http://www.pogowasright.org/?p=12906
U.S. ends webcam probe; no charges
August 17, 2010 by Dissent
John P. Martin reports:
Federal prosecutors on Tuesday closed their investigation into Lower Merion School District’s secret use of software to track student laptops, saying they found no evidence that anyone intentionally committed a crime.
The decision, announced by U.S. Attorney Zane Memeger, ended a six-month probe by the FBI into allegations that district employees might have spied on students through webcams on their school-issued laptops.
In a brief statement released by his office, Memeger didn’t disclose details of the investigation, but said agents and prosecutors concluded that charges were unwarranted.
Read more on Philly.com
I’d really like to know their reasoning in deciding not to file any charges. On some level, though, a prosecution is somewhat superfluous at this point as most schools have probably gotten the message that you can’t do what Lower Merion did. Prosecuting individual administrators or employees as criminals seems somewhat of overkill.
(Related)
http://www.pogowasright.org/?p=12908
Wiretap Act Violations Require Criminal Intent
August 17, 2010 by Dissent
Tim Hull reports:
A son who used his iPhone to record a kitchen-table conversation about his dying mother’s will did not violate the federal Wiretap Act, the 2nd Circuit ruled, because he had no criminal intent.
The federal appeals court in Manhattan joined its sister circuits in finding that the Act’s “exception to the one-party consent provision requires that a communication be intercepted for the purpose of a tortious or criminal act that is independent of the intentional act of recording.”
Just days before she died of lung cancer in 2008, Elizabeth Caro and her husband, Marshall, got into a “heated” conversation with family members about her will.
Without telling anyone, Elizabeth’s son, David Weintraub, used his iPhone to capture the conversation and, after Elizabeth died without a will, used the recording to challenge Marshall Caro’s claim on her estate.
Read more on Courthouse News.
Related: Caro v. Weintraub (opinion, pdf)
(Related)
http://www.pogowasright.org/?p=12900
Lower Merion adopts new policies on laptop tracking
August 17, 2010 by Dissent
John P. Martin reports:
The Lower Merion School District on Monday adopted a new set of policies to govern the use and tracking of student laptops and other technology, its latest step to get past the furor of webcam monitoring.
The measures, passed unanimously by the school board at its monthly meeting, spell out in detail when, how, and for what reasons school officials can access or monitor the laptops they will give to each of the district’s nearly 2,300 high school students next month.
Read more on Philly.com. If you’re wondering what the case has cost the district so far, Martin also reports:
The district has already spent nearly $1 million in legal fees and expenses on the case.
Meanwhile, the Robbinses’ attorney has asked the judge to order Lower Merion to pay him $418,000 to cover his bills through July. That request is pending.
Not all breaches disclose the same information. Think of this one from the “personal protection” (e.g. Secret Service) perspective.
http://www.databreaches.net/?p=13381
FIFA Ticketing Partner in Security Breach
August 18, 2010 by admin
From the not-very-sportsman-like dept.
FIFA [Fédération Internationale de Football Association] is liaising with its official ticketing partner Match after a massive security breach compromised the details of 80,000 of its customers, including Sweden’s former Prime Minister and the head of Norway’s national bank.
An investigation by the Norwegian newspaper Dagbladet reveals that confidential lists with personal data – including full name, date of birth and passport number – of at least 80,000 Match customers has been sold onto the black market.
The information also included detailed information about which games the customers had tickets to, and where they were seated.
The newspaper published emails from a Match employee offering the information to well-known figures in the international ticketing black market.
[...]
The unfaithful employee offered the lists in April 2009, quoting €2.50 per contact. More than 80,000 names and details were allegedly leaked, three quarters of which included full datasets.
Read more on World Football Insider.
Still looking for a common definition....
http://www.databreaches.net/?p=13376
Data breach demonstrates need for access control policies
August 18, 2010 by admin
Remember the breach reported a few weeks ago when a Freedom of Information request uncovered that a Canada Revenue Agency employee had been mining the database to identity high-wealth individuals that she might recruit as customers for her side business? The individuals whose data were accessed were never notified of the incident because the government decided that there was no risk of injury. Dave Kearns uses that breach story in the Vancouver Sun to make a few points:
1) Why weren’t controls in place to prevent, or at least raise a flag, when an agent accessed files randomly? Were they at least audited?
