Good morning. Welcome to CMC markets on Friday the 3rd of February and this quick look at the week ahead with me Michael Houston It's certainly been an interesting week for markets been very strongly positive week which sort Run slightly counter to the narrative that we've heard from central bankers on Wednesday and Thursday. We started with the Federal Reserve on Wednesday and as expected we got a step down from the 50 basis points that we saw in December to 25 basis points Jay Powell was very insistent that The job is far from done when it comes to Interest rate hikes and it was a narrative that was echoed yesterday by Christine Lagarde of the ECB in fact the ECB even pre-committed not only to a 50 basis point rate hike which we saw yesterday which took the headline rate to 3% but they pre-committed to another 50 basis point rate hike in March We also saw another 50 basis point Rate hike from the Bank of England which put the headline bank rate at 4% ECB headline rate 3% Fed headline rate 4.75% but to look at a bond market reaction and To look at the equity market reaction the market sort of pretty much thumb their nose That the central bankers the DAX closed at a new 11 month high 100 didn't perform as well, but it still remains within touching distance of the record highs that we saw back in 2018 at 7900 as the speakers at 7840 and US markets also saw a strong session with the NASDAQ 100 leading the way with gains of over 3% although The Dow actually finished the day lower So What is that market reaction telling us? Well, well central banks would like to give the impression they are further to go When it comes to more rate rises Markets are taking the opposite view. They're actually pricing in rate cuts and to give an indication I think of how the market is perceiving the central bank rhetoric. You've only really got a look at what us UK Five-year guilt yields did yesterday. They fell off a cliff and they are now back below the levels. They were Pre-emergency budget and that in the sense in the in essence is actually good news for fixed-rate mortgage holders because five year of five year rates now back below the levels they were In September when we saw that really strong move higher As a result of the emergency budget the move up to close to 4.7 8% They are now almost 2 percentage points lower So good news. We saw a similar sort of downward move in two-year yields As well as 10 year yields and we saw a similar down move in the price of German two-year yields and the move in Italian yields was even Sharper a very sharp move lower. So while Central bankers are basically Pushing forward one message and they're still doing it this morning With the ECB Simcus saying that even after a 50 basis point rate like in March We could we'll see another 50 basis points in May and yet markets are going. Yeah, whatever Well, we won't take your word for it given the fact that you're wrong about inflation being transitory So you're probably wrong about this and ultimately you'll probably be cutting rates by the end of the year now While I would potentially argue that we are closer to the end of the rate-hiking cycle and probably Have probably seen the peaks. I'm still sitting on the fence when We are thinking about the prospect of rate cuts this year inflation is still very very high Particularly when you look at the headline rates 4.75 on the Fed the Fed funds rate 3% on the ECB the Bank of England at 4% when you've got UK inflation at 10 and a half percent You know, is it really credible to be thinking about rate cuts in the book, you know by the end of this year? I think that's doubtful. I mean, I certainly think the Rates can stay high and certainly the the rate hikes are probably near the peak We probably may get one more from the Bank of England We probably will get one more From the Federal Reserve. I certainly think we'll see 5% as a terminal rate particularly if this afternoon's payroll numbers Come in Fairly strong weekly jobless claims are still very very low 183,000 at the most recent count Which would appear to suggest that the US labor market is still very very tight Also wage growth in the UK and Europe is in and around seven or eight percent So I can't imagine the central bankers will be cutting rates when wage growth is still well above core headline inflation which currently in the UK six was above six percent and sits at fairly similar levels in the European Union. So Essentially, what are we looking at going forward for equity markets over the course of the next week or so Over the next few days. Well, I'm still fairly bullish on European markets I still think there's potential for us to move higher on the FTSE 100 take out those record highs of 70,900 of 2018 and obviously also the peaks that we saw earlier this year It's interesting that even though we retreated from those peaks at 78 75 We haven't as yet been able to take out the previous peaks from last year 7689 we've fallen well short of that. So I think while we're within this channel here. I Think the buyer still remains very much for buying the dips certainly with respect to European markets if we look at say for example the DAX the DAX has once again kicked on It's made another new 11 month high this week on course for another strong week Finding support just below 15,000. I think they're still likely to remain the fairly key support area You know and the first rule of trading as I see it is to keep it simple Three words. That's what I got asked the other day. How would you sum up your trading style in three words? Keep it simple don't over complicate it if the markets going up by the dips if the markets going down sell the rallies It's really just a question of your skill in identifying where the support levels and the resistance levels are The easiest way to do that is by looking at a daily chart or a hourly chart or a four hourly chart And then trade accordingly according to what's going on there. So for me, I still think the DAX Has potential to head towards 16,000 Certainly while it's above 15,000 no reason to change my view on that now my view on US markets has evolved and I think you have to evolve it when your base case gets undermined by a technical breakout of the type of the type that we've seen on the S&P 500 and there's nothing wrong with that when the facts change I change my mind and I've modified my view ever so slightly when it comes to US markets because I Still think That while European markets are likely to outperform US markets We have seen significant breaks of some to key technical indicators first and foremost The break of the downtrend line on the S&P 500 from the lows last year Also the break above the 50 and the 200 day moving average as well We are starting to see what has the makings of a potential bullish golden cross It's still not particularly powerful signal because the 200 day moving average is It's still falling on a day-to-day basis and generally a golden cross works better When both moving averages are pointing in the same direction i.e. are trending higher The S&P the 200 day is not doing that nonetheless You can't hide the fact that the lows are getting higher and the highs are getting higher So there was certainly potential while we're above This four thousand level on the NASDAQ of Further incremental gains towards 4,310 but I'm certainly not expecting significant outperformance one of the main reasons why The NASDAQ and the S&P 500 have rallied so strongly Is this perception that US has hit peak rates When it comes to the prospect of potential rate cuts by the end of this year that means that It still remains very much By the dip mentality Similarly, we've broken through the downtrend from the from the peaks here. We are now breaking higher We're above the 200 day moving average and we're also above the 50 day moving average You can certainly draw a trend line through these lows here. It is quite steep We're starting to run into a bit of resistance here at the 38.2 Fibonacci retracement level of the the of the move lower to from the From the lows here this down move here So we're hitting 38.2 also coincides with those peaks back in september So the september peaks are acting as a bit of a resistance level On the NASDAQ 100. So i'm going to keep an eye on that for evidence of whether or not we can see further gains The recent earnings numbers from apple amazon and alphabets are disappointing So we could see a bit of a modest pullback when us markets open later today I'm going forward. I think in terms of what we're looking ahead for next week It's predominantly Another interest rate decision this time from the rba We are likely to get or we are pricing in A 25 basis point rate hike from the rba That being said There is a risk again Like we saw with the bank of england the ecb and the federal reserve that While the rba could issue some fairly hawkish guidance Simply because The january cpi Um, or the sorry to the september cpi numbers showed a bigger than expected jump To 8.4 percent from 7.3 percent in november. There was a big jump there And q4 cpi pushed the average rate to 7.8 from 7.3 So this raised some concerns the rba might have to be slightly more hawkish in terms of what to do On the 7th of february when it comes to looking tighten policy further they slowed down Their rate hiking cycle back in november they stepped down early They were one of the first central banks to do that Along with the bank of canada the danger is in doing that You're sending a slightly Confusing message to the markets and that's but i think borne out slightly by the market reaction to what central banks have said this week My central banks have unanimously pretty much said That they have further to go When it comes to raising rates and markets have unanimously said we don't care so How the rba manages that particular message on tuesday Is anybody's guess but certainly the ozzy dollar is starting to show signs of topping out We could see a bit of a pullback To this red line here 69 90 But we still remain very much of the opinion that Australian dollar is in an uptrend and if we look at the reaction of that particular candle there which Showed a very strong impulsive move lower But we closed pretty much On the highs of the day There does appear to be fairly decent demand for australian dollars In and around between the 69 80 and the 69 90 area So any weakness there probably could we'll see Some decent buying interest obviously if we dip below that then we'll probably head back towards the next support Which is around about 68 90 on the ozzy dollar We've also got a uk fourth quarter gdp And certainly i think what we saw last week with respect to Sorry a lot last week. Yeah last week or earlier this last month rather with some of the economic data that's That's Recently been released When it when it comes out for the uk economy in november and december it's been slightly better than expected Now we saw the uk economy contract in q3 to the tune of minus 0.3 percent There have been a widespread expectation that q4 would see a similar contraction Obviously then that would put the uk economy Into a recession Now some of the data Since