (original news release)

UAT-9686 actively targets Cisco Secure Email Gateway and Secure Email and Web Manager (original news release)

IBM and Cisco Announce Plans to Build a Network of Large-Scale, Fault-Tolerant Quantum Computers and quantum computing Internet

Amazing how this once famous network gear/device maker (Cisco Systems) and pioneer of local area networks (LANs) has transformed!

"- New collaboration plans to unite strengths of both leaders to design a connected network of large-scale, fault-tolerant quantum computers, targeted by early 2030s

- Companies plan to deliver an initial demonstration of multiple networked quantum computers within five years

- Distributed quantum network could lay groundwork towards quantum computing internet defined by quantum computers, sensors, and communication in the late 2030s

...."

IBM and Cisco Announce Plans to Build a Network of Large-Scale, Fault-Tolerant Quantum Computers

Image of the day

How AI will fundamentally change cyber attacks! 

The AI arms race goes on between the powers of good and evil and defensive and commercial espionage! 😊

Legal Battles Instead Of Competition

Posted: 12/142013

Update As Of 7/22/2014

For several months now, Microsoft has not offered any update.

What drives me mad is that this stupid mobile Skype on my Motorola X with Android 4.4.2 installed does not audibly ring when someone calls me on Skype although I have turned on all notifications in Skype and I have checked sound settings and app settings.

Update As Of 11/12/2013

If I am not mistaken, Skype offered another update which I installed past Friday (11/8/2013) and I rebooted afterwards, but the application still frequently dies when opened. Plus, invoking Skype also caused my phone to reboot suddenly. This is the only app on my phone that does this.

Update As Of 11/1/2013

Skype still stinks despite latest update! Video calls crash! Starting the app results in app restarting in an odd way!

An Update

As of today (9/12/2013), I can still report that mobile Skype sucks. Despite several updates in recent times (incl. at least one major one) after several months without any updates, it still not possible to end a conversation, because the controls for that are not visible on the screen nor are they accessible through the menu. This stinks!

Letting Steam Off

I usually do not blog about specific technology issues, but I need to let some steam off not least because I am a software developer myself.

My Great Experience In The Past

I have been using Skype on my notebook for many years and I have been very happy with this software. I usually make a lot of long distance calls across the Atlantic Ocean. Video calls work very well most of the times. Since so many dissidents in foreign countries used, we know it was fairly secure to use, because their servers were located in Luxembourg or so and the encryption was difficult to hack.

Lousy Experience With Skype On HTC Smart Phone With Android

My HTC Evo phone is just over two years old. Here is my gripe with Skype:

1.       For several months, Skype has not released any updates or new versions to fix issues

2.       When I place a call, the ringtone is so low that a hearing aid would not suffice

3.       When I receive a call nothing pops up to let me know and accept the call

4.       Too often, the software crashes when I accept a video call

5.       And so on …

Microsoft - The Evil Empire Again?

Microsoft purchased Skype for princely sum of $8.5 billion in 2011. What is Microsoft actually doing with Skype? Are Android users getting short shrifted for Windows Phone users?