"Rust is awesome, for certain things. But think twice before picking it up for a startup that needs to move fast," Matt Welsh, co-founder and chief executive of Fixie.ai and former Google engineering director, writes in a blog post. From the post: I hesitated writing this post, because I don't want to start, or get into, a holy war over programming languages. (Just to get the flame bait out of the way, Visual Basic is the best language ever!) But I've had a number of people ask me about my experience with Rust and whether they should pick up Rust for their projects. So, I'd like to share some of the pros and cons that I see of using Rust in a startup setting, where moving fast and scaling teams is really important. Right up front, I should say that Rust is very good at what it's designed to do, and if your project needs the specific benefits of Rust (a systems language with high performance, super strong typing, no need for garbage collection, etc.) then Rust is a great choice. But I think that Rust is often used in situations where it's not a great fit, and teams pay the price of Rust's complexity and overhead without getting much benefit.

My primary experience from Rust comes from working with it for a little more than 2 years at a previous startup. This project was a cloud-based SaaS product that is, more-or-less, a conventional CRUD app: it is a set of microservices that provide a REST and gRPC API endpoint in front of a database, as well as some other back-end microservices (themselves implemented in a combination of Rust and Python). Rust was used primarily because a couple of the founders of the company were Rust experts. Over time, we grew the team considerably (increasing the engineering headcount by nearly 10x), and the size and complexity of the codebase grew considerably as well. As the team and codebase grew, I felt that, over time, we were paying an increasingly heavy tax for continuing to use Rust. Development was sometimes sluggish, launching new features took longer than I would have expected, and the team was feeling a real productivity hit from that early decision to use Rust. Rewriting the code in another language would have, in the long run, made development much more nimble and sped up delivery time, but finding the time for the major rewrite work would have been exceedingly difficult.

So we were kind of stuck with Rust unless we decided to bite the bullet and rewrite a large amount of the code. Rust is supposed to be the best thing since sliced bread, so why was it not working so well for us? [...] Despite being some of the smartest and most experienced developers I had worked with, many people on the team (myself included) struggled to understand the canonical ways to do certain things in Rust, how to grok the often arcane error messages from the compiler, or how to understand how key libraries worked (more on this below). We started having weekly "learn Rust" sessions for the team to help share knowledge and expertise. This was all a significant drain on the team's productivity and morale as everyone felt the slow rate of development. As a comparison point of what it looks like to adopt a new language on a software team, one of my teams at Google was one of the first to switch entirely from C++ to Go, and it took no more than about two weeks before the entire 15-odd-person team was quite comfortably coding in Go for the first time.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: Hive Social, a social media platform that has seen meteoric growth since Elon Musk took over Twitter, abruptly shut down its service on Wednesday after a security advisory warned the site was riddled with vulnerabilities that exposed all data stored in user accounts. "The issues we reported allow any attacker to access all data, including private posts, private messages, shared media and even deleted direct messages," the advisory, published on Wednesday by Berlin-based security collective Zerforschung, claimed. "This also includes private email addresses and phone numbers entered during login." The post went on to say that after the researchers privately reported the vulnerabilities last Saturday, many of the flaws they reported remained unpatched. They headlined their post "Warning: do not use Hive Social." Hive Social responded by pulling down its entire service. "The Hive team has become aware of security issues that affect the stability of our application and the safety of our users," company officials wrote. "Fixing these issues will require temporarily turning off our servers for a couple of days while we fix this for a better and safer experience."

Technical details are being withheld to prevent the active exploitation of them by malicious hackers. According to Business Insider, Hive Social's user base has doubled in the last few weeks, going from about 1 million to 2 million as of last week. The site is only being staffed by two people, "neither of whom had much of a background in security," reports Ars.

Last year, Google announced Android Open Source Project (AOSP) support for Rust, and today the company provided an update, while highlighting the decline in memory safety vulnerabilities. 9to5Google reports: Google says the "number of memory safety vulnerabilities have dropped considerably over the past few years/releases."; Specifically, the number of annual memory safety vulnerabilities fell from 223 to 85 between 2019 and 2022. They are now 35% of Android's total vulnerabilities versus 76% four years ago. In fact, "2022 is the first year where memory safety vulnerabilities do not represent a majority of Android's vulnerabilities."

