Saturday, October 04, 2014

I don't see a good scenario here. Best case seems to be that a criminal group started out to rob these banks but were interrupted for some reason. Worst case, Russia is saying “back off in the Ukraine” and we haven't demonstrated a similar ability to impact their financial system. Jobs for my Ethical Hackers seem assured.
Hackers’ Attack Cracked 10 Financial Firms in Major Assault
The huge cyberattack on JPMorgan Chase that touched more than 83 million households and businesses was one of the most serious computer intrusions into an American corporation. But it could have been much worse.
Questions over who the hackers are and the approach of their attack concern government and industry officials. Also troubling is that about nine other financial institutions — a number that has not been previously reported — were also infiltrated by the same group of overseas hackers, according to people briefed on the matter. The hackers are thought to be operating from Russia and appear to have at least loose connections with officials of the Russian government, the people briefed on the matter said.
It is unclear whether the other intrusions, at banks and brokerage firms, were as deep as the one that JPMorgan disclosed on Thursday. The identities of the other institutions could not be immediately learned.
The breadth of the attacks — and the lack of clarity about whether it was an effort to steal from accounts or to demonstrate that the hackers could penetrate even the best-protected American financial institutions — has left Washington intelligence officials and policy makers far more concerned than they have let on publicly.


For my Ethical Hackers and Computer Security students.
Medical ID Theft: How Scammers Use Records To Steal Your Identity

(Related) Oh wait, let me guess... Because there's money to be made?
Facebook is reportedly going after the healthcare market. But why?
… We may get more information on Facebook’s plans soon. Next Thursday, the company will be presenting at the m.2014 Mobile Health and Innovation Conference, put on by Digitas Health.


Completely unrelated. Perhaps doctors need to look up from their iPhones on occasion? This would result in a much better example of undue reliance than Ford Motor Credit v. Swaren, but it is unlikely to ever see a courtroom.
The Ebola Patient Was Sent Home Because of Bad Software
… On Thursday night, the hospital released a statement explaining exactly how it managed to release an Ebola-infected patient back into America's ninth-largest city.
In short? Blame the robots, not the humans:
Protocols were followed by both the physician and the nurses. However, we have identified a flaw in the way the physician and nursing portions of our electronic health records (EHR) interacted in this specific case.
[Their explanation suggests that a bit of information was not communicated. What should have happened is that when “West Africa” was first mentioned, an immediate “Red Flag: Potential Infection Hazard” should have been initiated, and kept flashing on the front page of his medical records until Ebola was specifically eliminated as the cause of his fever. This type of risk should never wait for a doctor to get around to the patient. Bob]


Free (soon freemium) Security software.
Meet GlassWire, The Prettiest Bandwidth & Internet Security Monitor For Your Windows PC
Maybe you’re looking for a way to track your Internet usage and the applications that access the network. Maybe you have a habit of absentmindedly dismissing firewall alerts. Maybe you’d like a way to clue into sneaky malware that your anti-virus might not know about yet, or applications that mishandle your data or compromise your privacy.
If any of these is a concern for you, you’re in luck, because today I invite you to meet the prettiest little Internet/network security app you ever did see. It’s called GlassWire, and you can install it to your Windows PC. I’ll also give a quick rundown of four less-pretty but open-source/cross-platform options.


For my Data Mining and Data Analytics students. Note the authors... IBM would have Watson do the matching, but the FBI never trusted Sherlock Holmes.
Biographic Entity Resolution Challenges of managing and sharing
Via Public Intelligence – DOJ/FBI – Unclassified Presentation – Biographic Entity Resolution - Challenges of managing and sharing. John N. Dvorak - Senior Level IT Architect, September 16, 2014, Global Identity Summit.
  • “Entity Resolution: The process of determining whether two or more references to real-world objects such as people (individuals), places, or things are referring to the same object or to different objects. This concept is sometimes referred to as Entity Correlation, Entity Disambiguation, or Record Linkage, and includes related concepts such as Identity Resolution. (from draft DARA)
  • Entity Map: Complete enriched entity data that includes the linkage of relationships between people, places, things, and characteristics of data resulting from an entity resolution process.”


Tickles my teaching funny-bone.
… And speaking of LAUSD, the district has paid $3.75 million to settle a lawsuit with Maximus Inc, the company hired to build its new student information system. The district spent $112 million to build the system but never implemented it.
Marmosets apparently find video content educational too. And if it’s good enough for monkeys…
edX is getting into the "professional education" business to "better serve those learners who use our courses to advance their careers, or organizations that wish to support continuing learning for their workforce."
… Students on meal plans at George Mason University must be registered for the iris scanner. I’d love to know if this data is connected to the learning management system and if the university has plans to use students’ biometric data to prevent cheating in online courses.
… Free (local) community college for graduates of Chicago Public Schools and San Luis Obispo high schools.


Something for my Math students to consider.
Wolfram|Alpha Pro


For my i-students... Cheap and free Apps and games.
iPhone Photo Apps Fragment, Lenka & AppAlchemy Are All Free [iOS Sales]

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