Wednesday, April 24, 2013

This is (according to Google) my 2500th Centennial-Man blog post.
Since I do it all wrong, posting many articles at once, I have to recalculate the details at each milestone. 2500 posts is approximately 25000 articles, gleened from (complete SWAG here) 350,000 articles read. Of course I've been sending “Clippings” emails for years before that and before the emails I actually used to cut articles from the technical journals and mark them up with highlighters and actual ink comments (how 'old school')
Of course, 2500 days is 6.8 years or 82 months or 357 weeks (according to WolframAlpha.com) and I estimate I spend at least 2 hours each day reading, clipping and commenting. So that's 5000 hours (208 days or 300,000 minutes) spent in a futile attempt to keep my brain from turning to mush.


Just a quick question. Is an attack on Twitter considered an attack on our (the US) infrastructure? If not, why not? (Look at the graph!)
What Happened to Stock Markets When the AP's Twitter Account Was Hacked
Stock markets momentarily plunged after a tweet sent by the Twitter account of the Associated Press, which was apparently hacked, erroneously reported that explosions at the White House had injured US president Barack Obama.
AP staff have confirmed that the tweet was "bogus," and the @AP account has been suspended.
The Dow fell 146 points before recovering almost immediately. The S&P 500, which was hovering around 1576 before the mischievous tweet hit, tumbled by 0.8% in a matter of moments, falling to nearly 1563 at 1:10 p.m. EST.
… In a knee jerk move, the CBOE Volatility Index, or Vix -- the so-called fear gauge of the US stock market -- shot sharply higher


In theory, I speak English. Fortunately, I've already Googled “lakh” to translate past articles. NOTE: You need backups as soon as you have the data in hand! Hidden question: How will they notify the people whose data they lost?
Data loss, but no seemingly big risk of data misuse:
Maharashtra government has lost data of about three lakh people collected under the controversial Aadhaar scheme, mostly from Mumbai who enrolled into the number scheme.
According to a report in the Times of India, the data containing permanent account number (PAN) and biometric information was lost while being uploaded from Mumbai to Unique Identification Authority of India (UIDAI) server in Bengaluru. “While the transmission was in progress, the hard disk containing data crashed. When the data was downloaded in Bangalore, it could not be decrypted,” the newspaper report said quoting an official from Maharashtra information technology (IT) department, which is overseeing the enrolment of citizens.
Read more on MoneyLife.
Three lakh is 300,000 people. And if you’re wondering as to whether there was a backup, the Times of India reports that those whose data were lost will have to re-register for their Aadhaar ID – a time-consuming a frustrating process. Was there no backup of the drive??


A day for reminders?
April 23, 2013
Microsoft Security Intelligence Report v14: Why antivirus software matters
"The latest volume of the Security Intelligence Report (SIR) highlights the importance of using antivirus software. Antivirus software helps protect your computer from malicious software (malware) and can be downloaded or installed inexpensively or at no charge. Still, according to the SIR v14 findings, 24 percent of computers worldwide were not running up-to-date antivirus software, leaving them 5.5 times more likely to be infected with viruses."
  • SIR Volume 14: July 2012 to December 2012 - The Microsoft Security Intelligence Report (SIR) analyzes the threat landscape of exploits, vulnerabilities, and malware using data from Internet services and over 600 million computers worldwide. Threat awareness can help you protect your organization, software, and people."


Refining our understanding of the risk environment...
Caroline Donnelly reports:
The Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) has stepped up its enforcement activities, by issuing double the number of data breach fines in 2012-2013 as it did in the previous 12 months.
This is according to data obtained via a Freedom of Information (FoI) request by digital comms vendor ViaSat.
[...]
Between March 2012 and March 2013, there were 1,150 self-reported breaches made to the ICO, despite only 730 being made between 22 March 2011 and 17 February 2012.
Read more on IT Pro.


Oops! “...but look how quickly we made the arrest!”
Focus Shifts in Ricin Case as Charges Are Dropped
… One day after the F.B.I. said it could find no evidence that the man, Paul Kevin Curtis, was behind the plot, a federal judge released him from jail and federal authorities shifted focus to another person of interest in the case.
… According to a senior federal law enforcement official, the authorities were first drawn to Mr. Curtis because the language used in the letters was strikingly similar to language he had used before in letters to elected officials.
Prosecutors did not immediately respond to questions about the dropped charges. A court filing released Tuesday said the “ongoing investigation has revealed new information.”


Backgrounder...
April 23, 2013
EFF - How Facebook Teams Up With Data Brokers to Show You Targeted Ads
EFF: "Recently, we published a blog post that described how to opt out of seeing ads on Facebook targeted to you based on your offline activities. This post explained where these companies get their data, what information they share with Facebook, or what this means for your privacy. So get ready for the nitty-gritty details: who has your information, how they get it, and what they do with it. It’s a lot of information, so we’ve organized it into an FAQ for convenience."


Okay, ya got me. Everything here is repackaged, except my words of wisdom.
Is It Journalism, or Just a Repackaged Press Release? Here's a Tool to Help You Find Out
… Today, the Sunlight Foundation has unveiled a tool that will help us all with this work. "The tool is, essentially, an open-source plagiarism detection engine," web developer Kaitlin Devine explained to me. It will scan any text (a news article, e.g.) and compare it with a corpus of press releases and Wikipedia entries. If it finds similar language, you'll get a notification of a detected "churn" and you'll be able to take a look at the two sources side by side.


Tools & Techniques
LaTeX is a document markup language that is popularly used in academia. Researchers who are writing papers or books of their own on technical topics mostly choose LaTeX to prepare their documents. There are various desktop text editors that help you prepare documents using the LaTeX language. To share these documents, you must first save them and then send the file to your peers online. You must also make sure that they have a text editor installed that is capable of viewing and, if necessary, editing LaTeX files. In case the file’s recipient does not have LaTeX ready software, it is very difficult for them to view these files. An effective solution is offered by a site called writeLaTeX – it lets you write and share LaTeX from an online interface.
… Creating an account is not necessary but required in case you want to save your work and manage different saved documents. Your documents are published under a unique URL that can be shared with others for them to view and edit the document. Finished documents can also be exported to PDF files or ZIP files that include all the source files.
Similar tools: ScribTex, MonkeyTex and Verbosus.

No comments: