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Jack O'Sullivan
March 25 2021
Welcome to our daily news overview, here’s where we keep you up to date on the latest technology updates, cybersecurity news, and more. Here’s what’s going on in the tech world today:
YouTube is using AI to kick ads up a notch
As if YouTube users weren’t already plagued with ads, the social media giant is taking things to the next level by automatically recommending products that are shown in videos, so that viewers can purchase them straight away.
The app’s Products in Video feature has actually been in the testing phase since April 2020, but a US roll-out is expected to come soon. The feature works by detecting items shown in videos and uses that info to generate a list of related products that are available to buy. These automated suggestions will appear as viewers scroll through the platform.
Between 30 second unskippable ads, 2 minute in-video sponsored shout outs, 10 minute videos with 5 ad breaks in them, and now this – will users find this new feature useful, or will this be the straw that breaks the camel’s back? Read more here.
Oil giant Shell disclosed that it suffered a cyber attack late last year
The Accellion data breach definitely has a lot to answer for; recently, energy company Shell’s parent organisation – Royal Dutch Shell – informed the public that it fell victim to a cyber incident as a result of the transfer appliance’s hack.
The announcement came via RDS’s corporate website, informing customers that they’ve joined Bombardier, Qualys, Kroger, and more on the long list of organisations that were affected by the December attack. How were they affected exactly? Well, this all took place due to a previously-unreported vulnerability within Accellion’s File Transfer tool, leading the cyber criminals to start exfiltrating data. In Shell’s case, the information stolen was a combination of personal data and stakeholder info, but there’s no evidence so far that the attackers managed to infiltrate any other Shell systems – largely due to Accellion’s FTA was isolated from the rest of their corporate network.
The University of Northampton has been severely affected by a recent cyber-attack
As much as organisations hope they’ll be able to bounce straight back from a cyber-attack, or avoid any and all attacks altogether, unfortunately that’s not the case for some. The University of Northampton was one of the unlucky organisations who have been targeted by hackers and are still struggling to recover almost a week later. Cyber-criminals launched an attack on the university’s IT and telephone systems, making communication extremely difficult. This will also severely affect students, as most of which are remote learning, therefore rely on smooth and secure IT systems in order to communicate with their teachers and complete work.
UON released this statement to Twitter: “Our UON phone and IT systems are currently down – we’re so sorry for the inconvenience caused. Our team is working across the network to resolve the issue, and we’ll update as soon as systems are up and running again.” We sincerely hope the organisation is able to recover soon. For more info, check out this article here.
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