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Hackers Breach White House Network
wiredmikey writes: The White House's unclassified computer network was recently breached by intruders, a U.S. official said Tuesday. While the White House has not said so, The Washington Post reported that the Russian government was thought to be behind the act. Several recent reports have linked Russia to cyber attacks, including a report from FireEye on Tuesday that linked Russia back to an espionage campaign dating back to 2007. Earlier this month, iSight Partners revealed that a threat group allegedly linked with the Russian government had been leveraging a Microsoft Windows zero-day vulnerability to target NATO, the European Union, and various private energy and telecommunications organizations in Europe. The group has been dubbed the "Sandworm Team" and it has been using weaponized PowerPoint files in its recent attacks. Trend Micro believes the Sandworm team also has their eyes set on compromising SCADA-based systems.
Powerpoint has been a weapon against clear thinking, preparing for a meeting, and keeping people interested in what you're saying for a long time.
No one has ever cared about what the presenter had to say at meetings.
It just took more effort before Powerpoint - Both by the presenter, who had to actually prepare instead of cutting and pasting Wikipedia into a slideshow; and by the audience, who had to actually look at the presenter (thereby risking eye-contact) rather than glazing over while staring blankly at a projector screen.
Really, we should thank Microsoft for Powerpoint. Instead of meetings dragging on and on and on as the presenter rambles and people ask stupid questions in a futile effort to remain awake, now the meeting only lasts as long as the slideshow, no one asks any stupid questions, and everyone can go back to doing actual work that much sooner.