Hackers Targeted Italy Foreign Ministry, Russia Accused
Italy's foreign ministry was attacked by hackers last
year, a diplomatic source told AFP on Friday, amid reports that Russia could be
to blame.
"After the first attack the system was immediately
strengthened," said the source, who asked not to be named, after Britain's
Guardian newspaper said the ministry had come under a sustained cyber offensive
-- and officials suspected Russia.
… The malware
attack lasted over four months but did not affect then foreign minister Paolo
Gentiloni -- Italy's current prime minister -- because he avoided using email
during his mandate, the Guardian said. [Someone
learned from Hillary? Bob]
… There have been
concerns in recent weeks that Moscow has stepped up a cyber campaign against
several European countries including Germany, France, Norway and the
Netherlands.
This raises interesting questions. Would Congress care at all about smaller
breaches?
GOP senators demand more answers on Yahoo hacks
In a letter sent Friday, Sens. John Thune
(R-S.D.), chairman of the Senate Commerce Committee, and Jerry Moran
(R-Kan.), chairman of the panel's consumer protection and data security
subcommittee, hammered Yahoo for not providing enough information to lawmakers
on the matter.
… “Moreover,
Yahoo!’s recent, last-minute cancellation of a planned congressional staff
briefing, originally scheduled for January 31, 2017, has prompted concerns
about the company’s willingness to deal with Congress with complete candor
about these recent events,” the senators wrote.
For my Data Management students. Connect to your devices or the sensors in
your customer’s devices, or anything anywhere.
On land and in space, IoT networks can now cover the planet
At Mobile World Congress later this month, Nokia will show
off what it calls WING (worldwide IoT network grid), a virtual global
infrastructure that may include multiple private and carrier networks and
satellite systems, depending on what an enterprise needs to connect and how it
intends to use the data that’s collected.
… Nokia announced
WING on Friday, just days after Inmarsat started talking about its own foray into
global IoT. The venerable satellite
operator is linking low-power, unlicensed LoRaWAN networks with its worldwide
fleet of spacecraft. Real-world use
cases for that setup, including cattle-tracking in Australia and water
monitoring on a remote plantation in Malaysia, hint at what’s possible with
that combination.
(Related)
How IoT hackers turned a university's network against itself
… cybersecurity
researchers have now detailed how a network of hacked
IoT devices were turned around to attack the very network they were hosted
on.
The case in question, as reported in Verizon's Data
Breach Digest 2017, occurred within the last year and involved the
computer network at an unspecified university.
Analysis of the university firewall identified over 5,000
devices making hundreds of Domain Name Service (DNS) look-ups every 15 minutes,
slowing the institution's entire network and restricting access to the majority
of internet services.
In this instance, all of the DNS requests were attempting
to look up seafood restaurants -- and it wasn't because thousands of students
all had an overwhelming urge to eat fish -- but because devices on the network
had been instructed to repeatedly carry out this request.
"We identified that this was coming from their IoT
network, their vending machines and their light sensors were actually looking
for seafood domains; 5,000 discreet systems and they were nearly all in the IoT
infrastructure," says Laurance Dine, managing principal of investigative
response at Verizon.
For all my students.
Become an entrepreneur, get rich quick and remember to tip your
professor.
Ford Invests $1 Billion In Artificial Intelligence Startup
Argo AI And Here’s Why
Ford has announced it's investing $1 billion over the next
five years in Pittsburgh-based artificial intelligence startup Argo AI.
… "The next decade will be defined by the
automation of the automobile, and autonomous vehicles will have as significant
an impact on society as Ford's moving assembly line did 100 years ago,"
said Ford President and CEO Mark Fields in a statement. "As Ford expands to be an auto and a mobility company, we believe that
investing in Argo AI will create significant value for our shareholders by
strengthening Ford's leadership in bringing self-driving vehicles to market in
the near term and by creating technology that could be licensed to others in
the future."
… Spending $1 billion
is as good as acquiring another big company but the big money bag is just
making Ford a majority stakeholder in Argo AI. The remaining portion of Argo AI will still be
owned by its founders Bryan Salesky and Peter Rander. Other team members of Argo AI, including some
engineers that will jump from Ford will also be part owners.
… Argo is a
relatively very young company. Consider
it a baby as it was just founded last year.
A legal argument for my students to chew on.
Privacy groups say FBI hacking operation went too far
Privacy advocates are claiming in court that an FBI
hacking operation to take down a child pornography site was unconstitutional
and violated international law.
That’s because the operation involved the FBI hacking
8,700 computers in 120 countries, based on a single warrant, they said.
… According to
Privacy International, the case also raises important questions: What if a foreign country had carried out a
similar hacking operation that affected U.S. citizens? Would the U.S. welcome this?
… “Here, on the
basis of a single warrant, the FBI searched 8,000 computers located all over
the world,” EFF attorney Mark Rumold wrote in a blog post. “If the FBI tried to get a single warrant to
search 8,000 houses, such a request would unquestionably be denied.”
My first thought: Cook agrees with Trump? That’s got to be fake. Especially since he didn’t have a solution in
mind.
Apple CEO: Fake news ‘one of today’s chief problems’
Apple CEO Tim Cook called out fake news as a top concern
in a Friday interview in the United Kingdom.
… Cook didn’t
elaborate on what action Apple might take to combat fake news.
Global Warming! Global
Warming! (I have been remiss in my Gore
bashing.)
NY Metro Weather
With today's snowfall, the 15-season average snowfall at New York City rose
over 35.00" for the first time since observations began.
This is the fifth straight and 17th of 25 winter seasons with an 8"+
snowfall in NYC. The previous 25 year
period had 9 such storms - total.
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