Monday, March 28, 2016

Not sure if this was the result of another phishing scam or if the hackers simply guessed someone's email password. (Or someone reused a password compromised elsewhere)
How embarrassing would it be to have a firm named OpSec Security that advertises it’s “trusted by over 400 companies and 50 government agencies” – and then it falls for a phishing scheme?
Tim Stuhldreher reports:
In the wake of a data breach, an anti-counterfeiting company with local sales and manufacturing operations is advising its employees to be on the alert for identity theft, according to correspondence obtained by LNP.
In early March, “hackers accessed an email containing an attachment which included 2015 W-2 tax forms for all salaried and hourly employees, including some former employees,” reads an email sent to people working for OpSec Security.
Read more on Lancaster Online.




A new oxymoron: “Driving a self-driving car.” (Like “dialing” a phone.)
People Will Still Have to Learn How to Drive Self-Driving Cars
In a matter of days after Tesla first introduced Model S owners to a lane assistance feature called autopilot, videos of owners sitting in the back seat of cars while they were operating began popping up on YouTube. The root of the problem was clear: Humans made cars unsafe. But just last month, one of Google’s fully autonomous cars was not only involved in an accident but was the cause of it for the first time. The question, then, is which of these is the safer approach?
There are two schools of thought. The first, and the approach many automakers have already begun to take, is releasing semi-autonomous features incrementally in new generations of vehicles. The second, which closely matches Google’s current strategy, is that combining human and semi-autonomous control can be counterintuitive and that a car should be controlled by either one or the other and never both.
But in either case, there is a learning curve.
… Car makers are still learning how people interact with both semi-autonomous and fully self-driving cars, and rolling out semi-autonomous vehicles enables companies to do just that. That’s why they’ve started outfitting new and existing lines with data-gathering technology.




With all the best intentions…
Facebook 'Safety Check' Glitch Asks Users Far From Lahore, Pakistan If They Are Safe After Explosion
After a deadly explosion in Lahore, Pakistan on Sunday, Facebook activated its ‘Safety Check’ feature for the eighth time this year. However, a bug caused many users thousands of miles away from the apparent suicide bombing to mistakenly ask whether or not they were safe.
Users in locations such as London, New York and Washington D.C. took to social media to express confusion, annoyance and in some cases, alarm, after erroneously receiving ‘Safety Check’ texts or notifications. Some text alerts referenced an explosion without stating its location, leading some users to fear that an attack had occurred near them that they weren’t aware of. Smartphone alerts referenced Lahore. “This really freaked me out until I realized that Facebook thought I was in Pakistan,” a Facebook user said on Twitter.




Background. You can't tell the players without a scorecard.
Searching for Sundar Pichai
You may not know him by name just yet, but he’s one of the most powerful people alive. Google’s new CEO Sundar Pichai wants to bring the internet to the rest of the world, all while winning back your trust.




If nothing else, a really interesting graphic showing income from oil vs other sources.
What Low Oil Prices Really Mean
… What is surprising though, is the fundamental shift we think is happening. The current low oil price environment is not an “oil bust” that will be followed by an “oil boom” in the near future. Instead, it looks as if we have entered a new normal of lower oil prices that will impact not just oil and gas producers but also every nation, company, and person depending on it.
This new normal is the result of the oil business being disrupted.
… during the past decade, American shale oil and gas producers pioneered a new business model that shattered the incumbents’ approach. U.S.-based shale oil producers have improved their drilling and fracturing technology, and they can ramp up production in an appraised field in as few as six months at a small fraction of the capital investment required by their conventional rivals. As a result, shale oil has soared from about 10% of total U.S. crude oil production to about 50%.




Tools & Techniques
How to Archive All the New Tweets Sent Out by Anyone
While you can request your entire archive of tweets from Twitter, using a simple IFTTT recipe will allow you to keep track of your own tweets, or the tweets of any user of your choice.




This could save hours of debate among the members of the Movie Club.
How to Find a Movie’s Name From Vague Details About It
Most people enjoy watching movies, but there are so many out there that it can be hard to remember all of them clearly. With ways to rent movies for free online and new movies coming out all the time, your internal movie database probably grows by the hundreds every year.
If you’ve ever failed to recall a movie’s name but remember plot details or actor names, a new engine called Valossa at WhatIsMyMovie.com is here to help. You can give it details about a specific film and it will try to match your query with a movie, or type a description like “adventure movies about pirates” to get a list of similar movies.




Perhaps a new textbook for my Ethical Hacking class? “Take Ethical Hacking, drive the car(s) of your dreams!”
The Car Hacker’s Handbook isn’t a guide, it’s a wake-up call to automakers
Craig Smith readily admits that he’s paranoid by nature. As a digital security professional, paranoia is part of the job description. But unlike most security professionals, Smith is committed to unlocking secrets and demystifying what goes on in your car’s operating software. The theory goes that the best way to improve the code that keeps your car running is to get it out in the open and let everyone take a whack at it.
To help enthusiasts who want to know what’s really going on under the hood, Smith has written The Car Hacker’s Handbook, available now in both paperback and e-book editions from No Starch Press. The book is currently the top seller in its category on amazon.com.


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