 Some Microsoft employees are openly questioning whether diversity is important, in a lengthy discussion on an internal online messaging board meant for communicating with CEO Satya Nadella. Two posts on the board criticizing Microsoft diversity initiatives as “discriminatory hiring” and suggesting that women are less suited for engineering roles have elicited more than 800 comments, both affirming and criticizing the viewpoints, multiple Microsoft employees have told Quartz. The posts were written by a female Microsoft program manager. Quartz reached out to her directly for comment and isn’t making her name public at this point, pending her response. “Does Microsoft have any plans to end the current policy that financially incentivizes discriminatory hiring practices? To be clear, I am referring to the fact that senior leadership is awarded more money if they discriminate against Asians and white men,” read the original post by the Microsoft program manager on Yammer, a corporate messaging platform owned by Microsoft. The employee commented consistently throughout the thread, making similar arguments. Quartz reviewed lengthy sections of the internal discussion provided by Microsoft employees. “I have an ever-increasing file of white male Microsoft employees who have faced outright and overt discrimination because they had the misfortune of being born both white and male. This is unacceptable,” the program manager wrote in a comment later. The Microsoft employees who spoke to Quartz said they weren’t aware of any action by the company in response, despite the comments being reported to Microsoft’s human resources department. Full details posted on OUR FORUM.  Broadcom WiFi chipset drivers have been found to contain vulnerabilities impacting multiple operating systems and allowing potential attackers to remotely execute arbitrary code and to trigger denial-of-service according to a DHS/CISA alert and a CERT/CC vulnerability note. Quarkslab's intern Hugues Anguelkov was the one who reported five vulnerabilities he found in the "Broadcom wl driver and the open-source brcmfmac driver for Broadcom WiFi chipsets" while reversing engineering and fuzzing Broadcom WiFi chips firmware. As he discovered, "The Broadcom wl driver is vulnerable to two heap buffer overflows, and the open-source brcmfmac driver is vulnerable to a frame validation bypass and a heap buffer overflow." The Common Weakness Enumeration database describes heap buffer overflows in the CWE-122 entry, stating that they can lead to system crashes or the impacted software going into an infinite loop, while also allowing attackers "to execute arbitrary code, which is usually outside the scope of a program's implicit security policy" and bypassing security services. As the CERT/CC vulnerability note written by Trent Novelly explains, potential remote and unauthenticated attackers could exploit the Broadcom WiFi chipset driver vulnerabilities by sending maliciously-crafted WiFi packets to execute arbitrary code on vulnerable machines. However, as further detailed by Novelly, "More typically, these vulnerabilities will result in denial-of-service attacks." Learn more by visiting OUR FORUM.  Chipmaker Intel has announced today that it will be canceling production of its 5G modems. Stating that they aim to focus on PC, ‘Internet of Things’ devices, and data focussed devices, however, they intend to make components to help improve 5G infrastructure. This comes just hours after Qualcomm announced a 6-year partnership with Apple. In his statement, Intel CEO Bob Swan made it clear that there was ‘no path to profitability and positive returns’ when talking about the smartphone modem business. Swan went on to mention that “5G continues to be a strategic priority across Intel”. This comes just two weeks after Intel rebuffed a report suggesting the company was struggling with its 5G modem program. A similar situation occurred in 2018 when it was suggested the manufacturer was having troubles with its XMM 8060 Modem, the predecessor to the 8160 that was canceled today. Intel went on to say they would provide additional details on April 25, following their Q1 2019 earnings report. Swan closes out his statement saying “[the Intel] team has developed a valuable portfolio of wireless products and intellectual property. We are assessing our options to realize the value we have created, including the opportunities in a wide variety of data-centric platforms and devices in a 5G world.” current speculation suggests the company may be looking to sell its portfolio of products. Follow this and more on OUR FORUM. |
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