That count is for "vulnerabilities reported in the Android security bulletin, which includes critical/high severity vulnerabilities reported through our vulnerability rewards program (VRP) and vulnerabilities reported internally." During that period, the amount of new memory-unsafe code entering Android has decreased: "Android 13 is the first Android release where a majority of new code added to the release is in a memory safe language. "

Rust makes up 21% of all new native code in Android 13, including the Ultra-wideband (UWB) stack, DNS-over-HTTP3, Keystore2, Android's Virtualization framework (AVF), and "various other components and their open source dependencies." Google considers it significant that there have been "zero memory safety vulnerabilities discovered in Android's Rust code" so far across Android 12 and 13. Google's blog post today also talks about non-memory-safety vulnerabilities, and its future plans: "... We're implementing userspace HALs in Rust. We're adding support for Rust in Trusted Applications. We've migrated VM firmware in the Android Virtualization Framework to Rust. With support for Rust landing in Linux 6.1 we're excited to bring memory-safety to the kernel, starting with kernel drivers.

Vulnerabilities in mobile apps exposed Hyundai and Genesis car models after 2012 to remote attacks that allowed unlocking and even starting the vehicles. BleepingComputer reports: Security researchers at Yuga Labs found the issues and explored similar attack surfaces in the SiriusXM "smart vehicle" platform used in cars from other makers (Toyota, Honda, FCA, Nissan, Acura, and Infinity) that allowed them to "remotely unlock, start, locate, flash, and honk" them. At this time, the researchers have not published detailed technical write-ups for their findings but shared some information on Twitter, in two separate threads.

The mobile apps of Hyundai and Genesis, named MyHyundai and MyGenesis, allow authenticated users to start, stop, lock, and unlock their vehicles. After intercepting the traffic generated from the two apps, the researchers analyzed it and were able to extract API calls for further investigation. They found that validation of the owner is done based on the user's email address, which was included in the JSON body of POST requests. Next, the analysts discovered that MyHyundai did not require email confirmation upon registration. They created a new account using the target's email address with an additional control character at the end. Finally, they sent an HTTP request to Hyundai's endpoint containing the spoofed address in the JSON token and the victim's address in the JSON body, bypassing the validity check. To verify that they could use this access for an attack on the car, they tried to unlock a Hyundai car used for the research. A few seconds later, the car unlocked. The multi-step attack was eventually baked into a custom Python script, which only needed the target's email address for the attack.

Yuga Labs analysts found that the mobile apps for Acura, BMW, Honda, Hyundai, Infiniti, Jaguar, Land Rover, Lexus, Nissan, Subaru, and Toyota, use SiriusXM technology to implement remote vehicle management features. They inspected the network traffic from Nissan's app and found that it was possible to send forged HTTP requests to the endpoint only by knowing the target's vehicle identification number (VIN). The response to the unauthorized request contained the target's name, phone number, address, and vehicle details. Considering that VINs are easy to locate on parked cars, typically visible on a plate where the dashboard meets the windshield, an attacker could easily access it. These identification numbers are also available on specialized car selling websites, for potential buyers to check the vehicle's history. In addition to information disclosure, the requests can also carry commands to execute actions on the cars. [...] Before posting the details, Yuga Labs informed both Hyundai and SiriusXM of the flaws and associated risks. The two vendors have fixed the vulnerabilities.

The Australian parliament has approved a bill to amend the country's privacy legislation, significantly increasing the maximum penalties to AU$50 million for companies and data controllers who suffered large-scale data breaches. From a report: The financial penalty introduced by the new bill is set to whichever is greater: AU$50 million, three times the value of any benefit obtained through the misuse of information, and 30% of a company's adjusted turnover in the relevant period.

Previously, the penalty for severe data exposures was AU$2.22 million, considered wholly inadequate to incentivize companies to improve their data security mechanisms. The new bill comes in response to a series of recent cyberattacks against Australian companies, including ransomware and network breaches, resulting in the exposure of highly sensitive data for millions of people in the country. "The Albanese Labor government has wasted no time in responding to recent major data breaches. We have announced, introduced, and delivered legislation in just over a month," reads the media announcement. "These new, larger penalties send a clear message to large companies that they must do better to protect the data they collect."

