Axios Closer

September 19, 2022
Good afternoon! Here's what we have for you today...
Today's newsletter is 670 words, a 2½-minute read.
đź”” The dashboard: The S&P 500 closed up 0.7%.
- Biggest gainer? WestRock (+5.5%), leading a rebound of paper and packaging stocks following Friday's drops.
- Biggest decliner? Moderna (-7.1%), headlining a bad day for vaccine stocks after President Biden declared the pandemic over on Sunday's "60 Minutes."
1 big thing: Hackers like WFH too
Illustration: Brendan Lynch/Axios
Workers are being tricked into giving up their digital credentials through their most trusted device — their cellphones, Hope and Axios Codebook author Sam Sabin write.
Why it matters: Companies are now more vulnerable than ever to large-scale hacks as employees work from home and use their personal devices.
Driving the news: Uber is investigating a hack that compromised its internal systems — including Slack as well as its source code — after a contractor’s personal device had been infected with malware, the company said today.Â
- The attacker (or attackers) is reportedly affiliated with a group that has also breached companies including Microsoft and Samsung this year and claimed responsibility for an unprecedented leak of Grand Theft Auto footage from an unreleased game.Â
What’s happening: Managing threats has become harder as more people work from home and use their personal devices to do work, or their work devices to do personal things.
- Targeting workers through phone-based phishing campaigns also suggests hackers have found an efficient way to breach bigger companies that have more layered and sophisticated cybersecurity protections, says Sam Rubin, vice president of North American security consulting at Palo Alto Networks.Â
What they’re saying: Security teams are struggling to keep up with “an avalanche” of apps, accounts and credentials, personal devices and data, Jaime Blasco, co-founder and CTO at Nudge Security, tells Axios.
💬 Our thought bubble: Companies have been investing so heavily in keeping bad actors out that it’s both easy to underestimate and to undertrain employees on cybersecurity.
2. Charted: Credit crutch

Reliance on credit cards has grown substantially over the past year as record levels of inflation weigh on households, Hope writes.
State of play: The percentage of Americans who have been in credit card debt for at least 12 months grew to 60% as of the end of August — up by 10 percentage points from last year, a new CreditCards.com survey shows.
- People are getting squeezed by both high inflation and high-interest rates and it's showing up in the numbers, Ted Rossman, senior industry analyst at CreditCards.com, tells Axios.
The big picture: There's an element of rising credit card debt that actually shows consumer spending helps the economy, but in general, we don't want people to be in credit card debt, says Rossman.
What to watch: Average interest rates on credit cards is 18% — the highest since 1996.
4. Last day of U.K. mourning
Coldstream Guards travel along The Mall. Photo: Dan Kitwood/Getty Images
Queen Elizabeth II was laid to rest today, ending 10 days of national mourning in the U.K., Hope writes.
Why it matters: Businesses and public services that have shut down are expected to resume this week.
State of play: It's been a tricky time for some businesses, including restaurants and bars that risked being either criticized for denying basic services to the public or for possibly docking workers' pay if they didn't show up.
The big picture: Britain's economy has been teetering on the edge of recession, and there's now a greater risk after the nearly two-week period of economic slowdown, Modupe Adegbembo, an economist at AXA Investment Managers, tells The Guardian.
In photos: Britain and world leaders mourn Queen Elizabeth at state funeral
5. B-school diversity gap
Illustration: Sarah Grillo/Axios
Business schools still lack gender, racial and ethnic diversity, even as companies are under greater pressure to forge more diverse organizations, Bloomberg reports.
State of play: The top overall business schools in the world — Stanford, Chicago (Booth), Harvard, Northwestern (Kellogg) and Dartmouth (Tuck) — don't crack the top 10 for diversity, according to Bloomberg's latest business school rankings.
- Half of the score on Bloomberg Businessweek's Best B-School's Diversity Index is based on race and ethnicity and the other half is on gender.
- Howard ranked No. 1.
6. What they're saying
"We recognize we didn’t meet expectations."— DirecTV apologized to subscribers and offered reimbursement after a second straight week of streaming glitches with its NFL Sunday Ticket offering.
Today's newsletter was edited by Pete Gannon and copy edited by Sheryl Miller.
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