ISIS is organizing its cyber efforts, and might move on from amateur attacks to serious recruitment of black hat hackers. Ars Technica is reporting that five separate ISIS-affiliated hacking organizations are now consolidating into one group: the United Cyber Caliphate.
The militant organization’s cyberattacks have been, until now, a largely improvised affair. Five distinct groups have been working on small-scale attacks on vulnerable media, banking, and government targets. You might remember when ISIS hackers took over the social media pages of U.S. Central Command, for example.
The end goal, in attacks like these, is to spread ISIS propaganda and potentially recruit more hackers to the cause. These attacks are high-profile, sure, but not terribly hard to pull off. “ISIS hacked the U.S. Central Command …” sounds impressive, but when you finish the sentence to write “ISIS hacked the U.S. Central Command’s Twitter account”, it all becomes less frightening. It’s less of a massive breach of security and more of an embarrassing oversight on the part of whoever runs the social media accounts. As this XKCD comic points out so well, it’s more like vandalizing a poster hung up by the U.S. government than actually hacking the government.
But this could change, according to a report from Flashpoint, an intelligence firm that specializes in the deep web. They say ISIS’ consolidation also brings a focus on more meaningful attacks.
“Until recently, our analysis of the group’s overall capabilities indicated that they were neither advanced nor did they demonstrate sophisticated targeting,” said Laith Alkhouri, a co-founder of Flashpoint. “With the latest unification of multiple pro-ISIS cyber groups under one umbrella, there now appears to be a higher interest and willingness amongst ISIS supporters in coordinating and elevating cyber attacks against governments and companies.”
The report says that, like much of ISIS, the cyber efforts are likely underfunded, but increasingly ambitious. Attacks on financial institutions are likely to continue, and small-scale attacks on prominent low-hanging-fruit, such as Twitter accounts, will be used to attract talent.
The absolutely absurd idea of putting a touchscreen display on a mouse isn't exactly new. Turtle Beach already did it with its Command Series MC7, which features a 2.25-inch control screen. But apparently, even that wasn't ridiculous enough for Arctic Fox Technologies. Its new Super Mouse looks like someone took the chunky old Atari ST mouse, slapped a touchscreen and scroll wheel on it, and called it an upgrade.
The result is a rather unusual-looking mouse that is now on Kickstarter, starting at $199. And as ridiculous as it looks, some of its features are genuinely intriguing.
Apple is less than a day away from launching its highly anticipated OLED MacBook Pro with a touch-sensitive screen. But it appears that the upgrade is going to cost a pretty penny. According to a report by Bloomberg, Apple is reportedly eyeing a starting price of $2,899 for the 14-inch MacBook Pro, while the 16-inch version could start at $3,399 in the US.
"At $2,899, the 14-inch model would mark the highest starting price for a new MacBook Pro model, surpassing the $2,799 Apple charged for a 17-inch version introduced in 2006," says the report. The report claims that Apple is targeting a minimum price hike of $400 for its upcoming redesigned 14-inch and 16-inch MacBook Pro models.
I've spent a good amount of time digging into the spec sheet of the new M6 MacBook Pro (14-inch), and for all intents and purposes, this is a classic Apple "chip and connectivity" refresh. It's not a full redesign. The chassis, Liquid Retina XDR panel, speakers, ports, and battery, all of them carry over unchanged.
However, the M6 brings more cores, stronger on-device AI, higher memory bandwidth on the larger configs, and modern wireless. Here’s the practical rundown of what actually improved, and whether those gains are worth your money.