The latest attack against Microsoft was also carried out as a proof-of-concept by a researcher. Attacks targeting Amazon, Slack, Lyft, and Zillow, by contrast, were malicious, but it’s not clear if they succeeded in executing the malware inside their networks. The npm and PyPi open source code repositories, meanwhile, have been flooded with more than 5,000 proof-of-concept packages, according to Sonatype, a firm that helps customers secure the applications they develop.

“Given the daily volume of suspicious npm packages being picked up by Sonatype’s automated malware detection systems, we only expect this trend to increase, with adversaries abusing dependency confusion to conduct even more sinister activities,” Sonatype researcher Ax Sharma wrote earlier this week.

The recent hack against network tools provider Solar Winds — which compromised the Texas company’s software build system and used it to distribute malicious updates to 18,000 customers — was a stark reminder of the damage that can result from supply-side attacks. Dependency confusion attacks have the potential to inflict even more damage unless developers take precautionary measures.

Exchange essentially works with mail clients like Microsoft Office, ensuring that updates to devices are synchronized. It’s a very widely used product, to say the least. While Microsoft has sought to play down the potential scope of this hack (calling it “limited and targeted” in nature), it is beginning to look like that assessment is actually really, really wrong.

Among the numerous parties to disagree with the “limited and targeted” assessment is the White House, which said Friday that they were “concerned” about the extent of the attack. During a press conference, Biden administration spokesperson Jen Psaki said:

Everyone running these servers — government, private sector, academia — needs to act now to patch them. We are concerned that there are a large number of victims and are working with our partners to understand the scope of this...

In the end, the CDU managed to push the intruders out: The party's technical staff got the website back up by blocking access from outside Germany and specific locations inside the country. Meanwhile, undeterred by the attacks, delegates elected a new party leader through a voting system hosted on a separate server — a safeguard that had been set up to fend off cyberintruders. As Europe's largest economy heads into a string of regional votes that will culminate in a federal election in September, security experts and lawmakers have warned in various interviews that digital risks are on the rise.

A threefold menace: To better understand the cyber threat hanging over Germany's election, it helps to break it down into three categories.

*First, there is hacking: the gaining of unauthorized access to data in a system or computer.

*The disinformation threat: In late February, a Facebook spokeswoman said the company, which has over 43 million users in Germany, had “not seen evidence of ... operations targeting the German election” but added that the company is “staying vigilant” — not least because of the rise of new deepfake technology that lets users produce realistic fake videos in which people appear to do or say things they never did.

*Hybrid attacks: Then there is a third kind of cyberthreat looming over the election: complex operations known as “hybrid attacks.” These combine hacking with the placement of distorted information, and they often start with intruders breaking into the accounts of political decision-makers or their confidants by masquerading as trusted contacts. Such phishing attempts have become more frequent and professional.

The CDC is finalizing guidance for those who have been vaccinated in the United States. Over 82.5 million coronavirus vaccines have been administered as of Thursday.

While the final guidance has yet to be released, it is expected to advise those who have been fully vaccinated to only “have social interactions at small home gatherings with other fully vaccinated people,” per Politico. According to Politico‘s preview, “the guidelines said that vaccinated individuals should continue to adhere to mask and social distancing guidance in public.”

CNN said the CDC confirmed Politico’s description regarding the small, maskless social gatherings. But, according to CNN, the guidelines will not have a pre-pandemic feel.

“It’s not like going back to 2019,” the outlet assessed, urging readers to refrain from tossing their cloth masks. “The guidelines will advise the vaccinated to continue to wear masks in public and keep a good physical distance from others,” the outlet reported, citing infectious disease expert Dr William Schaffner, who said masks “work” and play a key role in fighting virus variants. A Harvard CAPS-Harris poll released this week showed 41 percent of Americans remain unwilling to receive a vaccination for the Wuhan virus.

1. No Biden Press Briefings in over a month. It looks like the last time Joe Biden gave a ‘press briefing’ was on January 25th.

2. Biden schedule not posted online, White House visitor logs a secret. So, who is making the presidential decisions? Who is Biden meeting with? Who are others in his administration meeting with? It’s a shroud of secrecy that America’s failed press isn’t doing enough to penetrate.

3. Biden calls lids, early to bed, takes weekends. President Joe Biden has called numerous “lids,” or early wraps of the day, even amid crises like the Texas freeze disaster.

4. Kamala Harris takes meetings with Heads of State. The National Pulse noted that Biden was missing from a call with French President Emanuel Macron. Harris also spoke with Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau.

5. No State of the Union Address yet. Meanwhile, an astonishing 31 million people tuned into former President Trump’s CPAC speech on Sunday, and that is just online viewership. The running joke on Twitter is that this was America’s ‘real’ State of the Union address.

