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Alaska Airlines has resumed operations after the failure of a critical piece of hardware forced the airline to ground all its flights for approximately three hours, but the effects will linger into Monday, the company announced. The carrier issued a system-wide ground stop for Alaska Airlines and Horizon Air flights around 8 p.m. Pacific time Sunday. The stop was lifted at 11 p.m., the Seattle-based company said in a social media post. More than 150 flights have been canceled since Sunday evening, including 64 Monday. The airline said a critical piece of multi-redundant hardware at our data centers, manufactured by a third-party, experienced an unexpected failure. That affected several of the airlines key systems, but hacking was not involved, and the airline said the incident was not related to any other events like the attack involving Microsoft’s servers over the weekend or the recent cybersecurity event at its Hawaiian Airlines subsidiary in June. We appreciate the patience of our guests whose travel plans have been disrupted. Were working to get them to their destinations as quickly as we can, the airline said in a statement. The airline also said it is working with its vendor to replace the hardware at the data center. Alaska Airlines led all airlines in cancellations Monday, according to the FlightAware website. Many of the cancellations were at the airline’s major hub of Seattle, but it also canceled flights at airports all over the country. The Federal Aviation Administration website had confirmed a ground stop for all Alaska Airlines mainline and Horizon aircraft, referring to an Alaska Airlines subsidiary. But the FAA referred all questions to the airline Monday. The National Transportation Board last month credited the crew of Alaska Airlines flight 1282 with the survival of passengers when a door plug panel flew off the plane shortly after takeoff on Jan. 5, 2024, leaving a hole that sucked objects out of the cabin. In September, Alaska Airlines said it grounded its flights in Seattle briefly due to significant disruptions from an unspecified technology problem that was resolved within hours. John Funk, AP business writer
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E-Commerce
On July 19, Microsoft alerted users that it was experiencing an active cyberattack on its SharePoint servers, which allow organizations to share and manage documents. According to The Washington Post, the attackwhich is still ongoinghas likely put tens of thousands of servers at risk, including several hosted by federal agencies, universities, and energy companies, which have reportedly already been breached. According to a blog posted by Microsoft, the hack only impacts SharePoint servers housed within an organization, and not those in the cloud through SharePoint Online in Microsoft 365. For Microsoft, this latest breach comes after a series of other security concerns in recent years. Last January, the tech giant reported that hackers backed by Russia had successfully stolen some of the companys source code, and, the following April, a federal review board found that Microsoft was at fault for security flaws that led to a Chinese hack of U.S. government officials emails. Heres what to know about this latest hack: Whats happened? The Netherlands-based research company Eye Security was the first to identify what it called large-scale exploitation of a new SharePoint remote-code execution (RCE) vulnerability chain in the wild on the evening of July 18. The hack was whats known as a zero-day attack, meaning it took advantage of a previously unknown hole in Microsofts security system, leaving the company without any immediate way to patch the problem. Eye Securitys report found dozens of systems actively compromised between two waves of attack on July 18 and July 19. Per the firms findings, the bug allows hackers to take private digital keys from SharePoint without any login credentials, enter an organizations servers, remotely plant malware, and gain access to the available files and data. Further, Eye Security warned, because SharePoint connects with other apps like Outlook and Teams, a breach can quickly lead to data theft, password harvesting, and lateral movement across the network. Both the U.S. Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) and Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) have confirmed that theyre actively working to assess the hack. The party (or parties) responsible is still unknown. Who has been impacted so far? According to a blog post from CISA on July 20, the scope of the hack is unclear so far. However, several private researchers informed The Washington Post that the impact could be widespread. Pete Renals, a senior manager with the cybersecurity research firm Unit 42, told the publication, We are seeing attempts to exploit thousands of SharePoint servers globally before a patch is available. We have identified dozens of compromised organizations spanning both commercial and government sectors. Multiple anonymous researchers claimed that at least two U.S. federal agencies have seen their servers breached. Further, Randy Rose, the vice president of the nonprofit Center for Internet Security, shared that the organization notified about 100 organizationsincluding public schools and universitiesthat they were vulnerable and potentially compromised. Anybody whos got a hosted SharePoint server has got a problem, Adam Meyers, senior vice president with the cybersecurity firm CrowdStrike, told The Washington Post. Its a significant vulnerability. What is Microsoft doing about this? After its initial announcement of the hack on July 19, Microsoft followed up on July 20 with several updates. The company rolled out emergency patches for users of SharePoint Subscription Edition and SharePoint 2019, which can be downloaded right away. As of this writing, developers are still working to devise patches for supported versions of SharePoint 2019, as well as SharePoint 2016. What should I do if my organization hosts a SharePoint server? In an email to TechCrunch, Michael Sikorski, the head of Unit 42, advised that any organization with SharePoint on-premise should assume that you have been compromised at this point. To mitigate potential attacks, Microsoft suggests the following steps: Use supported versions of on-premises SharePoint Server Apply the latest security updates, including the July 2025 Security Update Ensure the Antimalware Scan Interface (AMSI) is turned on and configured correctly, with an appropriate antivirus solution such as Defender Antivirus Deploy Microsoft Defender for Endpoint protection, or equivalent threat solutions Rotate SharePoint Server ASP.NET machine keys Microsofts blog post provides detailed instructions on how to follow each of these directives. When reached for additional comment on the hack, Microsoft directed Fast Company back to the blog.
