Looks
like some people are taking Russia's offer seriously.
Tor
Warns of Attack Attempting to Deanonymize Users
The
Tor Project has disclosed details of an attack which appeared to be
an attempt to deanonymize users of the popular anonymity network.
According
to Tor Project Leader Roger Dingledine, the attack was detected on
July 4 while the organization was trying to identify attacks
leveraging a method discovered by researchers at Carnegie Mellon
University's CERT.
The
researchers, Michael McCord and Alexander Volynkin, planned
on detailing a way to break the anonymity network by exploiting
fundamental flaws in its design and implementation at the upcoming
Black Hat security conference, but their presentation was cancelled
because their materials had not been approved for public release by
the Software Engineering Institute at Carnegie Mellon University.
Probably
small, but not the kind of message you want to send your customers.
Points for honesty? Probably not. I wonder if they have records
(activity logs) going back to 2011?
Ouch.
Lasko is notifying some customers of the Lasko
and Air
King web sites that on July 2, they became aware that
some customers were receiving phishing e-mails. Investigation
suggested that it may have been related to a hack of their system
that exposed customers’ names, email addresses, phone numbers,
credit card numbers and card expiration dates.
“Although
most of the activity associated with this unauthorized hacking into
our computer network appears to have occurred during March – June
2014, we can not rule out
the possibility of unauthorized access to our network leading to the
exposure of credit card information dating back to 2011,”
writes
Edward V. McAssey III, Chief Operating Officer. The meta-data for
their submission to the California Attorney General’s Office
indicates that the hack may have occurred in December 2011.
Those
notified were offered a year of free services through AllClear ID,
but there’s no indication in the letter how many customers are
being notified.
(Related)
People say they are concerned, but they don't seem to act that way.
Customer
Loyalty Seriously Affected by Data Breaches: SafeNet
A
global survey conducted by data protection solutions provider SafeNet
once again confirms that data breaches, especially ones that involve
financial data, have a negative impact on customer loyalty.
According
to the study,
65% of the roughly 4,500 respondents are unlikely to do business with
a company that experienced an incident in which credit card details,
bank account numbers or online banking login data was stolen.
Consumers in the United States and Germany appear to be the least
concerned, with 54%, respectively 53%, saying that they would not do
business with a firm that suffered a data breach. Japan is at the
other end of the poll with 82%.
…
The
Q2
Breach Level Index published by SafeNet on Wednesday shows that a
total of 175 million records were exposed worldwide in the second
quarter as a result of the 237 data breaches that occurred during
this period.
Security
as “competitive advantage.” Interesting.
Can
BlackBerry Become The Next Security Superpower?
BlackBerry
announced its intent to acquire Secusmart. It’s a company that
offers high-security
voice and data encryption and anti-eavesdropping solutions for
government organizations, enterprises and telecommunications service
providers.
…
BlackBerry is hanging its hat on becoming the next
security company…and that’s not a bad thing. BlackBerry is
making progress with its Enterprise Mobility Management
(EMM) solution but this is a tough market to win against the likes of
Vmware/Airwarch and Mobileiron.
Is
this all in reaction to NSA surveillance?
iPhone
App "Signal" Enables Free Encrypted Phone Calls
Open
Whisper Systems, the creators of the RedPhone secure calling app for
Android, announced on Tuesday the availability of Signal, an
iPhone application that lets users make encrypted voice calls
worldwide for free.
According
to the open source software group, Signal
is specifically created for mobile devices and it's fully compatible
with RedPhone. The new application uses existing phone numbers and
it's designed to display only contacts that area reachable through
Signal.
Users
don't need any passwords when utilizing the app. Instead, both the
caller and the receiver are presented with a pair of words. If the
words match on both ends, the connection is secure; if not, someone
is possibly eavesdropping on the conversation.
In
order to ensure that communications are protected, Signal uses ZRTP,
a protocol invented by Phil
Zimmermann,
who is also the creator of Pretty Good Privacy (PGP). In fact,
Zimmermann also co-founded Silent
Circle, a company providing encrypted communications services.
Is
DNA like fingerprints? I kinda think it is.
Ian
Duncan reports:
An appeals court on Wednesday sanctioned the police’s use of
genetic material obtained in one investigation to solve other crimes,
but agreed with attorneys for a burglar that questions surround the
little known practice.
Three judges of the Court of Special Appeals upheld the burglary
conviction of George Varriale, a homeless Anne Arundel County man,
which was based in part on DNA that he had voluntarily
given to police to clear himself in a rape investigation.