6. Biden is an executive order-signing machine. President Biden entered office and immediately issued a record-setting flurry of executive orders, which he signed as if he were a human auto-pen.

7. It took nearly 2 weeks to visit Texas. Despite the Texas governor declaring a disaster on February 12, it took until February 26 for Biden to show up in the state amidst warmer weather.

8. Biden forgets names, mask rules. While on his Texas visit, Biden reminded the world once again that his memory seems to be slipping.

9. Biden loses train of thought in mid-sentence. The awkward moment during his Texas visit wasn’t a one-off for Biden. It appears that his ability to keep his train of thought running is diminishing daily.

10. Biden’s campaign was a predictor of all of this. It is not that Biden’s conspicuous absence is coming out-of-the-blue, either. Neither will be the talk of using the 25th Amendment to remove Joe Biden from office; if and when that day comes.

Trump asked at his CPAC speech on Sunday, “Miss me yet?” Millions of Americans are not only missing Donald Trump as president, they are missing what it’s like to have a president at all.

Powering all China’s seapower buildup, unprecedented in recent history, is the world’s largest shipbuilding industry. By funding facilities and training, employing, and rotating workers, Chinese commercial shipbuilding subsidizes and supports military shipbuilding efforts. This is the culmination of a decades-long effort to pursue disciplined, evolving maritime strategy according to a strict hierarchy of priorities. In doing so, Beijing has gone from playing a bad hand relatively well to a good hand extremely well.

Already commanding the world's largest naval force, the People's Republic of China is building modern surface combatants, submarines, aircraft carriers, fighter jets, amphibious assault ships, ballistic nuclear missile submarines, large coast guard cutters, and polar icebreakers at alarming speed. Some of those will be the equal to or better than anything the US or other naval powers can put in the water.

Simultaneously, the US is reaching deep into its pockets in a bid to try and contain Beijing’s regional influence. American military leaders are reportedly looking for an extra $27.4 billion in funding to “establish a network of precision-strike missiles” along the “first island chain” – an archipelago stretching from the islands of Japan into the South China Sea. The rush for armaments already adds to existing military tensions and muscle-flexing in the area, none of which have eased under the presidency of Joe Biden.

As the cornerstone of its “Indo-Pacific” strategy, Washington aims to sustain its own regional and global military supremacy by countering China’s rise with a strategy of military containment around its entire periphery, similar to its approach to Iran and Russia. It might be noted that China’s actual military spending is still far behind that of the United States, both in overall and proportional terms. However, as it is not focused globally, it is able to concentrate it on one contest and pose problems.

The spread of the Wuhan coronavirus was accompanied by a matching spread of “excessive surveillance, discriminatory restrictions on freedoms like movement and assembly, and arbitrary or violent enforcement of such restrictions by police and nonstate actors,” which is tantamount to saying the CCP’s worldview and ideology spread along with its virus. A growing number of ruling regimes took advantage of the coronavirus to “quash opposition and fortify their power,” and China is the world leader in exports for opposition-quashing tactics and technologies.

Just a few days ago, Chinese state media argued the West should stop criticizing Beijing’s ruthless oppression of pro-democracy protesters in Hong Kong because those demonstrators are criminals just like the January 6 Capitol Hill rioters.

“The case of postwar Germany makes it clear that western fears about a Nazi return to power were far from unfounded and that the concerns about a Fourth Reich served a useful function in making people vigilant about defending against such a possibility,” said Rosenfeld in an exchange with The Times of Israel. In Rosenfeld’s assessment, today the idea of a Fourth Reich has entered an unprecedented heyday.

“The Fourth Reich is currently experiencing a new phase of normalization,” wrote Rosenfeld, whose latest book was published in March. “Thanks to the tumultuous political upheaval throughout the western world, the concept is becoming increasingly universalized. The election of Donald Trump, the many unending conflicts in the Middle East, and the continuing crisis of the European Union have made the prospect of a future Reich highly relevant.”

In Europe, according to Rosenfeld, the prospect of a Fourth Reich is raised by European Union critics on both the Left and Right: Some claim Germany has turned the EU into a kind of economic Reich. The concept of a Fourth Reich, wrote Rosenfeld, is “invoked in times of crisis and [fades] in times of stability.”

Los Angeles and Southern California have lots of company in this respect. The state and the West are gripped by persistent drought, including large areas of exceptional drought in the Southwest, where the 2020 monsoon was a no-show, as the most recent US Drought Monitor report shows. Many water agencies are discussing water conservation measures, and the North Marin Water District is considering voluntary and mandatory water conservation orders.

In the big picture, the drought in the West can be seen as a long-term event, interspersed with a few wet years, that has continued over the last two decades. The longer it lasts, the worse it gets, as climatologist Bill Patzert points out. It affects groundwater and the wildfire situation, and the effects build over time.