Slashdot reader storagedude writes: Ransomware groups have been busy improving their data exfiltration tools, and with good reason: As ransomware decryption fails to work most of the time, victims are more likely to pay a ransom to keep their stolen data from being publicly leaked.

But some security researchers think the trend suggests that ransomware groups may change their tactics entirely and abandon ransomware in favor of a combined approach of data destruction and exfiltration, stealing the data before destroying it and any backups, thus leaving the stolen copy of the data as the only hope for victims to recover their data. After all, if ransomware just destroys data anyway, why waste resources developing it?

“With data exfiltration now the norm among threat actors, developing stable, secure, and fast ransomware to encrypt files is a redundant and costly endeavor compared to corrupting files and using the exfiltrated copies as the means of data recovery,” Cyderes researchers wrote after analyzing an attack last month.

“Eliminating the step of encrypting the data makes the process faster and eliminates the risk of not getting the full payout, or that the victim will find other ways to decrypt the data,” they added. “Data destruction is rumored to be where ransomware is going to go, but we haven’t actually seen it in the wild. During a recent incident response, however, Cyderes and Stairwell discovered signs that threat actors are actively in the process of staging and developing this capability.” That incident – involving BlackCat/ALPHV ransomware – turned up an exfiltration tool with hardcoded sftp credentials that was analyzed by Stairwell’s Threat Research Team, which found partially-implemented data destruction functionality. “The use of data destruction by affiliate-level actors in lieu of RaaS deployment would mark a large shift in the data extortion landscape and would signal the balkanization of financially-motivated intrusion actors currently working under the banners of RaaS affiliate programs,” the Stairwell researchers wrote.

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Source: Slashdot – Could Data Destruction + Exfiltration Replace Ransomware?

This week the United Nations chastised “woefully inadequate” plans to cut carbon from world governments, reported the BBC, announcing the UN’s findings that current carbon-cutting efforts “would see global emissions fall by less than 1% by 2030, when according to scientists, reductions of 45% are needed” to keep global warming below a key threshhold of 1.5 degrees C (2.7 degrees Fahrenheit).

The Washington Post notes that our current trajectory would lead to “a dangerous future of extreme weather, rising sea levels and ‘endless suffering,’ as the United Nations put it itself.”

But then they bring more bad news:
Two other reports this week from U.N. agencies compounded these woes. An analysis by the U.N. Framework Convention on Climate Change found that few countries had adjusted their climate pledges since a major U.N. climate conference last year held in Glasgow, Scotland. This year’s conference is set to be hosted in Egypt next month. Another study by the World Meteorological Organization found that methane emissions are rising faster than ever. The evidence raises “questions about humanity’s ability to limit the greenhouse gas that is 80 times more potent than carbon dioxide in the near term,” my colleagues reported.

Advances have been made — the world is weaning itself off coal, while the governments of major emitters Australia and United States have recently enacted significant legislation to reduce emissions. But it’s not happening fast enough. “Global and national climate commitments are falling pitifully short,” U.N. Secretary General António Guterres said in a video message this week. “We must close the emissions gap before climate catastrophe closes in on us all.” No matter Guterres’s constant entreaties, the necessary political urgency is not on show in much of the world…. And so, my colleagues wrote, “the world is barreling toward a future of unbearable heat, escalating weather disasters, collapsing ecosystems and widespread hunger and disease.”

In some places, that future is now. The Horn of Africa and many parts of East Africa are in the midst of a devastating drought. A fifth consecutive rainy season has failed and analysts expect the sixth — starting next March — to also be a dud. As fields go fallow and millions of livestock die of thirst, there is a staggering crisis of hunger in countries throughout the region. According to the U.N.’s World Food Program, some 22 million people in Ethiopia, Somalia and Kenya are at risk of starvation…. Close to 8 million people — roughly half [Somalia’s] population — have been impacted by drought. Up to 6.7 million people across the country may face food insecurity by the end of the year.

“It’s not about the climate changing — the climate has changed,” the East Africa regional director for the UN’s World Food Program told the Washington Post. “And we are not going back even once the rains start. This is a crisis that we are well and truly in the middle of and I don’t know where the bottom is.”

The Post notes what it calls “the further tragedy of the situation”: that the regions most imperiled “played little to no role in creating the conditions stoking global warming now.”

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Source: Slashdot – As Governments Miss Climate Goals, Drought is Already Devastating Parts of Africa

“A pair of pranksters posing as laid-off Twitter employees tricked multiple media outlets Friday as the public anxiously awaited news on whether Elon Musk had begun axing staffers,” reports the New York Post:

CNBC’s Deirdre Bosa interviewed two people who identified themselves as Twitter employees and were seen near the company’s San Francisco headquarters carrying cardboard boxes.