then has probably been slightly better than expected Which is which is encouraging in some respects because it suggests that maybe we might not see a contraction in q4 And a lot of the reason for the q3 contraction Was a collapse in economic activity in september To due to the funeral of queen elizabeth second Now this slowdown saw a big rebound in the october gdp numbers We saw a monthly expansion of 0.5 percent This was then followed by a 0.1 percent monthly expansion in november Which confounded expectations of a 0.1 percent contraction And one the reason for this improvement or this better than expected performance In november was a resilience in the services sector because of the football world cup and guitar Which saw decent performances from the pubs bars hospitality people went out supported england We also saw a big jump Inter operators and reservation services Which were also positive contributors to the gdp numbers with gains of 3.7 percent as people booked holidays For next year. We've also seen that in the bookings numbers from airlines And the tour operators easy jet ryan air And tui So working on a rather unscientific basis and this is unscientific I'll grant you that the world cup ended on the 18th of december and england went out on the 10th There is the prospect that we might have avoided a q4 contraction and thus avoided the r word Even when taking into account the disruptive nature of the recent strike action that an awful lot of businesses have had to contend with over the course of the past few weeks Certainly recent retail updates have offered encouragement that consumers are still spending albeit more cautiously And according to the obr the uk economy is already in recession However, as is often the case the rba is the rba the obr is usually wrong So on that basis, I would expect um On that basis alone, I would expect the uk economy to be much better than perhaps people are thinking also the september decline on the rolling three-month gdp number is Is likely to drop out of that number which suggests that we could well see a bit of an uplift So I would argue that given the fact that we saw a 0.5 percent Rebound in october 0.1 positive in november December is going to have to be mightily bad Whether to be a contraction in q4 I mean, whatever your whatever your view in it the the the outcome of the gdp numbers the nuance is likely to be lost on an awful lot of people because Finances are very much under strain when it comes to the consumer. So You know, I think politically it'll be more important that the uk economy avoids a contraction in q4 Rather than anything else. What we do know Is that any growth is likely to be pretty anemic and 2023 this year is likely to be very challenging but nonetheless I think some of the worst case scenarios might just be avoided Given the declines that we've seen not only In energy prices, but we also are starting to see slightly more positivity come out when it comes to Inflation and inflationary pressures in business. So what does that mean for cable? Well, I had the cable charred up there and we have seen a bit of a roll-off from the 124 and a half highs and There is potential that we could see further weakness, but again There is potential For cable to continue to move higher And I certainly think if u.s. Economic data continues to hold up reasonably well Then perhaps The economic outlook more globally is likely to be generally more positive than perhaps is currently being priced in Certainly, there's an awful lot of bad news priced in and that would suggest that the potential for upside surprise is greater Than downside surprise. Certainly. I think When it comes to sterling weakness It's been no more apparent Than in euro sterling this week where we've broken above the recent highs in in the euro At around about 88 95 and could well head Towards 90 over the course of the next few sessions overall Still very much a case of euro sterling could well continue to ratchet higher Why well, essentially, I think there's this perception the ecb potentially has probably got Maybe one or two more hikes in it than perhaps the bank of england has but nonetheless Euro sterling remains very much a range trade Dolly end slightly more easier to call Still remains very much sell the rally on dolly end The current resistance level is at these peaks at 131 20 through here I still think there's potential for us to move back to these lows 127 20 in january head towards this trend line But also this support level here for some reason I have lost my Fibonacci retracement levels on this particular chart. So let's just put them back in And these are there So that then puts in the next support level at 126 50 Which is a 50 replacement of that move which also happens to go inside of this trend line support here So that for me. I think is the next target for dolly end Look to sell weakness lower highs lower lows. So it looks to sell strength rather Lower highs lower lows So the current resistance level is these two peaks at around about 131 20 But overall the bias remains for a strong again And a weaker dollar going forward On the earnings front. We have got BP In the wake of shells really strong numbers this week BP shares still look fairly strong Despite all the noise Over windfall taxes and what have you certainly BP have set aside an extra 800 million dollars in respect of the increase in windfall taxes You're going to get the usual political noise about They need to be paying more. Well, they're already paying 75 of the uk profits and we've already heard BP announced or suggest that they will need to increase the amount of spending on fossil fuels natural gas And really it's it's generally a case of you know supply and demand. There is not enough supply You know and politicians can scream and shout all they like You can't change the political reality that the energy backdrop has changed With the recent surge in energy prices and with energy security in higher prices now front of mind for ordinary people The only way to reduce prices is to add extra capacity ExxonMobil did that in 2017 to 2019 Pushing back against the biden administration who said they shouldn't be doing that And they've they've benefited from those higher prices But can you imagine how much higher prices would have been if they hadn't done that in 2017 and 2019? So now you've got the biden administration screaming and shouting at them saying you should be spending more on adding extra capacity We're not hearing that from uk politicians and we really should be because the The transition to renewables is still going to require extra lng capacity as well as extra spending in renewables Um and also returns from renewables are well below those of gas and aren't reliable enough. So But BP does need to spend more on renewables that that very much is true The total spend on low carbon this year for BP is $447 million out of a total spend of 2.64 billion dollars but ultimately BP's numbers aren't Likely to be anywhere near as good as shells because of the big write down that they took on their rosnef stake at the beginning Of this financial year, which was a quite hefty 3 billion dollars so I think yeah, I think it's very important not to get too caught up In the high political hyperbole the trend for BP still remains fairly positive And when you actually look at the share price and take it all the way back It still will below the record highs Or the peaks Not so much the record highs but the peaks that we saw back in 2018 when it was around about 200p So sometimes a bit of perspective is needed to step back and take a look at what the share price is actually doing Similarly, we've got numbers from unilever Been a serial underperformer for quite some time, but it has actually been doing quite well in recent weeks um, Alan jope the CEO is leaving um And it's a good job that they didn't buy that highly didn't buy haleon from Glaxo smith kline and that room that marks the turning point a year ago for the shares and they are continuing to move slowly higher Certainly, I think new management We could well see a much increased focus over the course of the next few months on margins and costs and what have you and perhaps Some disposals They really need to get rid of ben and jerry's because ultimately the noise around that is becoming a distraction We've also got numbers from disney or disney now What's interesting about an awful lot of these u.s Markets is how many of the stocks are now breaking above the 200 days 200 day moving average Seen it with disney. We've seen it with amazon Or actually we haven't seen it with amazon. It's on its 200 day moving average But we've seen it with apple and we've seen it with alphabet So that does appear to be a little bit of a shift change in some of The more heavily oversold parts of the u.s. Market particularly in tech just because You're back above your 200 day moving average doesn't necessarily mean you have further to go. Certainly disney Is starting to see a little bit of a turnaround bob iger is back in the hot seat You've got nelson pelts active as shareholder urging significant amounts of change as well as An increased focus on the fox part of the business which still remains a little bit of a cash drain Also, there'll be a particular focus on the number of The streaming business disney plus and how to effectively monetize that better because that is still operating at a hefty loss So that'll be interesting in terms of their first quarter numbers and how they perform there as well as obviously the parks business And holiday business as well We've also got uber which again has also seen some decent gains over the course of the past few weeks And certainly does appear to be looking to retest these highs Back in september So evidence of potential move higher in uber's share price now that the delivery business and their rides business They're almost 50 50 in terms of revenues that the various divisions both bring in so that's pretty much it for This week ladies and gentlemen quite a lot to get through. Hopefully you haven't gone on for too long. Thank you very much for listening um So we've got non-farm payrolls lately today So it'll be interesting to see how those numbers come out and I can talk a little bit about them in next week's video Thanks for listening. Have a great weekend and speak to you all same time same place next week


When the magnetic field is due to a straight wire, let's say this is the straight wire, it has a current of IE. I want to find out the magnetic field at a distance z coming, z is a point that two ends, main and middle, let's say theta point is making, it's a two end, okay? Are you similar in diagram, you have seen somewhere, when we found out something, smaller in the element somewhere, drop, all vector and draw it again and it's two lines, it will be cleaner, there is no concentration everywhere it is. So D means theta, that's a D end, so I have to write down everything in terms of theta only, okay? So can you write R equals z?  So this is the theta at the set of the triangle, this is the equilibrium time set, three such line segments are there, understood?


