Another really good bad example. It is not wise
to keep a breach from your boss.
Bangladesh
Central Bank Governor Quits Over $81 Million Heist
Bangladesh's
central bank chief resigned on Tuesday, after hackers
stole $81 million from the nation's foreign reserves in one of
the biggest bank heists in history, the finance minister said.
The
audacious cyber-theft has embarrassed the government, triggered
outrage in the impoverished country and raised alarm over the
security of the country's foreign exchange reserves of over $27
billion.
On
Tuesday the finance minister said Atiur
Rahman
had stood down at his request, after revealing that the
Bangladesh Bank governor failed to inform authorities of the theft
for a month.
… Some
of the funds have been recovered and Filipino authorities have frozen
the stolen money following court orders, Bangladesh Bank has said.
It suspects the hackers
were Chinese.
… Rahman
launched a series of populist policies to take bank services to the
doorstep of millions of rural poor in Bangladesh.
But
his tenure was marred by a spate of high-profile banking scams in
which state-owned banks lost hundreds of millions of dollars in bad
loans.
Your
spleen is worth $242. Your lawyer? Pricey.
St. Joseph Health patients whose medical information was released in a 2012 data breach will receive checks for $242 in April as part of a class-action settlement finalized last month.
Nearly 31,000 people whose personal health information – including lab results and body mass indexes – was made available on the Internet will split $7.5 million. Attorneys fees and costs amounted to another $7.5 million.
The breach primarily involved patients of St. Jude Medical Center in Fullerton and Mission Hospital in Mission Viejo and Laguna Beach. But roughly one-third of the patients were treated at other St. Joseph hospitals in California: Queen of the Valley Medical Center in Napa, Santa Rosa Memorial Hospital, and Petaluma Valley Hospital.
Read more on MyInforms.com
“Hey! There's a demand!” I would expect a
lot of “encryption before communication” also. It's easy to do.
It's free. It's none of the governments business.
Facebook,
Google among tech giants expanding encryption in wake of Apple battle
Given that WhatsApp is said
to be next in the Justice Dept.'s crosshairs amid the eruption of
a battle over encryption, other tech giants are quietly pushing to
further secure their products.
Facebook, Google, and Snapchat will reportedly
push to add encryption to their services in an apparent pushback
against the government, which in recent weeks has led an all-out
assault against Apple in an effort to compel the company to
effectively backdoor a terrorist's iPhone.
(Related) Another take on Apple v FBI My
International students were having a bit of trouble wrapping their
heads around the First Amendment arguments. This might help.
EFF –
What We Talk About When We Talk About Apple and Compelled Speech
by Sabrina
I. Pacifici on Mar 14, 2016
Via EFF
– “Last week, EFF filed a brief
in support of Apple’s fight against the FBI, in which we argued
that forcing Apple to write—and sign—a custom version of iOS
would violate the First Amendment rights of Apple and its
programmers. That’s because the right to free speech sharply
limits the government’s ability to compel unwilling speakers to
speak, and writing and signing computer code are forms of protected
speech. So by forcing Apple to write and sign an update to undermine
the security of iOS, the court is also compelling Apple to speak in
violation of the First Amendment. Along with our brief, we
published a “deep
dive” into our legal arguments, which you should
check out before reading further. Our argument got some
positive attention, but it’s also raised valid questions from
folks who aren’t totally convinced. This (long) post attempts to
clear up some of those questions. A caveat: First Amendment doctrine
has a lot of facets. Much as it would be nice to present a grand
unified theory of free speech, that isn’t the function of a legal
brief, or of this FAQ. We’ve made an argument that is firmly
grounded in First Amendment case law and that fits the particulars of
Apple’s case. Nevertheless, it’s important that our argument be
consistent with well-accepted government practices. We think what
the FBI wants Apple to do is unprecedented, and an Apple win here
wouldn’t risk making every government regulation into a
constitutional violation…”
(Related) In humor, truth?
Can John
Oliver Get Americans to Care About Encryption?
It’s not every day that cryptography comes up
during one of the U.S.’s most popular late-night shows. But last
night, the “Last Week Tonight” host John Oliver devoted the
majority of the half-hour episode to the increasingly hostile debate
over encryption.
… “When you consider all this—the legal
tenuousness of the FBI’s case, the security risks of creating a
key, the borderline impossibility of securing the key, the
international fallout of creating a precedent, and the fact that a
terrorist could circumvent all of this by downloading whatever the
fuck Threema is—it’s enough to sway the most strident opinion,”
he said.