Category:
E-Commerce
Watch out, AMC. There’s a new meme stock on the market. Shares in Opendoor Technologies Inc. (Nasdaq: OPEN) have been on fire over the past week. Since Tuesday, July 15, OPEN stock has surged more than 188% as of Fridays market close. And today, OPENs stock price is currently up an additional 27% in premarket trading. Heres why, and what you need to know about the company. What is Opendoor Technologies Inc? Opendoor is a real estate tech company based in San Francisco, California. It was founded in 2014. The company offers an online platform that allows homeowners to quickly sell their homes by providing details about the property. After the homeowners answer questions about their property, Opendoor will make them an offer to buy it directly. Once Opendoor purchases a home from a user, it will then often make necessary improvements to the home and then sell it to a buyer for a profit. In other words, Opendoor is a house-flipping company. It buys houses on the cheap, fixes them up, and flips them for a profit. Opendoor went public through a special purpose acquisition company (SPAC) in 2020, and it currently trades on the Nasdaq. Whats the story behind OPENs stock price? Less than a year after OPEN stock publicly debuted on the Nasdaq, its shares surged. OPENs stock price went from around $11 per share in July 2020 to nearly $40 a share at one point in February 2021, according to data from Yahoo Finance. But since then, the stock has cratered. By the end of 2022, CNBC notes, OPEN shares had fallen 92% to just $1.16 each. Opendoors stock price fell due to the companys business prospects, which got pummelled by rising interest rates, increasing Opendoors borrowing costs. At the same time, rising interest rates led to a slowdown in the housing market, as demand for home buying slowed. Recently, OPEN shares had fallen below $1, putting the company at risk of removal from the Nasdaq. The threat of delisting has prompted the company to consider a reverse stock split of up to 1 for 50, aiming to boost its share price and thereby maintain its listing on the Nasdaq, according to CNBC. OPEN shares continued their steady decline until July of this year, when, on July 15, the stock price suddenly began to accelerate upwards. By Friday, July 18, the stock had surged more than 188% over the previous five-day period. What is causing OPEN stock to surge? The main driver behind OPENs stock price surge over the past week seems to be down to one person, according to CNBC and Yahoo Finance. That person is hedge fund manager Eric Jackson. Jackson runs EMJCapital, but if you look at Jacksons X profile, youll see he describes himself as The Carvana hedge fund guy. All he does is try to find the next Carvana over & over again. He states this because he is the one who had the foresight to identify Carvana Co. (NYSE: CVNA) as a good buy when the stock price was trading in the single digits. In 2022, many investors thought Carvana was near bankruptcy, but Jackson was bullish on the stock. While CVNA hit a low of under $4 per share in December 2022, it surged more than 1,000% in 2023. And its great run has continued. On Friday, CVNA shares closed at almost $348, up nearly 170% for the year. Jackson was one of the few people to see the potential in Carvana when the stock was getting hammered in 2022. And now he seems to think hes found another stock with such potential in Opendoor. On July 14, Jackson began tweeting consistently about OPEN shares, arguing that it could be a 100-bagger over the next few years. In a lengthy thread, Jackson said he was bullish on OPEN because its giving his hedge fund $CVNA vibes. According to Jackson, some of the reasons for this are that next month, Opendoor is likely to report its first-ever positive EBITDA for a quarter. It has also cut costs aggressively and has few competitors left. Due to this and other reasons, Jackson argues that OPEN’s stock price could rise to $82 per share within a few years. Since Jacksons July 14 postsand his subsequent posts about OPENthe stocks price has surged more than 188%. Is OPEN the new meme stock? People are already describing OPEN as the new meme stock. A meme stock is the description given to a stock that becomes popular with retail investors on social media. Word of mouth spreads on social channels about the new hot stock, and soon many traders with brokerage accounts buy shares in hopes of seeing massive gains in a short amount of time. GameStop Corp. (NYSE: GME) and AMC Entertainment Holdings, Inc. (NYSE: AMC) were historically two of the most popular meme stocks, and their prices surged during the pandemic as at-home retail investing saw a renaissance while people were under lockdowns. Given that many retail investors on social media are singing the praises of OPEN after Jacksons tweets, it does seem fair to say OPEN is the new meme stock of the moment. Of course, that doesnt make it a safe bet. Jackson lays out some compelling arguments for the stocks bright future. But in investing, nothing is ever guaranteed. And while Jackson, and plenty of others now, are bullish on OPEN, its worth noting that there are voices out there arguing that the stock is not a buy. As of the time of this writing, in premarket trading, OPEN shares are up another 27% to around $2.86 per share.
Category:
E-Commerce
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