Have you ever wondered what to do once you've worked meticulously on a machine learning model And you want someone else to be able just to use it while you can pickle that model Let me show you how it's done. First of all, I'm just going to run my Cascaling style sheet to run and create my model I'm just going to use the random forest regressive from model from the ensemble library and scikit-learn and then just the ROC Area under the curve score there my receiver operating characteristic area under the curve score there more importantly though the pickle Import pickle. Let's just run through this model This is not a video about how to create a random forest regressor model But let's have a quick look. It's the second sheet here Which means sheet name equals one of my Microsoft Excel spreadsheet here and if we run that The first five rows of this data frame. We see four numerical variables three categorical variables and my outcome here So I have these seven predictor variables here and one outcome variable I'm going to pop pop off That outcome variable as a vector. It is now gone from my data frame and it lives inside of this computer variable Y Just to make sure there's my data types my seven predictor variables They now three of them are categorical This is a little function that will just extract all the categorical variables from a data frame and just describe them So it found category one, category two, category three as categorical variables 700 rows in each of them we see three unique values two and four unique values and the mode there with a frequency Now I've got to demify this if I want to create a random forest regressor model So I'm going to take category one, category two, category three. I'm going to do a little for loop through all of those I'm going to full NA with missing and I'm going to create this these set of dummy variables and in the end delete these three Columns, so if I look at the result of that, this is what we have perfect ready for use inside of a random forest regressor Model so see the four numerical variables and then this numeric representation through dummy variables So there's a one under cat one a so this would have been an a it would have been a Roman numeral two for cat Two and it would have been an R for cat three. There we go Already to go. Let's run our model There we go. I use random forest regressor Pass all my arguments. I fit my data my outcome variable to the model and we see an area under the curve there of 0.8977 now imagine for a while. I've worked meticulously on this model I've really worked hard on it and this is the best can be and I want to send it to someone else so that they Can just import the data and use the model and this is how we're going to do it We're going to simply pickle our model So I'm going to open a file Now you can see my file name dot PKL the WB argument is for write binary so it's open for writing in binary format and Now I'm just going to use the dump function pickle dot dump pass two arguments the model that we've just created after meticulous hard work and Then the file this reference to the computer variable to the file that is open to be written to in binary format. There we go and We should run this first there we go There we go. It is run and then lastly. We really just want to close that file. Remember always to close that file So we save I'm going to file close here if I go here. We can see that the Pickled file lives here now in the same folder now a colleague or co-worker or someone else wants to use That model that I've worked so hard on. Let's see how they're going to do that import pickle there now what they're going to do is to read the pickle file create this Reference this computer variable that references this file opening of this file I should say in read binary mode. There we go. They create a computer variable called Model which is what I've used there and pickle dot load. So they're going to load the model from this file There we go. And just to show you there's the model So now we're here that we import scikit-learn create the model anything It is the model that was pickled from before just to be sure we can see there there were 13 features The feature importances more importantly now. There's a new in this instance I'm supposed that this is data from a patient, but I'm going to pass values for these 13 Feature variables here predictor variables and we're just going to see what our model predicts. This was a regressor model So there was an 8% chance that this patient would be have a one outcome or successful outcome Remember outcomes are coded as zero and one for the regressor Model so a beautiful way just to save your model in for others to start using the model that you've worked so hard on


The Oregon State Congress Appeal Committee of the APC says it has not received any petition since it was inaugurated two days ago. The chairman of the committee, Patrick Obahedmon, spoke to journalists in Biokota. It shows that the process was right and correct, that's why nobody is challenging it. So please gentlemen, we have done our job, we have been party to this thing for the beginning till now. How best can we have done it that we have not done? So please, this panel has been fair, this panel has been thorough, and we have done our job. We will only go back now and write our report. We have served for two days now, and no persons have approached this State Congress Appeal Committee with any petition. We are in the circumstance of the view that the Oregon State APC political class are satisfied that the State Congress that took place on the 16th of October 2021 was in substantial compliance with both the constitution of APC, the extant regulations rolled out by the Ketika Extraordinary Conversion Planning Committee, and of course with the clear provisions of the constitution of the Federal Republic of Nigeria. What is left for us now is to write our report.


Alright, what's going on everybody? This is the city in basketball two box break number four two random teams each 15 spots sold in this one. Everyone gets two teams in the NBA from a two box break You think it'd be a good fight. I think it's first round KO four times one two three four Adam down a talent and four times on the NBA teams one Got NBA coming back in regular season coming back in what 13 days? Four I'm so pumped Chicago Bulls down to the Boston Celtics Adam Bulls Robert Magic Paul Pistons Adam Hawks Matt Sons Adam Grizzlies heat Lakers Thunder James Jazz Matt Clippers Matt Kings Robert Bucks Adam Raptors Matt Nets James Mavericks Adam Rockets and T-Wolves Matt Warriors Adam Blazers Robert Spurs Talon Hornets Matt Sixers Adam Pacers Robert Wizards Adam Nuggets Paul Pelicans Adam Knicks Cavs and Talon Celtics So we'll pause video see if there's any trades if not, we'll go ahead and rip. Alright, we got six boxes here We'll go one two three four five six One two left three four middle five six right middle So these other four Some other time I'll post the next break Our Zion and Seku in sequence and obsidian basketball. Is that real? All right, we got Daria's guard not numbered Trey young Marvin bags Alex Caruso One of ten gold You're gonna have to be a big player for the Lakers in the playoffs now that Avery Bradley is gone and Ray John Rondo is probably Out until at least September. There's Utah Jazz Mike Conley Green number 25 Wow, look at this coming up Throwback four five Steve Francis auto Volcanic signatures four out of five And we got number to 75 Jalen Noel hook you autograph there for the T wolf sets Adam 37 of 75 Jared Allen Utah Jazz Rudy Gobert Kauai Leonard There's auto Porter jr. That one's number to 75 and Kelly uber a junior back-to-back juniors That one's number 25 Yeah, a lot of breaks are pretty close jazz peace case breaks calm Matt boner auto One of 25 a little edge peel on this one on the top edge there San Antonio Spurs Matt Bonner for Robert J and four of 35 Trey young To color relic and auto Nice one for Adam and that Lena Hawks four out of 35 There you go. That was obsidian basketball two box break for two box break five be posted. Thanks everybody for getting in


Hello and welcome to this World Economic Forum discussion on a new global tax agenda. My name is Stephen Carroll. I'm a journalist at France 24 in Paris and we're here to discuss what may be a watershed moment in a year's long effort to try and reform the international taxation system and in particular how big companies are taxed. After what's been described as a 180 degree change in the United States position on the matter discussions are now advancing towards what could be a new global minimum corporate tax rate. In the context of the COVID-19 pandemic, this is a change that potentially could provide much needed revenue for governments who have collectively spent trillions on their response to the pandemic over the past year. But will this plan see the spoils go to the right places? Will it be shared equally? Will countries get their fair share? Or would this be a deal among rich countries that will leave behind developing economies? After decades of what's been called a race to the bottom in global taxation, how can international tax reform contribute to a more sustainable and equitable economic recovery to discuss this? We're joined today by Alicia Barsano, who's the Executive Secretary of the Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean of the United Nations. Alicia, thank you very much for being with us. Alex Cobham is with us, too. He's the Chief Executive of the Tax Justice Network. This is a 30 minute discussion just under now. We're going to start by speaking to our participants, but we'll have time for your questions in just about 20 minutes time. So please do submit them through the Zoom chat and we'll try and get to them all before the end of this as well. Of course, you can react if you're watching us on social media. You can react using the hashtag jobs reset 21 and of course via top link as well. So welcome, first of all, to Alex and to Alicia. Thank you very much for being with us. Alex, I'd like to start with you. We have an important meeting this weekend. Well, this Friday, G7 Finance Ministers are meeting. They're going to be talking about this topic. We have had lots of indication in the past few weeks that we might finally be reaching some sort of movement on this. Are you hopeful? Are we at this watershed moment for international tax reform? I think we're very nearly there. We may not get numbers from the finance ministers. We may not even get them from the heads of state meeting in Cornwall the week after. But I think we'll certainly have detailed by the time of the G20 meeting in July. And really what the G7 decide now is what the OECD will take forward. So I think one thing is what the public statement that comes out. Another thing is what's actually determined. And that's really about what rates they're going to set as a global minimum corporate tax rate. Fifteen percent would be a step forward. It would still, we think, bring in more than $250 billion of new revenues. And that would make it the biggest change in 100 years of international tax rules. If they go to 21 percent or even better to 25 percent, we're talking five, six, 700 billion dollars, the sort of money that when you're thinking about perhaps 50 billion needed for COVAX or the amounts to invest in public health systems in lower income countries. Suddenly, this is