TechPression

Tag: Github

  • Don’t fall victim: How to spot and avoid phishing scams targeting AppleCare+

    Don’t fall victim: How to spot and avoid phishing scams targeting AppleCare+

    AppleCare+ users looking for help or an extended warranty have been the target of a malicious operation. Scammers easily create fake messages that look a lot like real Apple emails, notifications, or help requests.

    Google advertising is used to trick people into visiting counterfeit GitHub websites owned by Microsoft. To steal money from careless people, scammers pose as Apple staff and use social engineering.

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    How do scams operate effectively? 

    This scam starts when users search for Apple support online. Google, which reportedly paid Apple $20 billion as the default search engine, displays adverts on Safari due to a profitable arrangement.

    These “Sponsored” results may show above authentic Apple contact information. In certain circumstances, many fraudulent adverts precede accurate results.

    When users click on these misleading advertisements, they are taken to a bogus page that claims to be the AppleCare+ customer assistance page. Users are encouraged to phone a toll-free number that is assumed to be associated with Apple on this page.

    On the other hand, victims are instantly connected to fraudsters operating from call centres in other countries. GitHub hosts the false customer support pages, which are standalone HTML templates that use Apple’s branding. This gives the impression that the pages are authentic.

    Scammers exploit GitHub: stay informed

    The scammers use Multiple GitHub accounts with fake templates that fool users with Apple branding. According to GitHub’s commit history, scammers can easily shift phone numbers during active campaigns if reported and blocked.

    These pages contain “autoDial,” an intriguing piece of code that opens the phone dialogue menu, decreasing the number of clicks victims need to connect with Apple impersonators.

    As a result of this problem, GitHub shut down the accounts that were reported as being criminal. One problem that keeps coming up is how easy it is for scammers to make new accounts and themes.

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    Fraud Prevention: Staying One Step Ahead 

    Malwarebytes says this scam is especially dangerous because it uses harmful Google ads and fake pages that look like the real thing.

    Scammers use users’ loyalty to Apple’s brand to trick them into thinking they are speaking with real support representatives. Financially, victims may be duped out of hundreds or thousands of dollars, so the risks are substantial.

    Scammers typically want victims to withdraw money from their bank accounts and pay it to them.

    Fakers may ask for the victim’s name, address, social security number, and banking information. With this information, criminals can commit identity theft or blackmail.

    Cybercriminals are trying to trick AppleCare+ users with malicious links. Mind you, scammers are constantly changing how they trick people, but if you stay thoughtful and careful, you will have a much lower chance of falling for these schemes.

  • GitHub to implement remote work policy, 10% layoffs

    GitHub to implement remote work policy, 10% layoffs

    Git software development and version control hosting provider GitHub have said it would lay off 10% of its staff by the end of the 2023 fiscal year. Approximately 300 workers are affected by this.

    To implement “new budgetary realignments, designed to protect the short-term health of our business while simultaneously affording us the capacity to invest in our long-term strategy,” as stated by CEO Thomas Dohmke, layoffs were implemented.

    Due to low utilisation and an embrace of the remote-first culture, the Microsoft-owned company claims it will likewise be closing all of its physical offices and turning 100% remote.

    In 2008, Tom Preston-Werner, P. J. Hyett, Chris Wanstrath, and Scott Chacon created GitHub. While Microsoft purchased the company and its assets for $7.5 billion in 2018, the community, platform, and business continued to function independently.

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    A Message from GitHub’s CEO to Staff 

    CEO Thomas Dohmke sent out an email to staff on February 9, 2023, which may be viewed below.

    “Today, we are announcing a number of difficult decisions, including saying goodbye to some Hubbers and enacting new budgetary realignments, designed to protect the short-term health of our business while also granting us the capacity to invest in our long-term strategy. With great respect for Hubbers, I first want to be clear about why we are making these decisions and what it means for GitHub’s future.

    Sustained growth is important for every business. For GitHub, this means that we continue to enable more productive developers across the globe and move quickly as our opportunities to help our customers change. Today, we are the home of 100M developers, and we must become the developer-first engineering system for the world of tomorrow. The age of AI has started and we have been leading this change with GitHub Copilot, our most successful product launch to date. We have an enormous opportunity to build an integrated, AI-powered GitHub with urgency. We must continue to help our customers grow and thrive with GitHub, expedite and simplify their cloud adoption journey, while supporting them every day. This will require strong focus and changes to how and where we invest our finite resources.

