37 Years of the Digest ... founded August 21, 1981
Copyright © 2019 E. William Horne. All Rights Reserved.

The Telecom Digest for Mon, 04 Feb 2019
Volume 38 : Issue 35 : "text" format

Table of contents
CenturyLink DNS issue blamed for Microsoft 365 services outage Bill Horne
Google Play apps with >4.3 million downloads stole pics and pushed porn adsMonty Solomon
What Public Safety Agencies Can Do While Waiting for Next Generation 911Bill Horne
Please send posts to telecom-digest.org, with userid set to telecomdigestsubmissions, or via Usenet to comp.dcom.telecom
The Telecom Digest is made possible by generous supporters like John Levine
---------------------------------------------------------------------- Message-ID: <20190203192344.GA1170@telecom.csail.mit.edu> Date: Sun, 3 Feb 2019 14:23:44 -0500 From: Bill Horne <bill@horneQRM.net> Subject: CenturyLink DNS issue blamed for Microsoft 365 services outage Engineers identified a software defect By Julia Talevski A software defect has been blamed for the authentication issue that hit Microsoft 365 services across the globe for three hours on January 30. According to Microsoft, engineers identified a DNS issue with CenturyLink, an external DNS provider. https://www.computerworld.com.au/article/656926/centurylink-dns-issue-blamed-microsoft-365-services-outage/ -- Bill Horne (Remove QRM from my email address to write to me directly) ------------------------------ Message-ID: <C87731F1-6377-42C0-AB1D-0976ED0749E3@roscom.com> Date: 3 Feb 2019 14:25:24 -0500 From: "Monty Solomon" <monty@roscom.com> Subject: Google Play apps with >4.3 million downloads stole pics and pushed porn ads Google has banned dozens of Android apps downloaded millions of times from the official Play Store after researchers discovered they were being used to display phishing and scam ads or perform other malicious acts. A blog post published by security firm Trend Micro listed 29 camera- or photo-related apps, with the top 11 of them fetching 100,000 to 1 million downloads each. One crop of apps caused browsers to display full-screen ads when users unlocked their devices. Clicking the pop-up ads in some cases caused a paid online pornography player to be downloaded, although it was incapable of playing content. The apps were carefully designed to conceal their malicious capabilities. https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2019/02/google-play-apps-with-4-3-million-downloads-stole-pics-and-pushed-porn-ads/ ------------------------------ Message-ID: <20190203192721.GA1202@telecom.csail.mit.edu> Date: Sun, 3 Feb 2019 14:27:21 -0500 From: Bill Horne <bill@horneQRM.net> Subject: What Public Safety Agencies Can Do While Waiting for Next Generation 911 The old system has been the victim of its own success, a software executive argues By Dave Nyczepir People expect that 911 will always be available, until they can't get through. One software executive says public safety departments can learn from the private sector when it comes to making their systems and technology more resilient for when 911 outages occur. https://www.nextgov.com/it-modernization/2019/02/what-public-safety-agencies-can-do-while-waiting-next-generation-911/154604/ -- Bill Horne (Remove QRM from my email address to write to me directly) ------------------------------ ********************************************* End of telecom Digest Mon, 04 Feb 2019

Telecom Digest Archives