really game changing. But the question that's left apart from the rate is who's going to get the benefit of this? Under the OECD proposals, the G7 countries themselves would get about 60 percent of those additional revenues, and that doesn't leave much for anyone else. There are fairways and we've proposed one of them. If they go forward with one of these fairways, I think this could really be the biggest shift in the global inequalities in taxing rights for a generation. And it would set the basis for building back better in a really genuine way. If instead they just look after themselves, I think we're going to see this issue comes the United Nations pretty quickly in the search for something fairer that really represents the interest of people all around the world, not just the 10 percent of the world's population who happen to live in the G7 economies. Thanks, Alex. That's a really good reminder. This has been a very long process to get us to where we are now, where potentially we have, in fact, some developments on the way. Alicia, I'd like to turn to you next. What are your hopes in this process in particular? We'll talk more broadly about the issue in a moment, but where we are now coming up to that G7 meeting, does this have the potential impact for Latin American countries and Caribbean countries that you'd be hoping for? Well, I think we have to address this issue from different perspectives as well, because I think, as Alex very well said, I mean, we are, of course, in favor of this global tax. There's no question about it. We are very much in favor. We hope it gets through. The problem is if this tax is going to be a one-time tax, or is it, as they say, it's going to be like a solidarity tax. They are calling it that it's going to go for buying vaccines. Now, who are the suppliers of vaccines? Hello are the North, right? So what is going to be the benefit for Latin America and the Caribbean, for example, or developing countries is not that clear. I have to say that today we are facing the worst situation. We have islands of immunity in the world in this region. We have a very great disparity in terms of access to vaccines. So if that money is going to go to buy vaccines, and the next step is how are they going to be redistributed? Are they going to be sale? So do the countries are going to be donated? What are going to be the criteria? Because COVAX is only is only going to be able to give 20% of those vaccines. So that's number one. And we do agree, of course, of these tax, no question about it. But there's other elements that I think need to be agreed upon in a in global agreements and in a global tax system that really could contribute to a to a transformation of the global economy. And I have to say that, first of all, I think that the most important thing for a region like ours is tax evasion. And that is tax evasion amounts to 6.1% of GDP. We're talking a lot of money there. And where does this money go and how do we regulate this money? So that's number one. We really need to go beyond, of course, as I tell you, I'm totally in favor of this global tax on corporate earnings, no question. But number two, we have to go to work to the tax evasion. And this is connected to tax-based erosion. And I do agree that BEPS, OECD has done a lot of work, but we have to go beyond because we need those taxes or those revenues. Let me put it that way, maybe we need those taxes or those where the where the gains of productivity are being made. And here, for example, we need a global alliance with the extractive industries and the World Economic Forum has been working on that a lot. But we need really to agree on a flat tax, if you wish, on certain commodities cannot be this disparity and the race to the bottom, as you said at the beginning, because what happens is that the big companies go to small countries, negotiate the best terms and they raise to the bottom the whole business. So we need to work on corporate tax, the taxation on the reform of international corporate taxation and really to go up to 25% worldwide. I hope and stop base erosion and profit shifting. I think this is extremely important. I really hope that the G7 will will address these issues carefully. And finally, the SDRs, I really hope that the G7, I mean, I know it's not totally related to taxing, but it is because what our countries do need today is liquidity. And we need we don't need very high cost liquidity. Middle income countries, which is the majority, by the way, with holding the highest levels of debt in the world, we need access to liquidity in better terms. SDR is an option. We need to we we need urgently the G7 to say yes and go ahead and reallocate the SDRs as soon as possible. And finally, I think the high, the other question that I hope will come from the public is we need a debt reduction strategy, a debt reduction that is not one size fits all. We need to take into account the toolbox of innovative instruments. I think the IMF is doing a great job, frankly. I think Cristalina Georgieva is really thinking differently out of the box to bring in, for example, a climate action as part of the debt swaps in the negotiations of debt, which I think is very innovative and very important for a greener building back forward, not even better, but forward, not backwards. Thank you so much. Thank you, Alicia, for bringing in. So so many of the other strands that are, of course, all around this issue and this this issue of tax that we're talking about today, because, of course, vaccines and, as you say, those issues around debt and the special drawing rights, the IMF are all interrelated into how we recover from this crisis. Lisa, I want to ask you that this is a discussion that's been centred at the OECD, which is, you know, a club that represents tends to represent the richer economies in the world. Is do you feel that those countries, those less developed economies are being sufficiently heard in this discussion about reform of global corporate tax? Do they have sufficient voice in those discussions to make sure that whatever is decided on will be fair? I think it's a great question. I think no, I think that that's why we need a reform on the tax on the multilateral tax debates. It's not enough what's happening in OECD. It's very important. I have to admit that Angel Goree and his team did a great job, by the way, he's leaving yesterday was his last day. But I mean, they did a fantastic job and Pascal did a fantastic job on BEPS, but it's not enough. We need to go a step further. We really need to get the developing countries voices in and the emerging economies. I mean, we're not only talking about the least developed, we're talking about very large economies that need to be heard. There is a place in OECD, which is the OECD Development Center. But I do believe that we need a tax reform and international tax discussion debate in the United Nations. And that is what Antonio Guterres is trying with the Prime Minister of Jamaica and Canada, that is to bring about the voices. For example, those voices that are never heard are the small island developing states, for example. I mean, and these guys are really drowning, not only because of the climate change, but also because the external debt and the high vulnerability. So definitely we need a space where tax discussion takes place and that could be the UN. I really believe so. The tax committee has to be upgraded and become a ministerial tax committee. Where the G20, by the way, comes along. I think this is very important. Alex, as someone who's been following this process for such a long time, do you have confidence in where the direction of travel is now that we're getting to where we've gotten through this OECD process? The draft communicate that's being reported ahead of Friday's meeting makes reference to the OECD process for taxation. Do you think that's where we're likely to end up and will that produce the desired results? So I think we'll end up with an OECD agreement within the next few months. And I think it will be a dramatic step forward. But I'm afraid everything that we've seen so far from the OECD suggests that they will continue with the current proposal for how this will be structured. So it will be an annual additional revenue of very significant amounts, making sure the largest multinationals are paying a minimum effective tax rate. But the majority of those revenues will go to the OECD countries and the G7 countries themselves. We know that lower income countries lose a bigger share of their current tax revenues to corporate tax abuse. And yet we're moving forward with a structure of a proposal from the OECD that would give them the least benefit. So I think even though this will be a step forward and normalizing the idea of a minimum tax rate is very important, I don't think this is going to be anything like the final answer to the question. We're going to see the pressure that's already been growing. You know, Alicia mentioned the Antonio Gutierrez process with Jamaica and Canada. That's already surfaced the idea of a UN tax convention and the high level facti panel has recommended that very strongly. I think we might see Antonio Gutierrez in September bring forward a proposal to start negotiations on a UN tax convention, which would be the basis for that intergovernmental body to set tax rules under UN auspices, which I think is increasingly where the consensus is. The OECD has had it short. It's opportunity to show that it could deliver for everyone unless something really dramatically shifts in the next month or so. I think that's gone. And I think we're looking now to the UN to fix this. Is there a chance that this will come an incremental step that we won't get into minimum taxation, as you say, is such a big step? But is it a step that we're going to be able to build on then through, for example, the likes of a UN process afterwards? Do we need to follow through this process to the end to get ourselves on that road? That's an interesting question. I think in terms of establishing the idea of a minimum tax rate that multinational companies should pay some minimum level that's not so far away from what a smaller domestic business pays, I think this process has been very important to normalise that idea. But at the moment, the OECD proposals would give the entire privilege to collect that revenue to the headquarters countries of multinationals. That's overwhelmingly the G7 and other OECD members ahead of the host countries, which is where most lower income countries find themselves hosting these multinationals, not being their headquarters. Our alternative proposal would say, let's take the under tax profit and let's apportion it without this discrimination between headquarters and host countries, instead just according to where the real activity takes place. Where do these multinationals have their sales and their employment? And if you do that, unsurprisingly, you get a much fairer outcome. It's not perfect, but it starts to reduce these global inequalities in taxing rights, and it will allow lower income countries to make the kind of sustained investment in public health systems that they need. Charity from the G7 through COVAX may be necessary right now, but it's necessary right now because the G7 and others in the OECD have undermined international tax systems for so long to the detriment of lower income countries. So let's fix that too for the longer term, because