Firefox developer Mozilla is making a rare foray into the world of mergers and acquisitions, with news that it has snapped up recently-shuttered California-based productivity startup Pulse. From a report: Terms of the deal haven't been disclosed, but the deal is tantamount to an "acqui-hire," with Mozilla looking to deploy the Pulse team across an array of machine learning (ML) projects. "We're acquiring Pulse for the incredible team they have built," Mozilla chief product officer Steve Teixeira told TechCrunch. "As we look to continue to improve user experiences across all of our products, ML will be a core part of that."

Founded out of Menlo Park in 2019, Pulse in its initial guise was a "virtual office" platform called Loop Team, but after honing the idea for a couple of years it pivoted and rebranded last November. Pulse, essentially, was an automated status-updating tool that used signals based on pre-configured integrations and preferences set by the user. For example, users could synchronize Pulse with their calendar and Slack, setting rules to stipulate what their status and corresponding emoji should be based on keywords in their calendar event title. If their schedule for a particular time says "hair appointment" from 12-1pm, then the person's Slack status update might display a scissors emoji alongside the word "haircut." Or, it might say "birthday" alongside a cake emoji if that's what is in their calendar.

A little more than one in five techies in Britain is aged 50 or older, and enticing more of that demographic to enter the world of information technology could help alleviate a perennial skills gap. From a report: This is according to research by the British Computer Society (BCS), which reckons just 22 percent (413,000) of the 1.9 million IT specialists in the local industry are at or past the half century mark. To fall in line with the average number of 50 year olds or older across all other employment areas (561,000) in the UK, an additional 148,000 people in that grouping are needed in the tech sector, the BCS claimed, basing its finding on data provided by the Office for National Statistics.

"We can only achieve the government's ambition for the UK to be the 'next Silicon Valley' by closing the digital skills gap and making this vital profession attractive to a far broader range of people," said Rashik Parmar MBE, CEO of the BCS. For those not aware, the UK government's latest harebrained scheme, outlined in the Autumn statement by Chancellor Jeremy Hunt, is to convert the island nation into "the next Silicon Valley". Sounds plausible? Oven-baked plan? No, we didn't think so either. The age factor was most pronounced in the north-east of the UK where just one in eight programmers/developers was 50 or over, the research found -- but didn't state why.

AmiMoJo writes: LastPass says unknown attackers breached its cloud storage using information stolen during a previous security incident from August 2022. The company added that, once in, the threat actors also managed to access customer data stored in the compromised storage service. "We recently detected unusual activity within a third-party cloud storage service, which is currently shared by both LastPass and its affiliate, GoTo," the company said. "We have determined that an unauthorized party, using information obtained in the August 2022 incident, was able to gain access to certain elements of our customers' information." Lastpass said it hired security firm Mandiant to investigate the incident and notified law enforcement of the attack. It also noted that customers' passwords have not been compromised and "remain safely encrypted due to LastPass's Zero Knowledge architecture."

Google researchers say they have linked a Barcelona, Spain-based IT company to the sale of advanced software frameworks that exploit vulnerabilities in Chrome, Firefox, and Windows Defender. From a report: Variston IT bills itself as a provider of tailor-made Information security solutions, including technology for embedded SCADA (supervisory control and data acquisition) and Internet of Things integrators, custom security patches for proprietary systems, tools for data discovery, security training, and the development of secure protocols for embedded devices.

According to a report from Google's Threat Analysis Group, Variston sells another product not mentioned on its website: software frameworks that provide everything a customer needs to surreptitiously install malware on devices they want to spy on. Researchers Clement Lecigne and Benoit Sevens said the exploit frameworks were used to exploit n-day vulnerabilities, which are those that have been patched recently enough that some targets haven't yet installed them. Evidence suggests, they added, that the frameworks were also used when the vulnerabilities were zero-days. The researchers are disclosing their findings in an attempt to disrupt the market for spyware, which they said is booming and poses a threat to various groups.