2) Why did it take four years for someone to realize that there were shady dealings going on?
3) How did CRA determine the “risk of injury”?
4) Why aren’t the affected parties notified whenever there’s a breach?
Indeed.
Read more on Network World.
E-conomics: How much should I spend to secure my computers?
http://www.databreaches.net/?p=13374
Making Sense of Security Breach Cost Numbers
August 18, 2010 by admin
Larry Walsh writes:
What is the most expensive security breach ever? Before you answer, read the rest of this blog (trust me, you’re probably wrong).
According to a recent report by the Ponemon Institute, the mean corporate loss to IT security breaches last year was $3.8 million. During the four-week study period, participating companies reported being the subjected to at least 50 known attacks. And these companies reported taking as long as 14 days at a cost of nearly $18,000 per day to remediate a security breach.
The Digital Forensics Association also released an analysis of more than 2,800 publicly disclosed data breaches over the last five years that caused $139 billion – that’s a 12-digit number – in damages. This isn’t precise math, but if you do some rough numbers on the back of a napkin you’ll calculate a cost of about $9 million per breach.
Now if these numbers are making your eyes spin, let me put them into perspective.
Read more on CompTIA.
Nice of them, but does this mean they are looking into their customer's computers?
http://www.databreaches.net/?p=13366
Virgin Media to inform customers of malware infections
August 17, 2010 by admin
Virgin Media has revealed that it will be sending customers whose computers are infected with malware warning letters.
The company announced that it would be taking the step following research which found that nearly a quarter of its customers are affected by some form of malware including viruses, Trojans and spyware.
Initially, Virgin Media is planning on distributing a few hundred letters every week and will expand the service based upon feedback from customers.
Read more on BCS.
[From the article:
It's time for ISPs to go beyond the basics and do whatever they can to help protect their customers.
"We're going to do whatever we can to help defend our customers from serious consequences such as identity theft, and even banking fraud."
(Related) On the other hand...
http://tech.slashdot.org/story/10/08/18/0027238/ISPs-Lie-About-Broadband-Up-To-Speeds?from=rss
ISPs Lie About Broadband "Up To" Speeds
Posted by samzenpus on Tuesday August 17, @09:47PM
"Ars Technica has an article detailing the difference between ISP advertised 'up to x Mbps' speeds and the actual speeds, in addition to some possible solutions. They find that on average, the advertised speeds were 'up to 6.7 Mbps' while the real median was 3 Mbps and the mean was 4 Mbps. This implies that ISPs were falsely advertising by at least 50%."
[From the article:
When you look at actual speeds, most Americans have fairly slow service
How do I urk thee? Let me count the ways. “Hey, welcome to the store. What can I sell you? Would you like one of these! You'd look good in that! Those are 25% off today! There's a dressing room over there, why not try that one on?”
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/08/17/technology/17app.html?_r=1
Aisle by Aisle, an App That Pushes Bargains
Major retailers are working with a new smartphone application that tracks and offers promotions to shoppers as they move from outside the store, to counters, to cash registers — even inside the dressing room (now that’s persistence).
The app, called Shopkick, will be available on Tuesday for the iPhone and in the fall for Android phones. And with five major companies supporting it — Macy’s, Best Buy, Sports Authority and American Eagle Outfitters, along with the Simon Property Group, the prominent mall operator — it is getting a big introduction.
I find this fascinating. In Churchill's day we were only concerned with “two nations, divided by a common language” Now as English is adopted as the universal tongue, everyone can invent their own sub-language (e-dialect?)
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-10971949
How the internet is changing language
'To Google' has become a universally understood verb and many countries are developing their own internet slang. But is the web changing language and is everyone up to speed?
[Can you define:
"rickrolling" "lurker" "troll" "caps" "LOLcat" “TMI” “WTF” “OMG”
Humor. I'll add this one to my Computer Security folder
A boss in information security forgot to lock his computer..
....and this is what his staff had waiting for him.