that's really what we need if everyone's going to have the kind of public services and the human rights ultimately that we want them to. Elisa, one of the questions that's come from one of our viewers is whether or not you think that this process, this minimum corporate tax could pave the way for other kinds of international taxation, maybe agreements on the global carbon tax. Would you have hoped that we could be moving in that direction? Definitely yes, but let me get a step backwards for a little moment because I believe that this process of taxation, I mean of corporate corporations coming in, and I want to underline what Alex just said, because I really believe that we need a system that is much more, I would say inclusive in a way that these corporations not only pay in the countries of their own jurisdiction, but in the countries where they are making the gains, the productivity gains. We are living under a world of great discontent, and I tell you something, the corporations need to understand that inequality conspires against their business, and they're not going to get it if we don't make it much fairer. I mean, look what's happening in Colombia and Chile everywhere. I mean, people are very tired. Now, the second thing you're asking, whether there is a space for other global taxes like the carbon tax, I think this is very important. I think there is space for that, but the first thing we need to understand is where are the subsidies on their energy? Are the energy subsidies in the developing world? I don't think so. So if we're going to go for a carbon tax, let's make sure that we design a system that again is not going to be discriminating against the developing countries. I think this is extremely important because these countries are looking for industrialization, of course, carbon-free, but you know that it's very expensive. Now, how to use the revenues of these taxes? Let me put an example. Are the corporations in the world ready to share patents for carbon-free technologies? Are they ready for that? Because that could be a very good global deal. If we put together, yes, a carbon tax, indeed, but then why don't we use some of these revenues for patents for the developing worlds on carbon-free technologies? I think this is very important. And then the last discussion I think we need to undertake is are we ready for property taxes, I think, and wealth taxes in our region? We are looking for that. I think we are not only looking for income taxes, that's good, but also for wealth taxes and that's something that if the world starts talking about that, maybe our countries will also develop those fiscal system. And just as an example, Mexico, where I am now, has made, you know, they say that Mexico is not doing any fiscal reform. Mind you, they are doing a very important fiscal reform. They are avoiding tax evasion and they are obtaining revenues last year of 1.7% of GDP. Very amazing. For me, that is a fiscal reform included. So over to you, Stephen. Sorry that I covered so many topics. No, I mean, it's all very interesting and it shows us again how connected all of these topics are. Alex, on that point, do you feel that have we learned something from this process that will allow us to build into other global agreements afterwards like, you know, carbon tax or other issues as well? Have we actually learned from this process how we could work together? So I think one thing we've learned is that the rich countries of the world will move when they face revenue pressure, but not necessarily in a way that benefits anyone else. And that's why, you know, to go back to this point, we have to get this into the UN system. You know, my colleague at the Global Alliance for Tax Justice, Derijay Alameyahu always says, if we're not at the table, then we're on the menu. And I think that's the experience of lower income countries far too often when we deal with international tax. At least he makes a really good point about a carbon tax. The idea of changing the incentives around carbon emissions is very important, and doing that on a worldwide level seems crucial, but if the effect of that is that we penalize lower income countries who are responsible for a much smaller share of the historic total of carbon emissions and also are less well-equipped to bear those costs today, in doing so, it will be fundamentally unjust. And the idea that we can fix the climate damage that the rich countries have done off the backs of the lower income countries seems unconscionable, and yet it's not at all unlikely that that kind of proposal would come through if we continue to let the OECDs set the rules for everyone else. Ultimately, it comes down to the politics of this. We can make the changes we want. We can ensure tax sovereignty in countries at every income level, but only by pulling that sovereignty, by cooperating in a way that is globally inclusive. These issues of tax evasion, also that Alicia mentioned, tax evasion and corporate tax abuse, the numbers show absolutely without doubt that the OECD countries and their dependent territories are responsible for about two-thirds up to almost 100% of the global problem, depending on how you cut that data. This is an issue driven by the rich countries that the rich countries benefit from, extracting income and the ability to tax from lower income countries. Until we understand that element of the politics, then the technical discussions will always end up taking us back to the same place, back to unequal proposals that favor the rich countries over lower income countries. Let's get this to the United Nations. Let's have the transparency and the globally inclusive nature that only the UN can deliver to intergovernmental negotiations and then we'll start to see the kind of tax changes that will really benefit everyone. Another question that's come in from our viewers, Alex, so do you think the EU will move forward with its proposed digital levy because we know so much of the conversation and Europe has been focused on taxing digital giants? Do you think it will move ahead with its digital levy despite what's happening with the G20 and the G7? The European Commission certainly sound like they're serious about doing that, and the fact that on the other pillar of the OECD reforms, the US proposals actually narrow it down, so there's only going to be a handful of digital companies covered by that, I think leaves the door open for the European Commission. Now, they'll have a fight about whether, if they agree with the OECD reforms, that's them committing not to do another digital type of tax, but I think the European Commission is big enough to say that we need to make sure that all of the big digital multinationals are captured by this, our citizens demand it, and also we'd quite like their revenues. So I think the incentives for them to move ahead with that will be quite strong, unless perhaps there's a really ambitious minimum tax rate agreed, in which case you'd find all of those multinationals were already paying a reasonably fair share of tax, something like 25% as a floor, I think would probably take that off the table for the European Commission, but I suspect we're going to see the UK and others pushing the ambition down probably towards 15%, in which case there's still a serious issue of the under taxation of those digital multinationals, which of course continue to out-compete local businesses with that unfair tax advantage, so there's a lot of reasons really to push ahead with that kind of change. I'm glad that you covered the issue of the rate because that's one of the big debates that we're expected to hear more about over the next few days. So you're thinking we're worth the UK and is going to push towards 15, but you'd like to see it much higher than that, so I'm glad you covered that. Elise, I want to come back to you as we're coming towards the end of our discussions here. One of the other issues that's related to this is the idea of creating a more level playing field for countries to compete. As we emerge from this crisis, are you hopeful that tax could be a lever in that to allow countries to compete in Latin America and the Caribbean to compete with other countries in different parts of the world? Well, before talking about competition, we need to talk about getting out of this emergency and how are we going to get out of this emergency? That's going to be crucial. And I think that the problem is that the level playing field is very uneven. Let's put it that way in many ways, because first of all, the countries and tax is going to be so important because there's a budgetary expansion that is going to be needed at least for this year, next year, probably 2023. That is, fiscal policies have shown us, by the way, that there was room for fiscal policies. Many people were on the fiscal contraction side, but now the world has demonstrated that there is fiscal space, by the way. If you want to find it, you found it. So the thing is here that, yes, I think that there is a there is a there, for example, in our region, these countries have invested around 4.1% of GDP, 4.3% of GDP in fiscal measures that are not enough, by the way, and they have to sustain this. So fiscal reform is essential. What type of reforms? Yes, income taxes need to go higher. The average of this region is 18% is not enough. We need to go up, OECD is around 34, so we definitely need to do that. Tax evasion, we need to control that. Tax expenditures, those are the privileges that are legal, what we have to review. Those tax expenditures, very carefully. And indeed, on this digital taxing, I think that in our region, it's so unfair what's going on. We have 45 million households without connectivity in this region. So those digital corporations need to make a solidarity expenditure to make sure that digital inclusion is there for everyone, if we really want to move forward. And finally, we have identified some key sectors for a better recovery. Energy transition is one, solutions based on nature, digital inclusion, electromobility, et cetera. So we are putting prices and costs to each one of these sectors to see how many jobs. Jobs is going to be the word. And that's why this World Economic Forum session is about jobs, because whatever we do, what we're going to need immediately is jobs. And who's going to provide those jobs? Is the private sector in it? I'm not sure. So we need fiscal paths, global fiscal paths, regional fiscal paths, and national fiscal compacts. Okay, Alicia Varsana from the UN Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean. Thank you very much, Alex. Just a quick last word from you, if you don't mind. What is your hope? What time of the year should we be looking at that we're all going to be living in a brave new world of international taxation? Is it going to be done this year, do you think? Yep. I think the main decision will be July and we'll get the detail in October. But I hope by that time, we'll have a UN process moving to negotiate a tax convention that will really change the architecture as well. Okay, thank you very much, Alex Carbon Chief Executive of the Tax Justice Network for joining us. Thank you to all of you for joining us on top link and on the social media of the World Economic Forum. You can continue to react using the hashtag on social media jobs reset 21 and on top link as well. Thank you all very much for joining us and enjoy the rest of your evening.