Android OEMs still don't provide the six years of updates you get with Apple phones, but some manufacturers are trying to close that gap. From a report: OnePlus is adding an extra year to its smartphone update promise and is now offering four years of major OS updates and five years of security updates. Timeline-wise, this plan matches Samsung's, though Samsung offers monthly security updates and OnePlus doesn't. The company is still only promising security updates every other month, so it can't do too much bragging. Android-maker Google -- who you'd think would have the best update plan -- is in a distant third, with only three years of OS updates and five years of security updates.

Microsoft is offering Windows 11 users a preview of an update that fixes some gaming performance problems. The software maker originally warned of issues with lower than expected performance in some games earlier this month, after some Windows 11 users that had upgraded to the latest 2022 Update (22H2) noticed problems. From a report: "Some games and apps might experience lower than expected performance or stuttering on Windows 11, version 22H2," said Microsoft at the time. "Affected games and apps are inadvertently enabling GPU performance debugging features not meant to be used by consumers." While Microsoft didn't list the exact apps and games experiencing problems, the company did block the Windows 11 2022 Update for systems with affected games and recommended people not upgrade. That safeguard was removed around a week ago, and now Microsoft has issued a full fix. If you're running the Windows 11 2022 Update, you can check Windows Update and find a KB5020044 update preview that you can install.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from TechCrunch: Dropbox has announced plans to bring end-to-end encryption to its business users, and it's doing so through acquiring "key assets" from Germany-based cloud security company Boxcryptor. Terms of the deal were not disclosed. Dropbox is well-known for its cloud-based file back-up and sharing services, and while it does offer encryption for files moving between its servers and the destination, Dropbox itself has access to the keys and can technically view any content passing through. What Boxcryptor brings to the table is an extra layer of security via so-called "zero knowledge" encryption on the client side, giving the user full control over who is allowed to decrypt their data.

For many people, such as consumers storing family photos or music files, this level of privacy might not be a major priority. But for SMEs and enterprises, end-to-end encryption is a big deal as it ensures that no intermediary can access their confidential documents stored in the cloud -- it's encrypted before it even arrives. Moving forward, Dropbox said that it plans to bake Boxcryptor's features natively into Dropbox for business users. "In a blog post published today, Boxcryptor founders Andrea Pfundmeier and Robert Freudenreich say that their 'new mission' will be to embed Boxcryptor's technology into Dropbox," adds TechCrunch. "And after today, nobody will be able to create an account or buy any licenses from Boxcryptor -- it's effectively closing to new customers."

"But there are reasons why the news is being packaged the way it has. The company is continuing to support existing customers through the duration of their current contracts."

Anker's popular Eufy-branded security cameras appear to be sending some data to the cloud, even when cloud storage is disabled and local only storage settings are turned on. MacRumors reports: The information comes from security consultant Paul Moore, who last week published a video outlining the issue. According to Moore, he purchased a Eufy Doorbell Dual, which was meant to be a device that stored video recording on device. He found that Eufy is uploading thumbnail images of faces and user information to its cloud service when cloud functionality is not enabled. Moore demonstrates the unauthorized cloud uploading by allowing his camera to capture his image and turning off the Eufy HomeBase. The website is still able to access the content through cloud integration, though he had not signed up for cloud service, and it remains accessible even when the footage is removed from the Eufy app. It's important to note that Eufy does not appear to be automatically uploading full streaming video to the cloud, but rather taking captures of the video as thumbnails.

The thumbnails are used in the Eufy app to activate streaming video from the Eufy base station, allowing Eufy users to watch their videos when away from home, as well as for sending rich notifications. The problem is the thumbnails are uploaded to the cloud automatically even when the cloud functionality is not active, and Eufy also seems to be using facial recognition on the uploads. Some users have taken issue with the unauthorized cloud uploads because Eufy advertises local-only service and has been popular among those who want a more private camera solution. "No Clouds or Costs," reads the Eufy website. Moore suggests that Eufy is also able to link facial recognition data collected from two separate cameras and two separate apps to users, all without camera owners being aware.

