Nadella has lost the plot calling Copilot an OS again - it’s a web app on Windows 11!

Satya Nadella has once again called Copilot a “new OS for work” when it is clearly an app, and that too a web app. As spotted by Windows Latest, this time the analogy comes in a leadership update, less than a week after Microsoft unveiled the latest Copilot, which was when the CEO first called Copilot an OS, at least on X.

"We’re building Copilot as a new OS for work that spans every model, every form factor, and every task. Today, we’re announcing our biggest update to Copilot to date"

I already have the “new” Copilot app on my PC, albeit without Home, Code, or Autopilot, because they are still not out yet. This app, however, is the replacement for the terribly named Microsoft 365 Copilot app, and you can get it too if you update it in the Microsoft Store.

Well, the thing Nadella keeps calling an OS is a regular Windows app, and when I went through the installation folder of build 154.0.4258.37, I found that copilotapp.exe is a rebranded Microsoft Edge launcher with a complete Chromium build behind it.

Microsoft is talking about a new operating system for work, but it’s actually an app on Windows 11 that runs in a browser. This is some Inception-level stuff! READ MORE...

www.windowslatest.com

What is Claude Mythos & why Anthropic won’t let anyone use it

An Anthropic engineer with zero security training asked Claude Mythos to find remote code execution bugs overnight. He woke up to a complete working exploit.

That’s the kind of model Anthropic announced on April 7. Claude Mythos Preview is, by every published benchmark, the most capable AI model ever built. It scores 93.9% on SWE-bench Verified, 97.6% on the USAMO math olympiad, and 83.1% on CyberGym. It found zero-day vulnerabilities in every major operating system and every major web browser. Fully autonomously. No human guidance needed.

Anthropic’s response to building it: don’t release it. Instead, the company launched Project Glasswing, a cybersecurity defense initiative that gives the model to Amazon, Apple, Google, Microsoft, Nvidia, CrowdStrike, JPMorgan Chase, Cisco, Broadcom, Palo Alto Networks, and the Linux Foundation. About 40 additional organizations that maintain critical software infrastructure also get access. Anthropic is committing $100 million in usage credits and $4 million in direct donations to open-source security organizations.

This is the first time a leading AI lab has built a frontier model and simultaneously decided the public cannot use it. READ MORE...

www.forbes.com

Web push notification scams and how to block them

 

Seeing pop ups similar to the above in the bottom right corner -or- filling up the right hand side of your screen? You are almost certainly seeing what is known as a Web Browser Notification Scam.

What is a Browser Notification Scam? A browser notification scam consists of fake messages that look like real notifications from websites. These scams deceive users into clicking on links that could direct them to harmful websites, phishing schemes, or malware downloads. The notifications often imitate real alerts, such as system updates, subscription confirmations, or attractive offers, making them hard to spot initially.

What is a Browser Notification? Browser notifications are messages that websites send to your device, typically showing up as pop-ups or alerts in the corner of your screen. These notifications can offer helpful information, like social media updates, reminders, or news alerts. When you visit a site that requests permission to send notifications, you’ll usually see a prompt asking if you want to allow or block these messages. While legitimate notifications can enhance your online experience, scammers have found ways to exploit this feature for malicious purposes.

Need a hand resolving this? Contact Donline.

www.trendmicro.com

Bots can now can complete CAPTCHAs quicker than humans!

 

Completely Automated Public Turing test to tell Computers and Humans Apart – better known as the ubiquitous CAPTCHA we see standing athwart the doors to many websites – may now be a misnomer as researchers have found that computers are much better at completing them.

The bot defense measure dates back to 1997 and the tortured acronym 2003, with the technology starting out as a distorted series of letters and/or numbers. Google's implementation, reCAPTCHA, eventually did away with much of these shenanigans to make the browser identify low-risk human users in the background, but the image verification method still pops up occasionally if risk cannot be ascertained.

Normal people see them as a time-waster, web devs see them as a crucial defence against bots, and criminals see them just as another obstacle to be hurdled.

"We do know for sure that they are very much unloved. We didn't have to do a study to come to that conclusion," team lead Gene Tsudik of the University of California, Irvine, told New Scientist. "But people don't know whether that effort, that colossal global effort that is invested into solving CAPTCHAs every day, every year, every month, whether that effort is actually worthwhile."

Thanks to the inexorable march of progress, the answer appears to be no.

Having found that 120 of the 200 most popular websites used CAPTCHA tests of one sort or another, the team enlisted 1,000 people of all ages, sexes, location, and education, and got them to each perform 10 CAPTCHA tests on these sites.