    To start, we will align our work with the areas where we can best impact these goals and our customers’ needs across all of our products. Unfortunately, this will include changes that will result in a reduction of GitHub’s workforce by up to 10% through the end of FY23. A number of Hubbers will receive notifications today, others will follow as we are re-aligning the business through the end of FY23. The hiring pause that I announced on January 18 remains in effect.

    Although our entire leadership team has carefully deliberated this step and come to agreement, ultimately, as CEO the decision is mine. I recognize this will be difficult on you all, and we will approach this period with the utmost respect for every Hubber. We will speak with impacted Hubbers so that they understand the transition compensation and COBRA/COBRA equivalent (outside the US) that will be provided. Career transition services assistance benefits will also be offered.

    Additionally, we have been working to improve our operational efficiency and scale as a business. One of our decisions is to move toward a fully remote GitHub. We are seeing very low utilization rates in our offices around the world, and this decision is a testament to the success of our long-standing remote-first culture. We are not vacating offices immediately, but will move to close all of our offices as their leases end or as we are operationally able to do so. We will share more workplace details and transition plans with you as they are finalized.

    We are looking at further reducing our operating costs. We will share details and transition plans with you in the coming months, but I wanted to share two decisions with you: i) Effective immediately, we will be moving laptop refreshes from three years to four years. ii) We will be moving to Microsoft Teams for the sole purpose of video conferencing, saving significant costs and simplifying cross-company and customer conversations. This move will be complete by September 1, 2023. We will remain on Slack as our day-to-day collaboration tool.

    Finally, I want to extend my deepest gratitude to every single Hubber and their incredible talents that have helped GitHub grow to where we are today. Every commit you have made and every day you have worked has helped construct GitHub into the largest and most important software development platform. Thank you for your dedication, resilience, and passion to empower millions of software developers around the globe“.

    About GitHub 

    GitHub is a commercial enterprise that provides a hosted Git repository service in the cloud. More simply put, it simplifies the process of using Git for version control and team collaboration.

    Because of GitHub’s intuitive design, even inexperienced programmers can benefit from using Git. The absence of GitHub from the Git workflow means that its users must have a higher level of technical expertise and comfort with the command line in order to use Git effectively.

    However, GitHub is so intuitive that some individuals use it to manage non-software projects, such as authoring novels. Also, it’s free for anyone to sign up and host a public code repository, thus, open-source projects tend to gravitate toward GitHub.

    GitHub’s business model is predicated on the sale of business plans that streamline the process of managing team members and security, as well as hosted private code repositories. At Kinsta, we rely heavily on the project management and advanced capabilities of Github.

  • Number of Russian Developer’s Accounts Suspended By Github.

    Number of Russian Developer’s Accounts Suspended By Github.

    Github began blocking accounts associated with developers and organizations sanctioned by the US government in response to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine on April 13. The San Francisco-based corporation has joined other top technology companies to withdraw or suspend Russia operations.

    Jetbrains ceased sales and R&D activity in Russia and Belarus indefinitely in response to their assault against Ukraine in early March 2022. In the same month, Google stopped licensing Russian-made BQ devices to run on Android, owned by Google Inc. This was in response to US sanctions imposed on the Russian government. Visa and Mastercard have also pulled out of Russia.


    About Github Censorship


    Github Inc. provides hosting for Git-based software development and version management. It also includes Git’s distributed version control and source code management features.

    Russian software developers have reported that their Github accounts have been suspended without notice or explanation. The victims are developers who are currently or have previously worked for corporations and organizations sanctioned by the US.

     

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    For example, Sberbank Technology, Sberbank AI Lab, and Alfa-Bank Laboratory Github account with disabled repositories have been removed from the platform.

    This has impacted other Russian developers. Victims who do not work for sanctioned organizations, on the other hand, can file an appeal via email.


    It’s About Compliance with Sanctions


    The decision to suspend Russian accounts runs counter to their previous declaration. GitHub has claimed earlier that its vision is to be the home for all developers. This includes those residing in Russia, indicating that no significant restrictions are in the works.

     

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    Github is now attempting to comply with the newly enacted US laws. The new restrictions make it illegal to export any technology from the United States to Russia. “At the same time, we are taking steps to support our platform and comply with the many government mandates you’ve certainly read about in this battle,” the business writes.


    “Our legal team thoroughly studies such demands, and we comply with export restrictions and trade legislation as they evolve.” This includes enacting rigorous new export regulations to severely limit Russia’s access to technologies and other items required to sustain its aggressive military capabilities.”