Moore received a response from Eufy in which Eufy confirmed that it is uploading event lists and thumbnails to AWS, but said the data is not able to "leak to the public" because the URL is restricted, time limited, and requires account login. There is also another issue that Moore has highlighted, suggesting Eufy camera streams can be watched live using an app like VLC, but little information on the exploit is available at this time. Moore said that unencrypted Eufy camera content can be accessed without authentication, which is alarming for Eufy users. There's a dedicated Reddit thread where other Eufy users are reporting the same thing happening.

Dropbox has announced plans to bring end-to-end encryption to its business users, and it's doing so through acquiring "key assets" from Germany-based cloud security company Boxcryptor. Terms of the deal were not disclosed. From a report: Dropbox is well-known for its cloud-based file back-up and sharing services, and while it does offer encryption for files moving between its servers and the destination, Dropbox itself has access to the keys and can technically view any content passing through. What Boxcryptor brings to the table is an extra layer of security via so-called "zero knowledge" encryption on the client side, giving the user full control over who is allowed to decrypt their data.

For many people, such as consumers storing family photos or music files, this level of privacy might not be a major priority. But for SMEs and enterprises, end-to-end encryption is a big deal as it ensures that no intermediary can access their confidential documents stored in the cloud -- it's encrypted before it even arrives. Moving forward, Dropbox said that it plans to bake Boxcryptor's features natively into Dropbox for business users.

Say goodbye to the airline call center -- at least at Frontier Airlines. From a report: The budget carrier has completed its transition to online, mobile and text support, which enables it to ensure that customers get "the information they need as expeditiously and efficiently as possible," spokeswoman Jennifer de la Cruz told CNBC in an e-mailed statement. Passengers who call the customer service number Frontier lists on its website now get the message: "At Frontier, we offer the lowest fares in the industry by operating our airline as efficiently as possible. We want our customers to be able to operate efficiently as well, which is why we make it easy to find what you need at Flyfrontier.com or on our mobile app." Those who want to text with the carrier can get a link to do so sent to their phone. Most major carriers still offer customer service lines. But Frontier, which charges fees for everything from advanced seat assignments to carry-on luggage and snacks, is often looking for ways to cut expenses. During its investor day earlier this month, Frontier hinted that it would stop offering customer service by phone, a change that travel site Travel Noire reported earlier this week. Further reading: US Fines Airlines More Than $7 Million for Not Providing Refunds.

ZDNet asks: why is everyone getting remote working wrong?

Researchers at tech analyst Gartner believe a rigid requirement to return to offices is a mistake. But the researchers also believe so-called "hybrid" schedules often are also flawed: "Most of those work models delivered below-average outcomes," the research found, and the common factor was some kind of rigid on-site requirement. Much more successful was a "hybrid-flexible" set-up offering leaders and employees the opportunity to choose where they work from. But most successful by far were workplaces that offered this flexibility and also included elements of "intentional collaboration and empathy-based management", where bosses don't force staff to come to the office just to keep an eye on them.

How the working week is organized matters: get it right, and staff are more likely to want to stay, and more likely to perform well. Autonomy also reduces fatigue, which in turn means workers are likely to sustain good performance over time.
ZDNet also tested virtual reality meetings — concluding they're "still undeniably somewhat clunky and can make you feel a bit awkward."

But at the same time, "I was also surprised by how much benefit they could potentially deliver." Sure, a meeting with avatars that only look a bit like your colleagues, in a fantasy meeting room that wouldn't look out of place in a Bond villain's lair does feel a bit ridiculous. But it also — and this was the revelation to me — adds a level of engagement that you just don't get from a video meeting of colleagues occupying flat tiles on a screen. It provides a sense of being there (wherever 'there' was) that adds meaning beyond what you get from staring into a monitor.

I'm not saying I want to have every meeting in VR from now on: far from it. But we have to see the present state of hybrid and remote working as just the current state of the art, and to keep experimenting, and thinking, about the way we work.

Brace for yet another expansion to the UK's Online Safety Bill: The Ministry of Justice has announced changes to the law which are aimed at protecting victims of revenge porn, pornographic deepfakes and other abuses related to the taking and sharing of intimate imagery without consent -- in a crackdown on a type of abuse that disproportionately affects women and girls. From a report: The government says the latest amendment to the Bill will broaden the scope of current intimate image offences -- "so that more perpetrators will face prosecution and potentially time in jail."