Known as the Roof of Africa, the highlands of Ethiopia are a lofty oasis. Though situated near the equator, the region enjoys cool temperatures year-round, thanks to its high elevation, about 1200 meters above sea level. But a changing climate could change that over the next century. Researchers at MIT project that towards the end of the 21st century, the Ethiopian highlands in East Africa will be at a significantly high risk for transmitting malaria, transforming this temperate haven into a breeding ground for disease. The work follows up on the team's previous research on West Africa. There, the researchers acknowledged malaria currently poses a big threat. A combination of high rainfall and warm temperatures create the ideal conditions for mosquitoes to breed and spread disease. Fast-forward several decades and some sub-regions of West Africa are projected to become less hospitable to the mosquito, with global warming nudging some of the region out of the optimal temperature zone for supporting the mosquito's life cycle. In East Africa, the team predicts the opposite will be true. Bands of warmer temperatures will gradually creep up the highlands of Ethiopia and push it into the sweet spot for mosquito breeding. The researchers arrived at the conclusion using a pair of custom-made computer models. Guided by extensive field campaigns, those models help them forecast the risk of malaria transmission in the Ethiopian highlands. One predicts future climate by taking recent surface temperature data gathered by satellites and projecting it forward in time based on the current pace of greenhouse gas emissions. The other combines such climate data with other environmental parameters to predict the future success of mosquito breeding. Results showed that if the current rate of greenhouse gas emissions is left unchecked, the Ethiopian highlands can expect a 4-degree bump in temperature over the next several decades. And that could be enough to turn the region into a place where mosquitoes can thrive and spread disease. That the highlands have to date remained relatively malaria-free will only make things worse. The low incidence of malaria in the region means that the more than 30 million people who live in vulnerable subregions of the highlands will likely have little or no immunity to protect them. This study proposes a framework that reconciles seemingly contradictory conclusions about climate change and disease risk. It also informs strategies for climate change adaptation not only over the Ethiopian highlands, but broadly over Africa. The maps of high-risk areas identified in this study could help guide the implementation of efficient measures to prevent malaria from becoming endemic to this region.


Thanks for checking this video out. Your mountaintop news video is coming up in just a minute.  Why is it your ad here? Call me. Thursday, May 5th, North Point Academy hosted Pike County Schools Special Olympics for the first time in two years. The Special Olympics hosted kids of all ages from all over the county. It's a great day for our special-lead students, we're having our special Olympics and really truly maybe my favorite day of the year at Pike County Schools. These kids have a super time and our program, our sponsors, our teachers, they do such a good job putting this on for our students. The Special Olympics is held annually for the students of Pike County and put on by staff and local volunteers. It's all Pike County Schools as well as Pike Independent, so we're all coming together in a collaborative effort to work with our special-lead kids. For more information on Pike County Schools and their events, visit pike.kyschools.us. For Mountaintop News, I'm Breanna Robinson.


I just didn't want you being in the shack, going into the building, right?  That's right, someone needs to go with the board.


The ARW 88 is our freestyle ski. It was designed in conjunction with our athletes and in doing so we've come with a new shape, a new binding insert as well as patent pending technology within our sidewall. So with the new shape we've got much tighter turn radius than previous years. The new binding insert that's been put in there is an ash binding insert. It's removing the plastic binding insert of previous years which is a much more sustainable option but it also increases binding retention as well. And then the wedge wall which is Armada's own patent pending sidewall technology whereby we injection mould the sidewall underneath the wood core and that gives you a much better bond between wood core and sidewall to increase durability by over 50%. We're super proud that Ellis Brigham have chosen the ARW 88 as their women's all mountain freestyle ski of the year.


