Cyberinsurance doesn’t cover acts of war. But even as cyberattacks mount, the definition of “warlike” actions remains blurry. From a report: This summer marks the fifth anniversary of the most expensive cyberattack ever: the NotPetya malware, released by Russia in June 2017, that shut down computer systems at companies and government agencies around the world, causing upward of $10 billion in damage due to lost business, repairs, and other operational disruptions. Half a decade later, the businesses affected by NotPetya are still sorting out who will pay those considerable costs in a series of legal disputes that will have serious ramifications for the rapidly growing cyberinsurance industry, as well as for the even more rapidly growing number of state-sponsored cyberattacks that blur the line between cyberwar and standard-issue government cyberactivity.

Whether or not insurers cover the costs of a cyberattack can depend, in part, on being able to make clear-cut distinctions in this blurry space: When Russian government hackers targeted Ukraine’s electric grid earlier this year, was that an act of war because the two countries were already at war? What about when Russia hacked Ukraine’s electric grid in 2015, or when pro-Russian hackers targeted servers in countries like the United States, Germany, Lithuania, and Norway because of their support for Ukraine? Figuring out which of these types of intrusions are “warlike” is not an academic matter for victims and their insurers — it is sometimes at the heart of who ends up paying for them. And the more that countries like Russia exercise their offensive cyber capabilities, the harder and more critical it becomes to make those distinctions and sort out who is on the line to cover the costs.

When insurers first began offering policies that covered costs related to computer security breaches more than 20 years ago, the promise was that the industry would do for cybersecurity what it had done for other types of risks like car accidents, fires, or robbery. In other words, cyberinsurance was supposed to insulate policyholders from some of the most burdensome short-term costs associated with these events while simultaneously requiring those same policyholders to adopt best practices (seat belts, smoke detectors, security cameras) for reducing the likelihood of these risks in the first place. But the industry has fallen well short of that goal, in many cases failing both to help breached companies cover the costs of major cyberattacks like NotPetya, and to help companies reduce their exposure to cyber risk.

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Source: Slashdot – Who Pays for an Act of Cyberwar?

Scientists should commit acts of civil disobedience to show the public how seriously they regard the threat posed by the climate crisis, a group of leading scientists has argued. From a report: “Civil disobedience by scientists has the potential to cut through the myriad complexities and confusion surrounding the climate crisis,” the researchers wrote in an article, published in the scientific journal Nature Climate Change on Monday.

“When those with expertise and knowledge are willing to convey their concerns in a more uncompromising manner … this affords them particular effectiveness as a communicative act. This is the insight of Greta Thunberg when she calls on us to âact as you would in a crisis.'” In recent months, scientists have shown themselves increasingly willing to take part in direct actions to bring attention to the climate crisis. A “scientists rebellion” mobilised more than 1,000 scientists in 25 countries in April, while in the UK a number of scientists were arrested for gluing scientific papers — and their hands — on to the glass facade of the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy.

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Source: Slashdot – Scientists Call on Colleagues To Protest Climate Crisis With Civil Disobedience

Facing European antitrust scrutiny, Microsoft has made it easier to virtualize its software on non-Microsoft cloud infrastructure — just so long as that infrastructure isn’t owned by notable competitors Amazon, Google, or Alibaba. From a report: The conflict, months in the making, is striking for a company that has largely avoided the antitrust scrutiny of its rivals, and eagerly sought to distance itself from the anti-competitive complaints and government actions that beset Microsoft in the late 1990s. Microsoft outlined the changes that would take effect on October 1 in a blog post. Nicole Dezen, chief partner officer, wrote that Microsoft “believes in the value of the partner ecosystem” and changed outsourcing and hosting terms that “will benefit partners and customers globally.”

New licensing terms would make it easier for Microsoft’s enterprise customers to bring Microsoft software to non-Microsoft infrastructure and scale the cost and size of theirs or their customer’s Microsoft systems on their own hardware, according to Dezen’s post. But Microsoft wants to be clear about something: Its Services Provider Licensing Agreement (SPLA) was meant for customers that are offering hosting “from their own data centers,” not buying Microsoft licenses to “host on others’ data centers.” To “strengthen the hoster ecosystem,” Dezen writes, Microsoft will remove the ability to outsource to Alibaba, Amazon Web Services, Google, Microsoft’s Azure cloud, or anybody using those companies as part of their hosting. Amazon and Google have weighed in, and they do not believe Microsoft is showing its newer, less anti-competitive side. “Microsoft is now doubling down on the same harmful practices by implementing even more restrictions in an unfair attempt to limit the competition it faces — rather than listening to its customers and restoring fair software licensing in the cloud for everyone,” an Amazon spokesperson told Reuters.

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Source: Slashdot – Microsoft EU Cloud Revisions Just So Happen To Exclude Google, Amazon