They then compared their successes to those of a number of bots coded by researchers and published in journals for the purpose of beating CAPTCHA tests. The results make for embarrassing reading: for distorted text fields: humans took 9-15 seconds with an accuracy of just 50-84 percent. Bots, on the other hand, beat the tests in less than a second with 99.8 percent accuracy.

www.theregister.com

Google Chrome to warn when installed extensions are malware

Google is testing a new feature in the Chrome browser that will warn users when an installed extension has been removed from the Chrome Web Store, usually indicative of it being malware. An unending supply of unwanted browser extensions is published on the Chrome Web Store and promoted through popup and redirect ads.

These extensions are made by scam companies and threat actors who use them to inject advertisements, track your search history, redirect you to affiliate pages, or in more severe cases, steal your Gmail emails and Facebook accounts.

The problem is that these extensions are churned out quickly, with the developers releasing new ones just as Google removes old ones from the Chrome Web Store.

Unfortunately, if you installed one of these extensions, they will still be installed in your browser, even after Google detects them as malware and removes them from the store.

Due to this, Google is now bringing its Safety Check feature to browser extensions, warning Chrome users when an extension has been detected as malware or removed from the store and that they should be uninstalled from the browser. This feature will go live in Chrome 117.

www.bleepingcomputer.com

Apple releases iOS, iPadOS and macOS security fixes for two zero-days under active attack

Apple released surprise software updates for iPhones, iPads and Macs on Wednesday that fix two security vulnerabilities known by Apple to be actively exploited by attackers.

The two vulnerabilities were found in WebKit, the browser engine that powers Safari and other apps, and the kernel, essentially the core of the operating system. The two flaws affect both iOS and iPadOS and macOS Monterey.

Apple said the WebKit bug could be exploited if a vulnerable device accessed or processed “maliciously crafted web content [that] may lead to arbitrary code execution,” while the second bug allowed a malicious application “to execute arbitrary code with kernel privileges,” which means full access to the device. The two flaws are believed to be related.

Some successful exploits, such as powerful nation-state spyware, use two or more vulnerabilities in conjunction to break through a device’s layers of protections. It’s not uncommon for attackers to first target a vulnerability in the device’s browser as a way to break into the wider operating system, granting the attacker wide access to the user’s sensitive data.

www.techcrunch.com

Coming soon: Google Chrome to no longer show secure website indicators

 

Google Chrome will no longer show whether a site you are visiting is secure and only show when you visit an insecure website.

For years, Google has been making a concerted effort to push websites into using HTTPS to provide a more secure browsing experience.

To further push web developers into only using HTTPS on their sites, Google introduced the protocol as a ranking factor. Those not hosting a secure site got a potentially minor hit in their Google search results rankings.

It has appeared to have worked as according to the 'HTTPS encryption on the web' of Google's Transparency Report, over 90% of all browser connections in Google Chrome currently use an HTTPS connection.

Currently, when you visit a secure site, Google Chrome will display a little locked icon indicating that your communication with the site is encrypted, as shown below:

As most website communication is now secure, Google is testing a new feature that removes the lock icon for secure sites. This feature is available to test in Chrome 93 Beta, and Chrome 94 Canary builds by enabling the 'Omnibox Updated connection security indicators' flag. With this feature enabled, Google Chrome will only display security indicators when the site is not secure.

www.bleepingcomputer.com

Microsoft puts PCs in the cloud with Windows 365

Microsoft is putting Windows in the cloud. Windows 365 is a new service that will let businesses access Cloud PCs from anywhere, streaming a version of Windows 10 or Windows 11 in a web browser. While virtualization and remote access to PCs has existed for more than a decade, Microsoft is betting on Windows 365 to offer Cloud PCs to businesses just as they shift toward a mix of office and remote work.

Windows 365 will work on any modern web browser or through Microsoft’s Remote Desktop app, allowing users to access their Cloud PC from a variety of devices. “Windows 365 provides an instant-on boot experience,” according to Wangui McKelvey, a general manager for Microsoft 365. This instant access lets workers stream their Windows session with all of their same apps, tools, data, and settings across Macs, iPads, Linux machines, and Android devices. “You can pick up right where you left off, because the state of your Cloud PC remains the same, even when you switch devices,” explains McKelvey.

www.theverge.com

Firefox 89: Can this redesign stem browser's decline?

 

Mozilla has released Firefox 89, proclaiming it a "fresh new Firefox," though it comes amid a relentless decline in market share.

Firefox matters more than most web browsers, because it uses its own browser engine, called Quantum, and its own JavaScript engine, called SpiderMonkey. By contrast, most other browsers, including Chrome and Chromium, Edge, Brave, Opera, and Vivaldi use the Google-sponsored Blink engine, while Apple's Safari uses WebKit (from which Blink was forked). The existence of multiple independent implementations is important for web standards, helping to prevent a single vendor from pushing through changes without consensus, and ensuring that the standards are coherent.