Read
more on Baltimore
Sun.
(Related)
Do we need a global DNA database? (No doubt the FBI would volunteer
to run it)
From
DutchNews.nl:
A ‘mass exchange’ of DNA profiles between the Netherlands and
Belgium may have helped solve hundreds of crimes, Belgian media
report on Thursday.
In total, 1,745 matches were found when crime scene DNA held in data
banks in the two countries was compared. In 576 cases, DNA found at
a crime scene in one country could be linked to someone who had been
forced to give a sample
in the other.
[...]
Belgium will also soon make DNA exchanges with German and French DNA
banks.
Since 2005, everyone convicted of a crime punishable by four years or
more in jail in the Netherlands must give a dna sample. This is kept
on the data base for 20 years.
There’s
no mention in this article of any privacy or human rights concerns.
How would you feel if the U.S. shared your DNA with other countries
for law enforcement purposes? I can see querying in particular
cases, but mass exchange?
No
decision, but lots of argument.
A
National Consensus: Cell Phone Location Records Are Private – EFF
by
Sabrina I.
Pacifici on Jul 30, 2014
“The
Fourth
Amendment protects us from
“unreasonable” government searches of our persons, houses, papers
and effects. How courts should determine what is and isn’t
reasonable in our increasingly digital world is the subject of a new
amicus
brief we filed today in San
Francisco federal court. At
issue is historical cell site data—the records of the cell
towers a customer’s cell phone connects to. The government has
long maintained that it’s unreasonable for customers to expect
those records to remain private. As a result, the government argues
it does not need a search warrant to obtain historical cell site
records from cell phone providers. Federal appeals courts are
divided on the issue. In 2013, the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals,
which covers Louisiana, Mississippi and Texas, ruled
there was no expectation of privacy in historical cell site data.
But last month, the Eleventh Circuit Court of Appeals, which covers
Alabama, Florida and Georgia, reached the opposite conclusion, ruling
people did have an expectation of privacy in this information.
Federal magistrate judge Nathanael
Cousins in San Francisco, who is not
required to follow either the Fifth or Eleventh Circuit–he’s
bound to follow the Ninth Circuit which hasn’t ruled on the issue
yet–recently requested
the local U.S. Attorney’s office to explain why the government
believed it did not need a search warrant to obtain cell site
records. He invited
the San Francisco Federal Defender to file a response
as well, and we filed an amicus
brief supporting a warrant
requirement. The ACLU
of Northern California and
University of San Francisco law professor Susan
Freiwald and EFF special counsel
Marcia Hofmann also submitted amicus briefs. A Fourth Amendment
“search” is an intrusion upon something in which a person has a
subjective expectation
of privacy that society considers
reasonable. By definition, determining whether a search is
“reasonable” requires looking at what society considers to be
deserving of privacy protection. So our amicus brief explains why
many Americans actually expect this detailed and sensitive location
information to remain private, even when it’s stored by phone
companies.”
Today
it's to study traffic flow, tomorrow it will be for “prevention of
terrorism!”
Soo
Kim reports:
All mobile phones logged into the Wi-Fi network at Helsinki Airport
will be monitored by an in-house tracking system that identifies
passengers’ real-time movements.
The technology has been criticised by privacy advocate groups, but is
said to be aimed at monitoring crowds and preventing bottlenecking at
the airport, which sees around 15 million passengers a year,
Bloomberg
reports.
Read
more on The
Telegraph.
Another
case of lawyers (and lobbyists) knowing more about health tan mere
doctors?
John
Commins reports that physician groups will
appeal the 11th Circuit ruling upholding Florida’s “Docs vs.
Glocks” law. I am glad to hear that as I think the law is not only
a gag on health professionals’ First Amendment rights, but a
prohibition on professional speech/conduct that is a disservice to
public health and safety. In my opinion, states should only be
interfering in (regulating) doctor-patient discussions or care when
there is sufficient evidence that a practice causes harm or puts
patients at unacceptable risk. There has been no such demonstration
in this case.
Just
as pediatricians and those of us who work with children may routinely
inquire about a child’s nutrition and sleep patterns in screening
for factors that may contribute to health and functioning, so too do
professionals screen for other factors that may affect our patients’
health – including the presence of guns in homes where there are
impulsive or curious young children. Mental health issues such as
depression or anger issues are not the only reason or justification
for asking about guns.
