Left, Khalil Joseph, March 2015; Right, Humberto Leon and Jesse Williams at the Music is My Mistress premiere party on February 9, 2017.

Left, by Owen Kolasinksi/BFA/Rex/Shutterstock; Right, courtesy of Donato Sardella/Getty Images/Kenzo.

Kahlil Joseph, the writer-director who co-helmed Beyoncs epic visual-concept album, Lemonade, has debuted his latest work of arta film for the French luxury brand Kenzo.

The auteur has partnered with Kenzos creative directors, Carol Lim and Humberto Leon, to make an original short film, Music Is My Mistress, that features the labels chicest looks from their spring/summer 2017 collection. Greys Anatomy star Jesse Williams stars as a lost music manager searching for an African luminary played by newly minted Golden Globe winner Tracee Ellis Ross (from TVs Black-ish).

The film is about blackness, Joseph told Vanity Fair at a special screening party held at L.A.s Underground Museum on Thursday night. He went on to explain that his objective was to portray African-Americans realistically on-screen in the way they move, talk, and interact with people.

The theme of blackness is also prevalent in Lemonade. Since working with Beyonc on her visual spectacle, the Grammy-nominated director says his life is relatively the same. Hes just thankful that the opportunity to work with his close pal finally came to fruition.

I have known Beyonc through friends for a while, and we had talked about working together on stuff in the past, said Joseph, who has also worked with Kendrick Lamar and film director Terrence Malick. Lemonade was the one that just made sense to work together. It was an important and personal story.

For Williams, who is an outspoken human-rights activist, creating a piece of art like Kenzos short film is more important than ever now that uncertaintyand fearis gripping the nation in the Trump era.

The art community means a tremendous amount in times of bliss and in times of peril. The world is in a very contentious moment right now, and its all the more important now for people to be able to create daring, inclusive, forward-leaning material that is challenging for the status quo, Williams told Vanity Fair. Artists shake shit up and they drive the conversation and establish a new stake in the ground. Its so important to keep on doing this.

But some critics believe celebrities and artists should keep their political opinions to themselves, saying they live in a privileged world and have no real understanding of the issues faced by others. Williams strongly objects to that idea.

Actors should talk and to continue to speak up about politics. Acting is a job. A career. If Im a plumber, can I only fix pipes? If Im a teacher, can I only teach? If thats a rule, its fucking bizarre and ridiculous, he explained. I cant care about being a member of the electorate and what happens in the legislative office? Its asinine. I have been a politically active, social-justice activist my whole life, and I happened to have started acting. I think people should do what they want to do.

Williams, who made headlines in June for a speech he gave at the B.E.T. Awards, vows to fight relentlessly against social injustice and to continue to provide entertainment through his acting career.

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Original post:
Beyonc's Lemonade Director Enlists Grey's Anatomy's Jesse Williams for His Latest Fashion Spectacle - Vanity Fair

Feb 10, 2017 6:00 AM

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Grey's plays out the Trump worldview against a hospital backdrop - A.V. Club

Technically speaking, almost all components of ransomware, such as spear phishing, watering hole attacks involving popular and trustworthy websites, antivirus evasion techniques or data encryption algorithms, are well-known and have been used separately by hackers since years. However, modern ransomware certainly merits a classification as one of the most evolving sectors of cybercrime in 2017.

Though it is quite difficult to calculate the overall damage caused by ransomware in 2016, some researchers state that cybercriminals received over $1 billion in ransom payments last year. Others mention a 3,500% increase in the criminal use of infrastructure that helps run ransomware campaigns. Carbon Black says that ransomware is the fastest growing malware across industries, up 50% in 2016. Technology (218%), utilities and energy (112%) and banking (93%) saw the highest year-on-year ransomware growth last year.

Due to an important lack of qualified technical personnel and other resources, law enforcement agencies are globally unprepared to detect, prevent and prosecute this type of digital crime. Moreover, more and more cases of ransom payment by the police have become public, while those police officers who dare to resist take a substantive risk. There is the Texas police who lost eight years of their investigative work and all of the evidence by refusing to pay cybercriminals. This sad statistic explains why the majority of despaired victims of cybercrime fail to report it to the law enforcement agencies.

