Where to Watch New Year's Eve Celebrations From Around the World Links to live streams for various cities around the world. Why celebrate once when you can celebrate on the hour all day long! Not all are pointing directly at the celebrations though, e.g. Cape Town's cam is pointing towards the mountain, and not towards the Waterfront where the fireworks are going off. So for Cape Town maybe try this one at or this one further away especially for the fireworks at . See #technology #livestream #newyear image
Home Assistant’s new hardware voice assistant answers to ‘Hey Jarvis’ and can work offline There’s a new voice assistant in town, and this one can work locally in your home without phoning home to its corporate overloads. This week, the popular hobbyist smart home platform Home Assistant officially launched its first voice assistant hardware — Home Assistant Voice Preview Edition. Built for the open-source smart home platform, Voice PE costs $59 and brings a locally controlled, privacy-focused voice assistant to Home Assistant in a plug-and-play package. Once connected to Home Assistant, you can use voice to control any connected device, with commands such as “Turn on the living room lights,” “Lock all the doors,” “Create a timer for 5 minutes,” and many more. There have been other solutions before, but they were not so reliable, and of course the Google or Amazon based ones require the cloud access of these companies, and many do not like to have that channel open. This is a hardware device (that does look pretty good) and seems to be pretty versatile. I think it could be well worth it, as long as it will get ongoing updates and not be replaced with some new model in the short term. Despite that, seeing it works fully offline, you should at least find it won't ever be bricked or turned into a paper weight. See #technology #homeassistant #privacy image
Oasis Security Research Team Discovers Microsoft Azure MFA Bypass: We Expect More From An Enterprise Provider Though Oasis Security's research team uncovered a critical vulnerability in Microsoft's Multi-Factor Authentication (MFA) implementation, allowing attackers to bypass it and gain unauthorized access to the user’s account, including Outlook emails, OneDrive files, Teams chats, Azure Cloud, and more. Microsoft has more than 400 million paid Office 365 seats, making the consequences of this vulnerability far-reaching. The bypass was simple: it took around an hour to execute, required no user interaction, and did not generate any notification or provide the account holder with any indication of trouble. The news surfaced now in the last week, so Microsoft has addressed the issue already. For me, though, the real news is that a global enterprise level IT company should not have had such basic guardrails missing. It appears really that Microsoft had knowingly relaxed some measures around its 2FA to allow for convenience. But surely a lack of attack rate limiting is just unforgivable. One of the basics I always employ on my servers and blog, is attack rate limiting with lengthy blocks in place. If anyone has to guess a password or 2FA more than 3 times, there is something wrong. Microsoft has had so many security fumbles over time that it is quite amazing that their monopoly in the workplace goes unchallenged. It seems Microsoft has very little care about their customers, as long as the money is rolling in, and if that eases, they just change the licensing parameters a bit. The recent Microsoft Recall feature was just another example of completely not appreciating their customers' privacy, and that was also only addressed after a major outcry. Microsoft probably has too much inertia, but actually there are some pretty good alternatives around if one takes a little trouble to rise out of the deep rut. The combination of pretty admin tools, AI, and cloud services has unfortunately made many admins way too lazy today. I think the quality of our admins on the edge, is a lot weaker than it used to be two decades back. All this usually means an even greater reliance on Microsoft where it is used in a corporate environment. Security is about keeping it simple, and having a reasonable depth of knowledge about what is being managed. See #technology #security #2FA #vulnerability image