Cyber security under the spotlight and Apple means business at WWDC

Good afternoon, this is Jane McCallion.

It’s been a big week in cybersecurity, with the MOVEit cyber attack taking center stage, as well as Barracuda Networks’ continued woes. Elsewhere, Apple had some interesting announcements for businesses from WWDC.

More on MOVEit

In case you haven’t been paying attention to the latest in this year’s string of supply chain cyber attacks, MOVEit Transfer – a service that deals with important file transfers for a number of major financial institutions and US federal agencies – had a large swathe of data stolen from its database.

In a post on the dark web, the attackers – identified as ‘Lace Tempest’ (also known as FIN11) by Microsoft – gave victims seven days to contact them and negotiate a payment in exchange for them not leaking the data online.

Which is… odd.

Normally in these cases, cyber criminals contact their victims to extort money from them, not the other way round.

As Connor Jones explores in his write-up , this has led to speculation the attackers may have more data than they can handle and so are unable to contact victims because they don’t really know who they are.

Stay tuned for more on this as the deadline for victims to make contact expires on 14 June.

No respite for Barracuda

Poor Barracuda Networks. Last month, the company identified a critical vulnerability in its email security gateway (ESG) appliances that allowed malicious actors to obtain “unauthorized access to a subset of ESG appliances”. It found that malware had already been installed on a number of these devices, offering would-be attackers unfettered backdoor access to affected systems.

The initial reaction from the company was, as you would expect, to issue a patch for the vulnerability. It seems, however, that this action was not enough and on Tuesday the company said all impacted ESG appliances should be replaced “immediately regardless of patch version level”.

There has been no further detail on why customers should take this action, but if you’re one of those affected you should probably get your skates on.

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Apple means business at WWDC23

Let it never be said that Apple events are just slick presentations of its consumer gadgets and services (although yes, it is also that). The company had some meaty announcements for business at its latest developer conference, WWDC23, too.

The big announcement was the company’s long rumored VR headset, which may strike you as the kind of consumer gadget I dismissed in the previous sentence, but not so quick. The Vision Pro , as it has been called, is a solidly business-focused device. It supports enterprise video conferencing apps such as Teams, Webex, and Zoom and was demoed in a specifically work-focused context, with a worker shown examining 3D visualizations on their desk and working on collaboration apps.

Oh, and it also displays the user’s eyes on the front face of the headset if someone else walks in the room so you can see how immersed they are. This is presumably to avoid a workplace filled with people being accidentally scared by colleagues creeping up on them unseen.

The new M2 Ultra processor also got a shout out, with claims it is capable of locally training large machine models like a large transformer model, which is no mean feat.

More traditional new hardware was also announced in the shape of the firmly business and professional-focused Mac Studio and Mac Pro. Both can be configured with the M2 Ultra or M2 Max.

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