Those
supporting the Docs vs. Glocks law seem to believe that inquiring is
just an attempt by professional groups to condemn guns or interfere
with adults Second Amendment rights to own guns. It’s not. It’s
an attempt to do our jobs properly.
And
given that we are required to maintain patient confidentiality and no
law requires us to record all of a patient’s answers, why is there
even a problem?
In
any event, the Docs vs. Glocks needs to be struck down - to protect
the health and safety of the public and so that health professionals’
hands are not unreasonably tied. If the state wants to regulate our
speech, it should have to meet a higher level of scrutiny.
Perhaps
my Ethical Hackers could do the same here? Students only? (Not
really)
Facebook
app gives free Internet to mobile users in Zambia
Facebook
introduced an app on Thursday that will give mobile phone subscribers
in Zambia access to a set of free basic mobile data services—and
Facebook.
The
app is part of Facebook’s Internet.org project that aims to bring
Internet access to the two thirds of the world’s population that
doesn’t have it. With the app, people can browse a set of health,
employment and local information services without data charges,
Facebook said on Thursday.
“By
providing free basic services via the app, we hope to bring more
people online and help them discover valuable services they might not
have otherwise,” Facebook’s director of product management, Guy
Rosen , wrote.
…
Facebook has already done something similar in the Philippines where
it partnered with service provider Globe to offer services for free.
It also has partnered with carrier Tigo in Paraguay in the early
stages of the Internet.org project. According to Facebook CEO Mark
Zuckerberg the number of Internet users doubled in the Philippines
while Tigo
saw the growth of Internet users rise by 50 percent as a result
as a result of the tests.
I
wonder of Facebook et al pay for this?
What
Sprint's New Wireless Plan Says About the Future of Mobile
Sprint
and Virgin Mobile USA announced phone plans Wednesday that will let
you access only four of the most popular social media apps in the
country.
Marketed
with parental controls and targeted toward families, customers can
pay $11.98 for the new Virgin Mobile Custom plan, a
no-annual-contract program for unlimited access to one of four social
media apps: Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest or Instagram.
Each
pre-paid $6.98 base plan includes 20 minutes of voice and 20 texts.
Another $5 provides customers with unlimited access to one of those
four apps. Or, you can choose to pay $15 for access to all four of
those apps.
“Phones
have migrated largely away from ‘talking’ at this point and are
much more utilized for apps, searching and making purchases,” said
Ken Wisnefski, founder and CEO of online marketing agency WebiMax.
“Talking is secondary.
Who talks on a phone anymore?”
...'cause
us teachers love Wikipedia.
–
enables you to have the
whole of Wikipedia on hand wherever you go. On a boat, in
the middle of nowhere or in jail, Kiwix gives you access to the
whole of human knowledge. You don’t need the Internet,
as everything is stored on your computer, USB flash drive or DVD.
Kiwix is free software, which means you can freely copy, modify and
distribute it.
[From
the webpage:
Kiwix
is mostly installed in schools, universities and libraries which
can't afford a broadband Internet access. It is much faster than the
Internet and also can be used by many institutions to save bandwidth
and reader's time. But many people use Kiwix for their own personal
purposes, for example, of people suffering from censorship or
prisoners.
Translating
student speak. (Of course, you can always Google it)
How
To Speak Gen Z
Have
you ever received text messages from Mum or Dad (maybe Grandma)
asking,”What’s ‘LOL’?” or “What’s “FML’?” If
you’re still unsure about the lingo of today’s generation Z,
here’s a quick cheat sheet to get you back on track.
While
you’re at it, you may as well learn
the alphabet the geeky way, as opposed to learning
the alphabet the obsolete way.
For
my students.
Tech
Jobs of the Future: What To Study If You Want a Cool Job Tomorrow
…
If you’re a student and looking to establish yourself in a field
of study that has a bright future in the world of high technology,
then you’ll need the mindset of a futurist. Understanding the
direction of technology will help you decide how you want to position
yourself to succeed, and figure out exactly what you need to study to
get there.
Modern
state of the art throughout the world of tech ranges across many
disciplines, including virtual
reality, artificial
intelligence, drones,
and even biotechnology.
How do you know where to start? The following are a few examples of
the sort of tech jobs you can expect to see within the next 5 to 10
years if advancements continue along the paths they are going.
Review them and decide whether your personality and interests would
make you a good candidate for any of these future jobs.
Cyber Security
Drone Programmers
Virtual Reality Designers
Vehicle Programmers
Smart Home Programmers
Advanced Automation
Artificial Intelligence Programmer
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