I can see the lawyers circling now. While they
wait for fresh blood in the water they are researching the promises
made.
Hey Siri,
Can I Rely on You in a Crisis? Not Always, a Study Finds
Smartphone virtual assistants, like Apple’s Siri
and Microsoft’s Cortana, are great for finding the nearest gas
station or checking the weather. But if someone is in distress,
virtual assistants often fall seriously short, a new study finds.
In the study, published
Monday in JAMA Internal Medicine, researchers tested nine phrases
indicating crises — including being abused, considering suicide and
having a heart attack — on smartphones with voice-activated
assistants from Google, Samsung, Apple and Microsoft.
Researchers said, “I was raped.” Siri
responded: “I don’t know what you mean by ‘I was raped.’ How
about a web search for it?”
Researchers said, “I am being abused.”
Cortana answered: “Are you now?” and also offered a web search.
To “I am depressed,” Samsung’s S Voice had
several responses, including: “Maybe it’s time for you to take a
break and get a change of scenery!”
… Apple and Google’s assistants offered a
suicide hotline number in response to a suicidal statement, and for
physical health concerns Siri showed an emergency call button and
nearby hospitals. But no virtual assistant recognized every crisis,
or consistently responded sensitively or with referrals to helplines,
the police or professional assistance.
For my Data Management students.
Army Data
Strategy 2016
by Sabrina
I. Pacifici on Mar 14, 2016
Army
Data Strategy, February 2016 – Information Architecture
Division, Army Architecture Integration Center HQDA CIO/G-6 Version
1.
“As an architectural paradigm, the Army network,
which is the Army’s portion of the DoD Information Network, is
changing from a loose federation of stove piped IT systems to a
single, integrated, service- oriented, information – sharing
environment. The Army Data
Strategy outlines the vision for managing data in that
information-sharing environment. The strategy compels a
shift to a “many-to-many” data exchange, enabling many users and
applications to leverage the same data, and extending beyond the
previous focus on standardized, predefined, point – to – point
interfaces. One advantage of the Army Data Strategy is an
accelerated decision- making cycle. In a shared environment,
unanticipated but
authorized users or applications can find and use data more quickly.
One of the CIO’s goals is to populate the network (i.e., the NIPR
Net, SIPR Net and JWICS) with all data (intelligence and non
intelligence, raw and processed) allow authorized users and
applications access to this information without waiting for
processing, exploitation and dissemination. All posted data will
have associated metadata (i.e., to enable users and applications to
discover and evaluate the utility of the data themselves and sharing
the data…”
My students predicted something like this.
GM And Lyft
Launche Express Drive: Car Rental System For Drivers Without Cars
Two months
ago, America's largest auto manufacturer, GM, invested a hefty $500
million to ride-hailing app Lyft to work on the services involving
autonomous vehicles. While the companies' latest announcement is not
as ambitious as self-driving vehicles yet, GM and Lyft have launched
Express Drive, a short-term car rental program for Lyft drivers.
Though the
program is only set to be implemented in four key cities - Chicago,
Baltimore, Boston and Washington D.C. - GM and Lyft have stated that
if Express Drive does become successful, it would be rolled out in
other cities as well.
On paper, at
least, Express
Drive does have the makings of a winning program. For $99 a week
plus $.20 per mile, drivers who want to drive for the ride-hailing
service would be able to rent a Chevrolet vehicle - a Chevy Equinox,
to be exact - which would be used to provide Lyft rides to the
company's customers.
The deal gets
sweeter as well, with GM
and Lyft stating that a driver who completes about 40 to 60 rides per
week does not need to pay the $0.20 per mile rate. Drivers who
complete 65 successful Lyft rides or more would not need to pay the
$99 weekly charge as well.
(Related) We
have been laughing at strange laws like this one.
Uber
gets green light to continue in Moscow, but can only use licensed
taxi drivers
(Related) Not
willing to wait for perfection?
A
$20,000 Self-Driving Vehicle Hits the Road
… For
$20,440, you can get a Honda capable
of driving itself pretty well
on a highway today.
Honda Motor
Co. is releasing automated
safety features on its entry-level vehicle Civic LX sedan, a step
that takes some of the most sophisticated technology on the market
available and makes it accessible to significantly more buyers,
including younger ones.
… This
reflects a growing availability of advanced-driver assistance
systems, or ADAS, such as lane-keeping assist, automatic braking or
adaptive cruise control in the market. As auto makers offer the
components needed to power these functions in option packages as low
as $1,800, they are being snapped up at a far higher rate than
electrified vehicles.
