This week in InfoSec (09:55)

With content liberated from the “today in infosec” twitter account and further afield

12th January 1996: Apple posts major loss

Apple Computer announces that it will post a US$68 million first quarter loss. It also announces a restructuring plan to reduce the company by a thousand employees. This event leads to the resignation of Apple CEO Michael Spindler, who is replaced by Gil Amelio. Gil Amelio eventually purchases Steve Jobs’ company, NeXT, which leads to the development of Mac OS X as well as the return of Steve Jobs as Apple CEO.

9th January 2007: Apple introduces iPhone

Apple introduces the iPhone at Macworld. The phone wasn’t available for sale until June 29th, prompting one of the most heavily anticipated sales launches in the history of technology. Apple sold 1.4 million iPhones in 2007, steadily increasing each year to sell over 230 million in 2015 alone

Rant of the Week (17:25)

Royal Mail, cops probe 'cyber incident' that's knackered international mail

Royal Mail confirmed a "cyber incident" has disrupted its ability to send letters and packages abroad, and also caused some delays on post coming into the UK.

The postal service, and the UK's National Cyber Security Centre and National Crime Agency, issued similar statements about the IT SNAFU on Wednesday, with Royal Mail advising customers to stop sending international mail until it fixed the problem.

"We're experiencing disruption to our international export services and are temporarily unable to dispatch items to overseas destinations," the organisation tweeted. "We strongly advise customers to hold any export items while we work to resolve the issue." 

Royal Mail added it was "sorry for any disruption this may cause," and would not comment further. This is a developing story; we'll keep you updated as we confirm any other details.

Lockbit Ransomware - It was Russia!

Royal Mail hit by Russia-linked ransomware attack

Billy Big Balls of the Week (27:24)

VALL-E AI can mimic a person’s voice from a three-second snippet

Microsoft researchers are working on a text-to-speech (TTS) model that can mimic a person's voice – complete with emotion and intonation – after a mere three seconds of training.

The technology – called VALL-E and outlined in a 15-page research paper released this month on the arXiv research site – is a significant step forward for Microsoft. TTS is a highly competitive niche that includes other heavyweights such as Google, Amazon, and Meta.

Redmond is already using artificial intelligence for natural language processing (NLP) through its Nuance business – which it bought for $20 billion last year including both speech recognition and TTS technology. And it's aggressively investing in and using technology from startup OpenAI – including its ChatGPT tool – possibly in its Bing search engine and its Office suite of applications.

A demo of VALL-E can be found on GitHub.

Semi-related - Microsoft Will Likely Invest $10 billion for 49 Percent Stake in OpenAI

This after the report by The Information about how Microsoft plans to integrate ChatGPT and GPT-4 into its software bundles like Word, Outlook, Bing and so forth.

Industry News (33:40)

UK Charities Offered Free Cyber Essentials Support

US Supreme Court Allows WhatsApp to Sue NSO Group

Sensitive Files From San Francisco Transit Police Allegedly Leaked

GitHub Adds Features to Automate Vulnerability Code Scanning

New APT Dark Pink Hits Asia-Pacific, Europe With Spear Phishing Tactics

Royal Mail Halts International Deliveries After Cyber-Incident

Twitter: Leak of 200 Million Accounts Not Due to Historic Bug

Google Chrome 'SymStealer' Vulnerability Could Affect 2.5 Billion Users

The Guardian Confirms UK Staff Data Was Accessed in Ransomware Attack

Tweet of the Week (42:50)

https://twitter.com/IanColdwater/status/1613690189246828544

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