I'd like to introduce first time speaker William Martin in his talk, One Click, Co-Deviant. Thank you, Kars. As Kars said, my name is William Martin, and uh, I'm an OSCP, I'm a pen tester for RSM US, and I'm based out of Charlotte, and you know, first time presenting at DEF CON, so no pressure. Thank you. Uh, if you can't see me back there, I'm the one on the right. And we only got 20 minutes, so we're gonna kind of blow through this. Uh, we're gonna talk about, uh, basics on exchange and the various endpoints on exchange. Uh, we're gonna go through a little bit of a multi-factor authentication crash course on how it's typically set up, uh, which will kind of emphasize some gaps that some organizations face. Uh, then we're gonna talk about my favorite tag, which is the NTLM relay attack. Uh, we're gonna do a demo and a tool release, and then we're gonna talk about how to fix the things that we just broke. So, overall, organizations have been doing a pretty kick-ass job in terms of implementing multi-factor authentication across the board for their externally-facing services. Like VPNs, definitely, our remote desktop services, Citrix, um, web apps, and email. Uh, with an asterisk on email, we're gonna get to that one. Um, OWA is typically where we see a lot of two-factor being implemented. But there's a little bit of a break in mentality on the goal for multi-factor authentication on OWA. Um, I don't know about most of you, but I have email synced on my phone. I take a gamble at least 60%, 70% of this room also have that scenario, uh, for themselves. Um, but when I was working in an organization, I found that I was using multi-factor authentication on our OWA portal, but my phone was syncing just fine with just my username and password with no other, no other factor, no certification, um, no code, nothing. So that was a bit weird. That seemed like it was counterintuitive for the point of multi-factor authentication. So, to find out why that gap exists, I realized I had to learn a little bit more about how my phone and my outlook were connecting to Exchange, and that's what we're gonna talk about. So, for those who haven't set up an Exchange server themselves, Exchange, uh, has multiple roles in which it can be installed. There's a mailbox server role, there's an edge transport role, um, and all of these kind of dictate how the server is going to operate. The role that we care about is called the client access server role. It's the one that we interact with when we're talking to our email. That's things like, uh, Autodiscover for telling us how to connect our email, uh, Mappy which is how Outlook connects in, uh, an OWA and ECP, um, which are pretty much the focus of this. So, Exchange Cast Servers run essentially on top of an IIS server. There's one large web app, and accessing them looks a bit like this. So, all over HTTPS, all over HTTP, uh, just your standard web calls. Now, to break down what these little endpoints do and the various ways you can talk to Exchange, there is PowerShell, which is used by administrators to kind of administer the server itself. Autodiscover tells your client how to connect to Exchange, Mappy is used by Outlook, RPC is used by Old School Outlook, Active Sync, used by your phone typically, uh, OAB provides your client a way to download the global address book. So, it takes, it kind of eases the burden on Exchange. ECP is, uh, in addition to OWA, which allows a user to kind of change their settings. This is where you go into when you're changing your signature, adding forwarding rules and whatnot, um, on your OWA. And then, not to be a dead horse, OWA itself, the web app that lets you access your email, kind of get access to your tasks, manage your calendar, um, and whatnot from the web without having to, like, run a thick client. And then finally, EWS or Exchange web services. It's a SOAP-based API that allows you to interact with Exchange and make API-based calls to your mailbox. So a lot of, like, old school apps or, uh, the Outlook client from Mac is based on EWS. So, the endpoints because we're hackers that we care about are the ones that have access to the email. So that would be Mappy, RPC, uh, ActiveSync, ECP, OWA, and EWS. Now, as a pen tester, interestingly enough, the ones that I find covered by two-factor authentication most often, are only these two. OWA and Exchange Control Panel, which leaves at least four other ways we can access or email whatnot without that code. So, to find out why, I mean, doesn't get ahead of myself. I'm by far not the first one to find this gap. There have been other security researchers, like notably, uh, Blackhill Information Security that have found this kind of gap, this inconsistency on the implementation of multi-factor authentication protecting Exchange. And, like, 2016, 2016, they reported this to Microsoft and say, hey, this is a gap, are you guys gonna fix it? Microsoft replied saying, no, because this is not an issue on properly configured systems.  So, but because it was so prevalent, I wanted to find out what was causing such a, a pervasive human error. Um, why would, why would, why across all these organizations do we see this gap consistently? An answer is, there really isn't a mention of these other endpoints in those two-factor authentication, uh, protocol implementations.  And the reason that is, is because a lot of these protocols are authenticating through something called ADFS, or Active Directory Federation Services. Without derailing the talk to talk about what that is, um, in a nutshell, it provides a way for users to authenticate to this one server, through whatever means they choose, like multi-factor, and this server will provide that user a cookie which will vouch to other single sign-on services.  That trust gets passed through exchange, and I'm able to log into OWA, even though exchange didn't handle most of the authentication. So, the issue lies in that, that whole exchange, happens over HTTP, happens over like that web app based, um, protocol. Uh, but EWS and MAPI and RPC and those lower layer protocols can't handle that kind of interaction. So, that causes a bit of an issue. This is what it kind of looks like when you log into OWA through an ADFS protected setup. Um, you try to access OWA, you get that redirect saying no contact ADFS first. ADFS is the one that actually authenticates you. It says, hey, log in, maybe use your two-factor code or maybe, uh, give me your, your certificate to prove who you are. If you're using multi-factor, it'll pass that code off and say to its multi-factor authentication provider, again, like Symantec and say, hey, is this code good? And it will say yes or no. Anyways, after that's done, ADFS will pass you back your token or your cookie. You then take that over to OWA and you're good to go. So, vendors know that their solutions aren't covering these underlying protocols. This is not, they're not oblivious to this. Uh, but the issue is not so much on the vendors themselves as they've stated. It lies on the environment that they're implementing their solution on. And to implement their solution properly, they need something called modern authentication. Uh, which, if you've got an exchange environment on premises, takes a bit of a, uh, overhead to implement. So, modern authentication in a nutshell is Microsoft's implementation of the OAuth protocol. And it allows Outlook, EWS mappy and other protocols to handle, um, OAuth tokens. Now, with OAuth, exchange is no longer handling the actual authentication phase of it, even through single sign on like through ADFS. OAuth just passes exchange in a token and it says cool, you're good to go. The OAuth provider is the one that really implements those two factor solutions or whatever else may be. Um, but the catch is with modern authentication, you need to implement Azure in some way, shape, or form. You can't just spin up a DC on-prem, spin up an exchange server on-prem, spin up an ADFS server on-prem and be good to go. You have to interact with Office 365 somehow. And it's that catch that leaves a lot of organizations in the dark and, uh, vulnerable to this kind of, um, lack of coverage. So, when you implement it with exchange on-prem, you need to use something called hybrid modern authentication. It requires an on-prem ADFS and it requires you to use Outlook 2013 or later and you're using Azure to perform all of the token, uh, provisioning. Uh, with Pure Office 365 guys, when you're, when you're using exchange online, you already support modern auth because it's all going through, uh, Office 365 anyways. Um, it just comes down to what kind of multi-factor authentication you want to implement through this now supported protocol. And this is what it looks like when you have a hybrid setup. So, anyways, now we know that the gap that these two factor solutions cause is not a quick, easy fix.  So, while we can, how can we take advantage of this gap? How can we take advantage of this oversight? Well, looking back at those other endpoints that you can talk to that are typically unprotected, there's a common theme amongst three of them. Before doing this research, I didn't know that three of them use NTLM, which is my favorite authentication mechanism. So, that's my point. So, also the first meme I've ever made. Um, so NTLM relay is my favorite attack and it's how I pop maybe 80 to 90% of my internal pen tests. Um, it's a tail, it's attack is all this time itself. Um, the cult of the dead clown, the cult of the dead cow where I explained this as early as 2001. So, for those who don't know, the NTLM relay attack happens through three messages. Works like this. The victim is somehow tricked to connect to an attacker and we'll talk about how they're tricked in a second. But they connect to an attacker and say, hey, I want to log in, here's my domain, here's my username. The attacker that redirects that says, hey, I want to log in, here's my domain and my username. The target server will reply saying, alright, cool, if you're really so and so, take this challenge and hash your password with it. We don't know the password as an attacker, so we'll pass that right back to the victim. The victim will happily oblige and pass that back. So now the attacker has the response, we pass that on to our target server. Target server probably says, okay cool, you've now authenticated, you are so and so. The attacker gets the session and we kill our victim. We just say, no, you weren't able to log in. So, the ways to trigger NTLM authentication are vast. Um, some of the common ways, and my favorite ways are UNC links and emails, which if you're opening an email in Outlook and you click a UNC link, Outlook treats that, it really passes on to Windows and Windows treats that like a, you're trying to access a network share and per network shares it will try to authenticate to it, try to log in, try to open that folder for you. Well, if the attacker is on the other end of that UNC path, it will authenticate to them and that triggers the NTLM relay attack. My other favorite way is NTLM, uh, sorry, NetBios and LLM and R Poisoning, which, anyone here use responder show hands? Yeah, fair number of us. So, uh, never fails to get a hash. Um, for those who don't use responder, it's a tool that hackers use to abuse how Windows works. When Windows asks for a resource that isn't available through DNS, it will then send a broadcast to the local network saying, hey, has anyone seen, I don't know, William share? And typically there