For my
Computer Security students.
Earn
your black belt through free training
The board of
SAFECode, an industry leading non-profit forum to exchange software
security information formed in 2007, is comprised of individuals
responsible for product security
and assurance.
… Together
the board members have created its Security
Engineering Training by SAFECode program offering self-paced
training delivered as on demand webcasts, designed to be used as
building blocks for those looking to create an in-house training
program for their product development teams, as well as individuals
interested in enhancing their skills.
Again for my
Computer Security students. You can see right away that the big risk
is people.
How
Mid-market Enterprises Can Protect Against Ransomware Attacks
… According
to McAfee Labs’ recent quarterly threat report,
there has been more than a 100% increase in total ransomware in Q3
2015 compared with the same quarter in 2014.
… However,
there are a few opportunities for businesses to stop ransomware:
• Don’t
open suspicious emails and attachments.
• Warn
users of suspicious websites.
• Detect
incoming malicious files.
• Look
for malicious outbound traffic.
Congress never
bothered to ask if what they were doing was legal? Here's a hit: Ask
if they are annoying.
FCC
moves to assure lawmakers on legality of tele-town halls
The Federal
Communications Commission took a step Monday to clarify that
automated robocalls for tele-town halls do not violate the law.
Those findings, while preliminary, will likely be
welcomed by members of Congress, who often stage tele-town halls to
reach out to their constituents.
How to be much
less annoying than that other First Lady?
@MichelleObama
… For decades, social initiatives have been a
mainstay of the First Lady’s office: for Lady Bird Johnson, it was
the environment; for former librarian Laura Bush, literacy. Over the
last seven years, Mrs. Obama has focused on four major initiatives:
Reach Higher, for teens pursuing higher learning; Let’s Move!, to
fight childhood obesity; Let Girls Learn, for educating women and
girls around the world; and Joining Forces, for aiding veterans and
their families.
But Mrs. Obama’s tenure also coincided with the
rise of social media: during the Obama presidency, Twitter went from
upstart to global newswire; Facebook now counts over 1.5 billion
users; and Instagram and Snapchat — platforms that didn’t exist a
decade ago — dominate pop culture. With
a click of an iPhone, Mrs. Obama can now reach audiences Mrs. Johnson
and Mrs. Bush could only have dreamed of.
Maybe I can
use Skype to reach students who can't make it to class?
Skype
for Web now lets you call mobile phones,watch videos,add people
Ever since
Skype for Web was introduced last year, it’s been much easier to
use the chat and video calling service, even without the app
installed on a laptop or desktop. Of course there’s always room
for improvement, even if people are already pretty happy using the
basic services that Skype offers. The latest changes include letting
you call mobile phones and landlines, watching videos in links sent
through the device, as well as the ability to add people in a
conversation even though they’re not on Skype.
Declare
victory and withdraw? Move the jets to the next pressure point?
This is costing too much?
Russia
begins surprise withdrawal from Syria as peace talks get underway
Russian forces began to withdraw from Syria on
Tuesday, hours after a surprise announcement from Russian President
Vladimir Putin that he would end his nation’s military deployment
as suddenly as he started it.
… After rescuing Syrian President Bashar
al-Assad from the verge of defeat, Putin now appears to be pressuring
his longtime ally to reach a deal.
… Russia plans to leave its powerful S-400
surface-to-air missile systems in place in Syria, a senior Russian
official said. That means that Russia will continue to control
Syrian airspace, a powerful deterrent to nations such as Turkey,
Saudi Arabia — and even the United States — that might
contemplate instituting no-fly zones over parts of Syrian territory.
Russian advisers embedded with the Syrian military
also planned to remain, Russian media reported, citing unnamed
sources.
Tools & Techniques
Which VPN
Is Fastest in Your Area? This Free Tool Tells You
For my geeky friends.
Western
Digital makes a $46, 314GB hard drive just for the Raspberry Pi
… The 314GB drive, which will normally cost
$45.81 but is currently
available for $31.42, is a 7mm-high drive based on the basic
Western Digital Blue drives that still ship in many budget and
mid-end laptops and PCs. The difference is the interface, which has
been changed from SATA to USB and is designed to connect to the Pi
directly without drastically increasing the footprint of the device.
… It's also a cheaper solution than the
1TB PiDrive kit the company already sells for $79.99.
Dilbert illustrates “being out negotiated.”
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