Other abusive behaviors that will become explicitly illegal include "downblousing" (where photographs are taken down a women's top without consent); and the installation of equipment, such as hidden cameras, to take or record images of someone without their consent. The government describes the planned changes as a comprehensive package of measure to modernize laws in this area.

Google has disclosed several security flaws for phones that have Mali GPUs, such as those with Exynos chipsets. From a report: The company's Project Zero team says it flagged the problems to ARM (which produces the GPUs) back in the summer. ARM resolved the issues on its end in July and August. However, smartphone manufacturers including Samsung, Xiaomi, Oppo and Google itself hadn't deployed patches to fix the vulnerabilities as of earlier this week, Project Zero said.

Researchers identified five new issues in June and July and promptly flagged them to ARM. "One of these issues led to kernel memory corruption, one led to physical memory addresses being disclosed to userspace and the remaining three led to a physical page use-after-free condition," Project Zero's Ian Beer wrote in a blog post. "These would enable an attacker to continue to read and write physical pages after they had been returned to the system." Beer noted that it would be possible for a hacker to gain full access to a system as they'd be able to bypass the permissions model on Android and gain "broad access" to a user's data. The attacker could do so by forcing the kernel to reuse the afore-mentioned physical pages as page tables.

An international police operation has dismantled an online spoofing service that allowed cybercriminals to impersonate trusted corporations to steal more than $120 million from victims. From a report: iSpoof, which now displays a message stating that it has been seized by the FBI and the U.S. Secret Service, offered "spoofing" services that enabled paying users to mask their phone numbers with one belonging to a trusted organization, such as banks and tax offices, to carry out social engineering attacks. "The services of the website allowed those who sign up and pay for the service to anonymously make spoofed calls, send recorded messages, and intercept one-time passwords," Europol said in a statement on Thursday. "The users were able to impersonate an infinite number of entities for financial gain and substantial losses to victims."

London's Metropolitan Police, which began investigating iSpoof in June 2021 along with international law enforcement agencies, in the U.S., the Netherlands, and Ukraine, said it had arrested the website's suspected administrator, named as Teejai Fletcher, 34, charged with fraud and offenses related to organized crime. Fletcher was remanded to custody and will appear at Southwark Crown Court in London on December 6. iSpoof had around 59,000 users, which caused $58.2 million of losses to 200,000 identified victims in the U.K., according to the Met Police. One victim was scammed out of $3.64 million, while the average amount stolen was $12,100.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from TechCrunch: Microsoft has warned that malicious hackers are exploiting a discontinued web server found in common Internet of Things (IoT) devices to target organizations in the energy sector. In an analysis published on Tuesday, Microsoft researchers said they had discovered a vulnerable open-source component in the Boa web server, which is still widely used in a range of routers and security cameras, as well as popular software development kits (SDKs), despite the software's retirement in 2005. The technology giant identified the component while investigating a suspected Indian electric grid intrusion first detailed by Recorded Future in April, where Chinese state-sponsored attackers used IoT devices to gain a foothold on operational technology (OT) networks, used to monitor and control physical industrial systems.

Microsoft said it has identified one million internet-exposed Boa server components globally over the span of a one-week period, warning that the vulnerable component poses a "supply chain risk that may affect millions of organizations and devices." The company added that it continues to see attackers attempting to exploit Boa flaws, which include a high-severity information disclosure bug (CVE-2021-33558) and another arbitrary file access flaw (CVE-2017-9833). "The known [vulnerabilities] impacting such components can allow an attacker to collect information about network assets before initiating attacks, and to gain access to a network undetected by obtaining valid credentials," Microsoft said, adding that this can allow the attackers to have a "much greater impact" once the attack is initiated. "The company has warned that mitigating these Boa flaws is difficult due to both the continued popularity of the now-defunct web server and the complex nature of how it is built into the IoT device supply chain," reports TechCrunch. "Microsoft recommends that organizations and network operators patch vulnerable devices where possible, identify devices with vulnerable components, and to configure detection rules to identify malicious activity."