31–40 of 43 posts
Hey! As a 46 year old I am offended by this - I am definitely not Gen X. We’re a weird X/Millenial hybrid I’ve seen referred to as Xennials. Also F ZScaler - we use this officially sanctioned MTM attack at work and all it does is make my job harder.
> Zscaler says they combine information from compromised systems with publicly available data to map reporting lines and identify the employees most likely to influence a company's response. And commercially-available data: enterprise salespeople, for example, can buy this intel from data brokers (directly, or with layered services catering to sales funnels specifically). It's another way that surveillance capitalism…
They've learned from how real businesses operate. Ever talked to a salesperson? Notice how much the initial conversation is geared to trying to figure out whether you have any real purchasing authority, and who does if it isn't you?
The article is unclear: Do they "attack" the GenX managers and encrypt their stuff, or do they simply contact GenX managers in order to get paid faster? In that case, the managers aren't "victims" and aren't "attacked", that would be the company..
If the article was written by an actual human, we may have had the answer. Instead, we got this non-sense > By the time the ransom note lands, the crooks may already know who approves invoices, who signs contracts, who runs HR, and who reports to whom. The encryption is just the bit that victims notice.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
People on the borderlines often are overlooked. I'm an old GenX, a few years too young to be a Boomer, and even the younger Boomers grew up with a quite different experience than the mainline Boomer generation. And I was already an adult and married by the main part of the GenX era.
You might be Generation Jones: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Generation_Jones
Earlier quoted context omitted.
They've learned from how real businesses operate. Ever talked to a salesperson? Notice how much the initial conversation is geared to trying to figure out whether you have any real purchasing authority, and who does if it isn't you?
I have never talked to sales. How do they find this out smoothly, without insulting the person being talked to for not having any actual authority?
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Dividing generations across decades might work for marketing to them in general, but it's otherwise about as useful as horoscopes and the BMI scale.
The BMI scale is useful. Yes, athletes and bodybuilders it may not be accurate for, but being on HN I think you are neither :) Currently, I am at 20 BMI, for reference.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
If the article was written by an actual human, we may have had the answer. Instead, we got this non-sense > By the time the ransom note lands, the crooks may already know who approves invoices, who signs contracts, who runs HR, and who reports to whom. The encryption is just the bit that victims notice.
I'm unclear what part of that sentence you didn't like, it was quite well formed. It's pointing out that the attackers do homework in advance and understand the victim company they target. It's illustrating the asymmetric information aspect of the attack, it's targeted with a lot of pre-work rather than a random victim.
“The crooks…”
”… is just the bit…”
LLM tells.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
They've learned from how real businesses operate. Ever talked to a salesperson? Notice how much the initial conversation is geared to trying to figure out whether you have any real purchasing authority, and who does if it isn't you?
I have never talked to sales. How do they find this out smoothly, without insulting the person being talked to for not having any actual authority?
Because often in larger companies you got approval, then you go testing and the users approve as well, and suddenly either legal, finance or your manager pulls back. So they want these people in the loop and signing off as early or quickly as possible, to avoid wasting their time.
That’s also why the sales people usually state how important it is to have clear small and measurable goals. It’s not only for you to figure out if the solution works, but to have you set up small and clear internal criteria to sign off on as quickly as possible.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
But also: > Xennials, also called Xillenials, are a social cohort encompassing people born on the cusp of or during the later years of Generation X and the early years of the Millennials generation. > Many researchers and popular media use birth years from 1977 to 1983, though some extend this further in either direction. Xennials are described as having had an analog childhood and a digital young adulthood. https://…
> Xennials are described as having had an analog childhood and a digital young adulthood. Pretty bang on description actually. As a 46 yo, sometimes I can't believe I have actual memories of using a rotary phone, or when my family first got a microwave or even VHS recorder. Yet I do. Feels like eons ago.
I feel blessed for this actually. It’s like I lived 3 generations at once.
Companies hope that training will protect them from cyber threats, while ignoring that their most vulnerable employees are the ones that lost the motivation to care about their job.
Training is basically just for legal and insurance reasons... If not there would be no reason to do yearly training of the same bs courses.