A glance at a statistics site like W3Counter is telling. In April 2008, Microsoft enjoyed a 63 per cent market share with Internet Explorer, and with Firefox performing strongly behind it at 29.3 per cent. By April 2010, IE was down to 48.6 per cent, Firefox up to 32.7 per cent, and Google's newer Chrome was starting to make an impact, at 8.3 per cent.

In April 2012, the three were almost on a par, though Chrome (26.8 per cent) had overtaken Firefox (25 per cent). Today, Chrome is at 65.3 per cent, Safari second at 16.7 per cent, IE and Edge has 5.7 per cent, and Firefox has just 4.1 per cent share. 

Despite numerous updates, Mozilla's browser has declined from 6.1 per cent share a year ago. Statcounter tells a similar story, reporting a 3.59 per cent share for Firefox, down from 4.21 per cent a year ago.

www.theregister.com

Microsoft is finally retiring Internet Explorer in 2022

Microsoft is finally retiring Internet Explorer next year, after more than 25 years. The aging web browser has largely been unused by most consumers for years, but Microsoft is putting the final nail in the Internet Explorer coffin on the 15th June 2022, by retiring it in favour of Microsoft Edge.

“We are announcing that the future of Internet Explorer on Windows 10 is in Microsoft Edge,” says Sean Lyndersay, a Microsoft Edge program manager. “The Internet Explorer 11 desktop application will be retired and go out of support on June 15, 2022, for certain versions of Windows 10.”

www.theverge.com

Still using Internet Explorer 11? Really? Another reason to move to a modern Web Browser...

 

Last year, Google announced that Google Workspace will officially stop supporting Internet Explorer 11 (IE11) on March 15, 2021. 

To avoid any possible disruptions in service, such as degraded performance or security vulnerabilities, please be sure to switch to a different browser before that date.

Donline says: use this one!

www.googleblog.com

Introducing Microsoft Editor - bring out your best writer wherever you write

Bring out your best writer anywhere you write with Microsoft Editor, your intelligent writing assistant. Many of us are working or attending school remotely, and with so much communication happening through writing it is more important than ever that we communicate clearly. Microsoft Editor, an AI-powered service that enables you to write with confidence in 20+ languages, can help. Write polished prose, craft impressive emails, and post on your favorite sites like LinkedIn, Gmail, Facebook, and more.

Anyone can access the essential Editor capabilities, such as spelling and basic grammar across Word, Outlook.com, and the web for free with a Microsoft sign-in. However, Microsoft 365 Personal and Family subscribers have access to advanced grammar and style refinements. Clarity, conciseness, formal language, vocabulary suggestions, and much more are included with your subscription.

Optimized for where you write most, Editor will be available in three main places: documents (Word for the web and desktop), email (Outlook.com and Outlook for the web), and across the web (through our new browser extension). While Editor will be available to help everyone with the basics for free, for Microsoft 365 users there are some additional powerful features that vary by endpoint.

www.microsoft.com

Threats to the security of Google Chrome - propagated by Google's own Web Store!

Efforts to manipulate installation counts in Chrome Web Store extension listings appear to be alive and well, despite a developer's personal crusade to call attention to the problem.

Julio Marin Torres has been highlighting suspiciously popular Chrome extensions since January in posts to the Chromium Extensions forum, trying to get Googler to enforce their store policies.

In an email to The Register, he said Google has taken some action since his initial posts on the subject, but the problem has only gotten worse since then. "Something has to change," he said. "I think this hurts the entire Chrome Store developer and user community."

There are still thousands of extensions in the Chrome Web Store that artificially inflate their user count statistics, to make store visitors more inclined to believe the extensions are widely used and trustworthy.

Google Chrome is a great Web browser, but there are a number of vectors out there that can turn chrome from a great tool, into a misery! Extensions & Notifications are the biggest threats that I have to deal with on behalf of my clients. Have problems with Chrome? Contact Donline.

www.theregister.co.uk

The true cost of cheap phones: Xiaomi harvesting user data - transmitting it to remote servers!

Security researcher Gabi Cirlig has discovered that his Redmi Note 8 usage habits were being tracked and sent to servers hosted by Alibaba in Singapore and Russia that have been rented by Xiaomi. This included the folders he opened on his phone, the screens he swiped to including the status bar and the settings menu. As if that was not enough, Xiaomi was even tracking what music Cirlig was listening to using the default music player on his Redmi phone.

The security researcher also found that whenever he browsed the web using Xiaomi's default browser app, it kept a record of all the websites he visited, search engine queries, and the items viewed on the browser's newsfeed. More worryingly, the behavior continued even when using the incognito mode in the browser. The security researcher found the same tracking code in other Xiaomi phones as well including premium models like the Redmi K20, Mi 10, and Mi Mix 3.

www.neowin.net

The all new Microsoft Edge Web Browser is available to download now!