will be radio silence. But an attacker will say, yeah, I'm William share. And then the victim will say, oh cool, all right, let me log into you. And then that's how you get the NTLM hash. Recently, I've seen some really cool, well, ways to trigger NTLM authentication that I think are worth mentioning. So, uh, recently there was a CVE pushed out by Will Dorman, which he found that Outlook, you could send an RTF or a rich checks formatted email. And when Outlook received that email, it would parse it. And if that RTF email had a, I know I'm getting really technical, but if, uh, that RTF email had a remote resource embedded in it, Outlook would try to automatically load that and it would parse it to Windows, and then Windows would authenticate to it if it's a UNC path. Um, and this is all without user, um, intervening. And this is without any kind of warnings. So essentially you send an email, they open it, and they are, you already get their hash. Um, Microsoft patched that one, but, uh, we all know that everyone patches everything appropriately, so we have nothing to worry about there. So, um, the other way that is not patched, because it's a bit more difficult to patch, is by Mike Felch. Mike, you in the room? Oh man, he said he was coming. Alright. So, long story short, an attacker can modify the details of a Microsoft document and embed, uh, UNC path in the web settings. So, when a Microsoft Word opens up that document, it will see a little UNC path in the web settings, and it treats that as an external HTML page that you want to embed in your document. And so, as always, it will try to reach out and get that, and if it's on a share, it passes it to windows, and windows will authenticate. This one, there's no user interaction whatsoever outside of opening a document. So if you find that UNC links are filtered in K-mail, and you can't get like a macro through, you might be able to get just a benign document through their email system and get them to trigger an NTLM authentication that way. So, now that we know that we can, these are protected by NTLM, and we can relay to NTLM, which is what we want to attack. Well, a couple years ago, uh, Sense Post came out with an attack called the Ruler Attack, which took advantage of Outlook rules. In a nutshell, the Outlook thick client on a desktop could be configured to run certain commands, uh, upon receiving an email, sending an email, upon a certain event happening.  So, um, naturally I thought, great, I could get RCE with a relay, let's use that. That's what Ruler looks like. Unfortunately, one of the creators of Ruler already had this idea, and it turns out, to perform the true, uh, the true authentic ruler attack, you need to authenticate to exchange more than a few times. And the NTLM relay attack is pretty much a one and done. So, you're not going to really get that far with using a mappy or RPC, which what Ruler is based on. So, I just left this guy, exchange web services, which I, five already, Christ! Alright, so which I had never heard of until I built this, uh, until I ran this attack. So, in a nutshell exchange web services is just a way to access exchange through an API. And, the things we care about is that it's enabled by default. And by on premise exchange, it supports NTLM by default. And it provides access to most things Outlook has access to. And we don't have to go through multiple stages of authentication with NTLM on EWS, it's one and done. So, I built a tool called exchange relay X, which has these goals in mind. Uh, if we pop a user, we want them, we want to be able to read, send, delete, you know, manage their inbox as they would. We will download their attachments, uh, add forwarding rules to kind of backdoor their email, uh, scrape as much data as we can from Active Directory and launch spear phishing from inside the organization. Typically orgs have great, uh, attachment filtering on their prim, on the, uh, perimeter. But from user to user from inside the organization, they have that gap. So, if you compromise the exchange of one user, you might be able to send users B, C and D, uh, malicious attachments without being filtered through. Alright, so now let's try to power through a demo. This demo is going to show an OWA that's protected with two-factor authentication, but is vulnerable to the same gaps that we've covered. Now being prompted for the code, enter it through and there, and there's your usual, uh, outlook web app interface. You've got emails, you can see that the user that we're on is, uh, William Martin, that's me. Uh, we've got a folder over there on the left called modern auth project. We're going to open the user's outlook thick client just to demonstrate the same thing. So, now we're going to actually launch the attack. The tool is called exchange relay X, and right now we're just going to check if the victim is vulnerable. Right now it just reaches out to the mail and says, hey, do you support NTLM? And it turns out, we do. So let's build a relay to that NTLM interface. Let's build a relay to exchange web services. This is showing, sending a sample UNC link to a victim. And we're masking it as a YouTube link. And I'm skipping through some of the loading times of the demo because we're tight on time. The user gets the, uh, the phishing email with that malicious link in there. They click it, and that's it. That's all the user has to do. The attack is now done on their end. Over here we receive the connection, we've relayed it back to their exchange server, and we see them popped right there. So, what can we do with this? I tried to build a similar looking OWA for, for hackers. So, now you see we can open up their email. We've still got the same, uh, little folder on the left that they do. And by the way, as we're reading email and as we're sending email, we're not showing up in their sent folder. Man, you're killing me, Kars. So, I'm gonna release this tool and you guys have a lot of fun with it, but we kind of have to blow through what you can do. One of the features is that you can, uh, add forwarding rules as well as you can, uh, automatically download all of their attachments. So, it just goes through inbox, sent folder, everything, and just as quickly as it can downloads every attachment they've ever sent or received. So, if you have a user that's not super technical, maybe they're a CFO, and they get popped, that's a really bad day. So, stop applauding, we have to move through. So, uh, how do we fix this? You have to implement modern authentication across your application. Ah, man. Alright, modern authentication everywhere. Uh, you're gonna have to implement Azure with that. RPC won't be able to support that. Uh, same thing with pop 3 and IMAP. If you have any 2010s anywhere, this will not work for you. You can't get modern auth with 2010s in the environment. Um, yeah, implement MFA everywhere, filter on 139, 445, and, uh, remember that split tunnel VPNs and IPv6 are typically a gap. Alright, here are the contributors. Sorry for the rush through.


Okay, my name is Marissa John and I'm going to tell you about the nanny van Which is a mobile design studio in sound lab that accelerates the movement for domestic workers rights and We are working with domestic workers nationwide or key partners national domestic workers alliance And we are creating new resources to improve their welfare So to understand where we're coming from you first need to know that in the 1930s and 40s The new deal labor laws Intentionally excluded domestic workers from receiving those same rights However in New York in 2010 domestic workers won a bill of rights that guarantees minimum and overtime wage and so forth and Now what's really exciting is that those laws are changing nationwide? So but in New York to inform the 200,000 domestic workers about their newfound rights We created this tool where you can call in using any kind of phone and hear humorous episodes about the law or about health and safety this is the logo that we produced on the business cards and the flyers and The way that the word gets out is primarily through Advocacy groups and a lot of on-the-ground Outreach by nannies to each other in the park And a key thing to know is that you can access it using any kind of phone so even a really basic to be a phone so now as I mentioned the laws are changing nationwide and Massachusetts is going to be the fourth state to pass their bill of rights and So we're creating a national version of that and to do that we created the nanny van So essentially we've been trekking around the country and meeting with domestic workers So We have a couple different groups that we think of as a demographic Okay, so we have the domestic workers and we have done a lot of surveys and the value of feedbacks And we know that we reach them primarily through basic cheapy cell phones Then we also work with domestic employers and we they have indicated that They're most Keen to access stuff via the web and then for the general public or what we think of as left-leaning liberals who were inclined to Want to do the right thing it's via social media And Twitter specifically Twitter and Facebook so here's some of the examples of Events and ways of outreach here's a group of nannies at the SF Public Library Doing a lion dance to the tunes the nant them here is a group of 140 nannies Not all in the picture here and they are creating nanny vane grams dedicated to political leaders and the pictures are then tweeted to local leaders and Then delivered in person so in Massachusetts. They were delivered to the state house And then for the other demographic the fourth demographic is political leaders and that's in-person Meetings as well as those tweets So we've been really kind of crafting and honing the specific ways that we reach these very different demographics Employers outreach includes things like farmers markets or food truck stops or Here we are at a private high school doing workshops with High schoolers to who likely have domestic workers here. We are creating placemats for the children of domestic employers and ideas that people colored in the kids colored in it goes on to the refrigerator as a Kind of trickle up tip So this is what our audience engagement plan looks like and we've been crafting and honing and so forth so the thing that really blew us away through all of this was that a few weekends ago we went to The Queens Museum where we had an event and it was really successful your got a couple of hundred nanny vane grams creates mostly Domestic employers as well as the general public so culture going left leaning public and Then then that was on a Saturday and then the Sunday What happened was there was this antique auto show and so we backed up the nanny van there It is in the background and we backed it about 20 feet and then all of a sudden there was thousands people coming by to take all of Our resources and this was just so this is like we had not anticipate antique car fetishists as part of our demographic and so here is Dom Artali who runs the auto antique show in the Queens and it's this kind of roving thing and that really Exploded what we think of as the general public and so now as we're continuing to go across the country here We are at Grand Canyon we're just rethinking this idea of the general public and Opening our minds as to who who is interested in domestic workers rights and these new Ways to support domestic employers and workers And that's been the most interesting thing for me. Thank you