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Today's Topics:
1. UK?s MI6 spy agency to target dark web for new recruits,
including in Russia (Stephen Loosley)
2. Re: Why don't telcos cut off bulk scam calls (David)
3. Microsoft thinks cloud PCs might be overkill, starts
streaming just apps under Windows 365 (Stephen Loosley)
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Message: 1
Date: Fri, 19 Sep 2025 14:20:00 +0930
From: Stephen Loosley <[email protected]>
To: "link" <[email protected]>
Subject: [LINK] UK?s MI6 spy agency to target dark web for new
recruits, including in Russia
Message-ID: <[email protected]>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="UTF-8"
UK?s MI6 spy agency to target dark web for new recruits, including in Russia
The Foreign Office said the agency?s secure messaging portal ?Silent Courier?
will allow anyone to contact MI6 to offer their services
Published: 6:59am, 19 Sep 2025 Updated: 10:00am, 19 Sep 2025
https://www.scmp.com/news/world/europe/article/3326053/uks-mi6-spy-agency-target-dark-web-new-recruits-including-russia
Britain?s spy agency is going dark ? the dark web, specifically ? for new
recruits.
The Foreign Office said on Thursday that the Secret Intelligence Service,
commonly known as MI6, is aiming to recruit new spies for the UK, including in
Russia, through the launch of a web portal on the dark web.
It said the agency?s new secure messaging platform, called ?Silent Courier?,
will harness the anonymity of the dark web for the first time as it seeks to
bolster the UK?s defences against global instability, international terrorism
and hostile state intelligence activity.
The platform will enable anyone, anywhere in the world who has access to
sensitive information relating to terrorism or hostile intelligence activity to
securely contact the UK and offer their services.
?As the world changes and the threats we?re facing multiply, we must ensure the
UK is always one step ahead of our adversaries,? new Foreign Secretary Yvette
Cooper said.
?Our world-class intelligence agencies are at the coalface of this challenge,
working behind the scenes to keep British people safe.?
The portal will be available from Friday, with instructions on how to use it
publicly available on MI6?s verified YouTube channel.
Users are recommended to access it through trustworthy VPNs and devices not
linked to themselves.
?Our virtual door is open to you,? outgoing MI6 chief Richard Moore is expected
to say in Istanbul at the portal?s launch.
The launch follows a similar approach by the United States? Central
Intelligence Agency, which published videos on social media channels to target
potential Russian spies in 2023.
--
------------------------------
Message: 2
Date: Fri, 19 Sep 2025 16:45:09 +1000
From: David <[email protected]>
To: [email protected]
Subject: Re: [LINK] Why don't telcos cut off bulk scam calls
Message-ID: <2904201.DJkKcVGEfx@ulysses>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"
On Friday, 19 September 2025 10:41:13 AEST Tom Worthington wrote:
> I don't see why the telcos could not detect and stop this.
But how? If all banks, acting individually, were required to develop a
mechanism for "detecting and stopping" this dangerous traffic they would always
risk missing a spam connection or blocking a legitimate message, with possibly
litigious consequences.
Perhaps Australian banks acting co-operatively, could develop a secure AusBank
gateway. This would require some form of client authentication (even for VoIP
messages) but that might make things even worse for citizens without a proper
understanding of the problem. Then the insurance companies, and the health
providers, and the online advertisers, etc. etc... would all want one of course.
At a personal level, if your VoIP service uses a decent domestic Analogue
Telephone Adapter (ATA), you can almost certainly configure a white-list of
acceptable calling numbers and block the rest. And you could configure a
star-code to add acceptable callers you've forgotten.
_DavidL_
------------------------------
Message: 3
Date: Fri, 19 Sep 2025 22:49:19 +0930
From: Stephen Loosley <[email protected]>
To: "link" <[email protected]>
Subject: [LINK] Microsoft thinks cloud PCs might be overkill, starts
streaming just apps under Windows 365
Message-ID: <[email protected]>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="UTF-8"
Microsoft thinks cloud PCs might be overkill, starts streaming just apps under
Windows 365
As old-school virtual desktop player Omnissa distances itself further from
VMware
By Simon Sharwood Thu 18 Sep 2025
https://www.theregister.com/2025/09/18/microsoft_cloud_apps_omnissa_update/
Microsoft thinks cloudy PCs might be overkill for some users, so has started
streaming individual apps instead as part of its Windows 365 service.
The software giant on Thursday announced the public preview of what it calls
?Windows 365 Cloud Apps?, a service that allows users of Frontline Cloud PCs ?
a virtual PC shared by a pool of users ? to boot straight into an app instead
of the Windows desktop.
?This is ideal for organizations that want to streamline app delivery, reduce
overhead, and modernize their virtual desktop infrastructure (VDI)
environments,? wrote Microsoft senior product manager Serena Zheng, who said
the service delivers ?only essential applications like Outlook or Word without
loading a full desktop.?
Her post suggests Microsoft wants to open the service to more apps.
?As organizations embrace Windows 365 Cloud Apps, Microsoft is focused on
simplifying app delivery even further?making it faster, easier, and more
intuitive for IT admins to deploy custom line-of-business apps at scale,? she
wrote.
Those are fighting words for Microsoft?s rivals in the fields of virtual
desktops and application streaming, markets led by Citrix and VMware end-user
computing spin-out Omnissa.
The latter staged its annual conference this week at which it delivered a
version of its App Volumes Manager ? a tool to manage app deployments to
endpoints ? that runs on physical servers and PCs. The company also confirmed
its promised move into server management.
Both of those releases reflect Omnissa?s belief that users are tired of using
multiple tools to manage their fleets of physical and virtual endpoints. The
company has therefore entered the security market with ?Workspace ONE
Vulnerability Defense?, a product that scans endpoints for security problems
and informs admins which machines need attention.
More Context:
* Desktop-as-a-service now often cheaper to run than laptops - even after thin
client costs
* Citrix adds remote Mac support, but some customers are grumpy
* Microsoft kills classic Azure DaaS, because it isn't really Azure
* AWS targets desktop virtualization rigs with lift and shift to cloudy DaaS
It's 2025, so the company has also decided to apply agentic AI to the challenge
of securing endpoint fleets, with a forthcoming tool that will automatically
act on analyses produced by Vulnerability Defense.
The company also continued to distance itself from VMware, by confirming its
products will work on Nutanix?s AHV hypervisor and hyperconverged stack instead
of only on Virtzilla?s vSphere and Cloud Foundation, and announcing a plan to
run on Platform9?s cut of OpenStack. Support for Hyper-V and OpenShift is also
on Omnissa?s agenda. ?
--
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