It's time to expect more. The new Microsoft Edge is now available for download on all supported versions of Windows, macOS, Android and iOS in more than ninety languages.

Insiders, thank you for joining our journey to build the new Microsoft Edge. There have been millions of downloads of the prerelease builds by the Microsoft Edge community. We couldn't have done it without you. We will continue to engage with the Insider community to make Microsoft Edge the browser that puts the web to work for you.

So, what's the difference between old & new Edge? On 6th December 2018, Microsoft announced its intent to base Edge on the Chromium source code, using the same rendering engine as Google Chrome but with "enhancements" developed by Microsoft.

www.microsoft.com

Stop everything. Update Firefox now!

Do you use the Firefox web browser? You need to update it, now!

The United States Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) has issued an advisory urging users and administrators to upgrade their versions of Firefox (the latest version at the time of writing is 72.0.1).

The reason? Mozilla, the makers of Firefox, has identified (and, in version 72.0.1, patched) a zero-day vulnerability in Firefox that could allow an attacker to take control of users’ computers.

According to Mozilla the vulnerability was detected in exploits seen in-the-wild.

So, don’t dilly-dally and update your version of Firefox to make sure that you are protected.

www.grahamcluley.com

Avast and AVG extensions pulled from Chrome - criticised for excessive data collection

Google Chrome is the latest browser to drop AVG and Avast extensions after reports of excessive data snooping.

Back in October, a blog post from Wladimir Palant, founder and CTO at AdBlock Plus, highlighted that browser extensions created by the two security firms were hoovering up more data than necessary to function, especially versus rivals such as Google Safe Browsing. That data, according to the post, included user ID, where you're located, and how you got to a specific page.

After that report, Mozilla and Opera both pulled the AVG and Avast extensions, though the former reinstated one set of add-ons after changes to data collection were made. Google has now reportedly also followed that lead, removing the questionable extensions.

"I didn't expect to publish this update any more, but Avast extensions are now gone from Chrome Web Store as well," Palant tweeted. "Only AVG Online Security remains for some reason. Way to go Google!" The latter has 3,582 users, according to the Google Web Store.

Avast, which bought AVG in 2016, had not replied to a request for comment at the time of publishing.

www.itpro.co.uk

Introducing the new Microsoft Edge and Bing

In our mission to empower people with knowledge with Microsoft 365, one critical opportunity is the internet. We know that 60% of the time people spend on the PC is within the web browser, and it has become the primary way we work, learn and play. The internet has become an everyday utility, that we reach for automatically without thinking, yet two decades after its introduction, we are bumping into challenges and obstacles that raise questions for us.

• Is our data safe and our privacy protected as we surf the web?
• At work, why can’t we find our internal company information, like our pay stub or co-worker’s office location, right from within our browser or search engine like we do with web search?
• Why can’t the web work more seamlessly with the productivity tools we know like Office 365 so that we can be more productive with our research and collaborate with others?

At Microsoft, we believe it is time to expect more from your web experience whether you are using it for personal or business use, an IT manager in a company, or a web developer. Today we begin with a focus on people in businesses and introduce the new Microsoft Edge and Microsoft Bing – the browser and search engine for business.

Microsoft today announced that the new Microsoft Edge is expected to be generally available starting January 15, 2020. We are also excited to introduce our new look! To learn more about these announcements, click below:

www.windows.com

Slashdot poll: what web browser do techies use?

A web browser (commonly referred to as a browser) is a software application for accessing information on the World Wide Web. Each individual web page, image, and video is identified by a distinct Uniform Resource Locator (URL), enabling browsers to retrieve these resources from a web server and display them on a user's device.

As of March 2019, more than 4.3 billion people use a browser, which is about 55% of the world’s population. The most popular browsers are Chrome, Firefox, Safari, Internet Explorer, and Edge.

Slashdot is one of the most popular sites for techies. This poll gives some indication of what web browser us techies use. BTW - I use Chrome most of the time, then Edge & Firefox for testing. 

www.slashdot.org

The WWW is 30 years old today! What now? A Contract for the Web

The World Wide Web (WWW), commonly known as the Web, is an information space where documents and other web resources are identified by Uniform Resource Locators (URLs, such as https://www.donline.co.uk/), which may be interlinked by hypertext, and are accessible via the Internet. The resources of the WWW may be accessed by users via a software application called a web browser. 

30 years ago today (12th March 1989), Tim Berners-Lee coded the foundational technologies for the World Wide Web.

The web was designed to bring people together and make knowledge freely available. Everyone has a role to play to ensure the web serves humanity. By committing to these principles, governments, companies and citizens around the world can help protect the open web as a public good and a basic right for everyone.

Read more, & sign up here to make the Web better for everyone:

www.contractfortheweb.org