Attackers can easily rent a Ransomware-as-a-Service (RaaS) infrastructure for as low as $39.99 per month, making up to $195,000 of monthly profit without much effort in comparison to other niches of digital fraud and crime. The business of ransomware has become so attractive that some cybercriminals dont even bother to actually encrypt the data, but just extort money from their victims with fake malware. The victims are so scared by media stories about ransomware, combined with law enforcement agencies inability to protect them or at least to punish the offenders, that they usually pay.

The new generation of ransomware attacks IoT and smart devices, locking not only mobiles and smart TVs, but also doors in hotels and air conditioning systems in luxury smart houses. Criminals switch from file encryption to database encryption and web applications, demonstrating a great scalability of ransomware tactics.

To increase their profits, hacking teams behind the ransomware campaigns now threaten to send the victims sensitive data to all of their contacts instead of just deleting it. Cryptocurrencies allow attackers to receive online payments almost without any risk of being traced and prosecuted. Despite the media hype around blockchains ability to reinvent and improve the world, so far only the cybercriminals have entirely leveraged the full potential of this emerging technology.

A simple business model, high profits, accessibility and affordability of resources to deploy large-scale attacking campaigns, and low risks in comparison to other sectors of (cyber)crime, assure the flourishing future of ransomware. All of this without mentioning the problem of global inequality actually causing the cybercrime, which I briefly described in Forbes recently.

Nonetheless, it does not mean that organizations should give up. The FBI confirms the skyrocketing problem of ransomware, but suggests relying on prevention rather than paying ransom to the criminals. PwC also suggests to plan and prepare the organization to this kind of incident in order to have internal capabilities to recover without suffering important financial losses.

Some cybersecurity vendors, like SentinelOne, contractually guarantee protection and provide a financial insurance for their clients. Others, like Kaspersky, offer free tools to decrypt data compromised by popular malware. Last, but not least, Europols No More Ransom public-private partnership with other law enforcement agencies and leading cybersecurity companies, provides a comprehensive collection of free tools to recover the data and clean the systems infected with ransomware.

Below are six essential steps that will help you avoid paying ransoms:

By following those rules, any company and organization can significantly reduce their risk of having to pay ransom. Attackers would rather target easy and unprepared victims, instead of spending their efforts on any particular organization. Properly implemented security standards, like ISO 27001, can also prevent the vast majority of costly ransomware incidents.

However, keep in mind that information security starts with factual security, not with a paper-based compliance. If your IT infrastructure is secure in practice, you will not only easily pass the majority of compliance and regulation requirements, but you will also defend your business from many vectors of cybercrime, including the growing monster of ransomware.

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Originally posted here:
Ransomware 2.0: Anatomy of an emerging multibillion business - CSO Online

In 2006, editors from Newsweek magazine picked this picture for the front of an issue on the 25th anniversary of AIDS. The woman, Jennifer Jako, was HIV positive and 6 months pregnant. (Ethan Hill ) Feb 8, 2017 by Kenny Malone

About nine years ago, 17.5 million people tuned into an episode of Greys Anatomy that, on the surface, appeared like any other high-stakes surgery, high-drama love triangles. What those millions of Greys viewers didnt know was that they were guinea pigs for a massive, secret experiment.

That experiment was arguably a referendum about a single woman: Jennifer Jako, and her decision to become a mother.

In 1991, at the age of 18, Jako had a one night stand with a high-school friend. It was the only time shed ever had sex without a condom. She contracted HIV and spent years trying to debunk misconceptions: producing a documentary that aired on MTV, speaking at college campuses and on talk shows.

Over time, the countrys view of HIV evolved. As people started living longer, stigma decreased. People generally understood that the infection wasnt a death sentence any longer.

But there was one area people couldnt seem to understand: Pregnancy. Studies showed the general public simply didnt know or didnt believe that an HIV-positive woman, with the right treatment, had a tremendously low chance of passing the virusonto her baby less than 2-percent at the time.

Jennifer Jako got a cruel lesson in where the public stood when she appeared on the cover of Newsweek magazine, six months pregnant.

Later, as an experiment, the Kaiser Family Foundation decided to see if they could move the needle by trying something totally different: product placement of medical information in a Greys Anatomy episode.

In this episode of Only Human we tell the epic story of Jennifer Jako and how she managed to sneak into our livings rooms and, possibly, change public opinion forever.

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Only Human is a show about health that we all can relate to. Because every body has a story. Produced by WNYC Studios.

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The Woman Behind a Secret Grey's Anatomy Experiment - WNYC