For my Ethical Hackers
The 7 Useful (And Unknown) Web Browsers That Are Worth A Try
[One example:
Browzar is based on the Internet Explorer engine, which means it’s such a small file that it only takes seconds to download. We’ve made it disposable; so you have the choice of keeping Browzar on your PC, or downloading it each time you need to protect your privacy. You don’t even need to install it. You can just click ‘run’ and go.
For my website students
HTML5 Reset Speeds Up Site Development With Handy Boilerplate Code
We recently stumbled across HTML5 Reset, a set of templates and code that makes a great starting point for a sites that will be using HTML5 and CSS 3.
HTML5 Reset draws on many well-known sources like Eric Meyer’s reset stylesheet, the Modernizr script for HTML5 across browsers, Dean Edwards’ IE7.js. (Separately, there’s also the excellent HTML5 Boilerplate, which has similar HTML5 and CSS 3 features, but of course a slightly different way of implementing them.)
(Related)
http://www.makeuseof.com/tag/freemake-easy-video-converter-windows/
Freemake – An Easy Video Converter For Windows
The program will accept virtually any video file you can dream of as an input.
You can select numerous files at once and convert them in a batch.
While a wide variety of inputs are accepted, the outputs are more limited, but still very robust. AVI, MP4, WMV, 3GP, DVD, MP3 and Youtube output is supported. The AVI and WMV options allow you to chose from a variety of quality options including 1080p, 720p, DVD quality, TV quality and mobile quality. The MP4 conversion is optimized for mobile devices including the iPhone, iPad, the Sony PSP, and smartphones. The 3GP format is also targeted towards mobile devices.
[Also see:
http://www.makeuseof.com/tag/5-easy-to-use-freeware-video-converters/
5 Easy-to-use Freeware Video Converters
Got data? Got lots and lots and lots of data? Here's an interesting way to sift through it. (Windows Vista or better)
http://www.makeuseof.com/tag/pivot-search-interact-massive-amounts-data/
Pivot – Search & Interact With Massive Amounts Of Data
Pivot is based on a previous experiment called Seadragon, now dubbed Zoom.it and free for all. Just like Zoom.it, Pivot allows you to move and search through incredible amounts of data. But where the former could only exploit one huge picture at a time, Pivot juggles with thousands upon thousands of different files. It’s a new way to experience data.
… Although Pivot is free, revolutionary and quite stunning, you’ll have to bear in mind that it’s still an experiment. Currently this means that it isn’t exactly easy to create collections of your own. The best GUI currently available seems to be Pivot Collection Maker, by y2k4life (third-party).
Pivot currently features a Collection Gallery. Most relevant are the sport-related collections, Wikipedia (highly recommended), Yoga Journal Featured Poses, AMG Movies/Actors and New/Concept Cars. The other available Collections can be seen here.
Free is good!
http://www.makeuseof.com/tag/limited-time-offer-anybizsofts-pdf-merger-pdf-splitter-free/
Limited Time Offer: Get AnyBizSoft’s PDF Merger & PDF Splitter for FREE
Do you read or work with PDF files often? If so, you’ve probably needed the ability to either combine multiple files into one or split one into many at some point.
AnyBizSoft has two applications that can do just that. Their PDF Merger allows you to combine multiple PDF files into one for better organizing, archiving, and batch printing, while their PDF Splitter enables you to split PDF files–even encrypted ones–by pages, bookmarks, and page ranges.
… For a limited time only, AnyBizSoft is giving licenses to these apps away for free. All you have to do is navigate over to their Facebook page and fill in your information to be sent a free license for both apps. Once you have a license, you can download the apps from their respective pages and enter in your code to begin using them for free.
Aside from the limited time offer, AnyBizSoft is also constantly giving away free licenses for their flagship app, PDF to Word Converter 3.0.0. More details on their Facebook page.
If you’re an academic user, you can also check out their Back to School special offer page for more great deals.
Know your enemy students!
http://www.beloit.edu/mindset/2014.php
The Beloit College Mindset List for the Class of 2014
1. Few in the class know how to write in cursive.
19. They never twisted the coiled handset wire aimlessly around their wrists while chatting on the phone.
… 28. They’ve never recognized that pointing to their wrists was a request for the time of day.
… 58. Beethoven has always been a dog.
A certain Law Professor we know forwards this video about the benefits of a new medication
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