Skepticism immediately emerged on social media. One of the pranksters said his name was “Rahul Ligma” — a reference to a popular internet meme — and held a copy of Michelle Obama’s book “Becoming” aloft while speaking to reporters. The other said his name was “Daniel Johnson.”

CNBC, Bloomberg, the Daily Mail and NBC were among the outlets that reported layoffs were underway after the duo spoke to the media…. “It’s happening,” CNBC’s Bosa tweeted. Entire team of data engineers let go. These are two of them.”

“They are visibly shaken,” Bosa added. “Daniel tells us he owns a Tesla and doesn’t know how he’s going to make payments….”

Twitter employees have feared for months that Musk would enact sweeping layoffs at the company once his $44 billion takeover was complete. Those fears escalated last week after the Washington Post reported Musk was planning to cut 75% of Twitter’s 7,500-employee workforce. Musk immediately fired several executives, including CEO Parag Agrawal, but it’s still unclear how many employees will be ousted. He denied the 75% figure was accurate while meeting with Twitter employees earlier this week.

A source familiar with the situation told the Post that Twitter employees feel as though they’re “in limbo,” with no one having a clear idea of how many layoffs are coming. “People are just keeping their heads down until they see what happens,” the source said. The source added that remaining employees are fearful about speaking to the media now that Musk has assumed control of the company. “Folks don’t want to get fired for leaking,” the source said.

You can still watch video footage of the pranksters’ interview on Reuters’ official feed on YouTube (headlined “LIVE: Outside Twitter’s San Francisco HQ after Elon Musk takes over”)

The Verge spotted the footage — and then added that “Since we’re doing this, here are some other ridiculous things said by Ligma and his box-bearing associate.”
“It makes me worry about the future of our democracy… the future of celebrity conservatorship. I mean, when Britney [Spears] happened….”
“I even own a Tesla, man. I’m a big fan of clean energy, climate change, even free speech too.”

Elon Musk — who has changed the title on his Twitter profile to “chief Twit” — responded Friday afternoon to the brouhaha, tweeting “Ligma Johnson had it coming.”

Earlier in the day, Musk had tweeted “Let the good times roll” and “Comedy is now legal on Twitter.”

On a more serious note, Musk also tweeted Friday that Twitter “will be forming a content moderation council with widely diverse viewpoints. No major content decisions or account reinstatements will happen before that council convenes.”

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Source: Slashdot – Pranksters Posing as Laid-Off Twitter Employees Trick Media Outlets

An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Register: AMD turned to advanced packaging to create chiplet designs and become a formidable CPU player again. Apple used the tech to beef up the power of its M1 Ultra chip. And Intel is pinning its future success on 2D and 3D multi-die packaging technologies as part of its ambitious comeback plan. Now TSMC, the world’s largest contract chipmaker, wants to make chiplet-based products easier and faster to manufacture using its growing toolbox of advanced packaging tech that has already benefited the likes of AMD, Apple, and others. The Taiwanese foundry giant plans to do this through the formation of the 3DFabric Alliance, announced Thursday, which aims to help chip designers implement advanced packaging tech into their plans faster by collaborating with partner companies that are key to the development process.

TSMC’s partners cover several important elements of chip development, from electronic design automation and memory to substrates and testing. As part of the new alliance, they will have early access to TSMC’s 3DFabric portfolio of 3D silicon stacking and advanced packaging technologies. The goal is to allow these partners to build new solutions in parallel with the development of TSMC’s 3DFabric tech so that chip designers can get their hands on the tools, technologies, materials, and other resources necessary to make multi-die chip packages faster. TSMC’s 3DFabric portfolio includes brand-new technology, like system-on-integrated-chips (SoIC), which underpins the 3D V-Cache tech in AMD’s Milan-X and Ryzen 7 5800X3D processors that came out this year. The portfolio also includes older technologies: integrated-fan-out and chip-on-wafer-on-substrate (CoWoS), which have received new iterations over the past several years. Those using CoWoS include Nvidia and Amazon Web Services. Representatives from AMD, Nvidia, and AWS gave support for the new alliance, which is one of several set up by TSMC as part of its Open Innovation Platform initiative. TSMC veep of R&D, LC Lu, said while advanced packaging technologies can “open the door to a new era of chip-level and system-level innovation,” “extensive ecosystem collaboration” is required to “help designers navigate the best path through the myriad options and approaches available to them.”

“Through the collective leadership of TSMC and our ecosystem partners, our 3DFabric Alliance offers customers an easy and flexible way to unlocking the power of 3D [integrated circuits] in their designs,” he added.

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Source: Slashdot – TSMC Wants To Unleash a Flood of Chiplet Designs With 3DFabric Alliance