Katie Mulvaney reports:
An unknown person or group held a
Providence law firm captive for months by encrypting its files and then
demanding $25,000 in ransom paid in anonymous cyber currency to restore access,
according to a lawsuit filed in U.S. District Court.
Moses Afonso Ryan Ltd. is suing
its insurer, Sentinel Insurance Co., for breach of contract and bad faith after
it denied its claim for lost billings over the three-month period the documents
were frozen last year by the so-called “ransomware” attack.
Read more on Providence
Journal.
And remember how you were warned that paying ransom wasn’t
necessarily any guarantee you’d get a real decryption key or your data
unlocked? According to the complaint,
after MAR made initial payment to the attackers, the attackers demanded
additional payment. By the time this was
over, MAR had spent more than 3 months and more than $25,000 to regain access
to their files.
And yes, it
all started when an attorney received an email from an unknown source that had
an attachment – and the attorney opened it. It was in May, 2015.
Another easy target?
“Content” passes through a lot of hands.
You only need to hack the weakest link.
http://variety.com/2017/digital/news/orange-is-the-new-black-season-5-hacker-piracy-leak-1202403760/
Hacker Leaks Stolen ‘Orange Is the New Black’ Season 5
Episodes to Piracy Network
An anonymous hacker has carried
through on a threat to release “Orange
Is the New Black” season five episodes online — after Netflix
allegedly failed to respond to the cybercriminal’s shakedown demands.
Variety was unable to verify the authenticity of
the “OITNB” episodes the hacker claimed to have shared on popular file-sharing
site the Pirate Bay.
The first 10 episodes of season 5 were apparently shared
shortly before 6 a.m. ET Saturday, with the 10 files comprising a total of
11.46 gigabytes. The hacker, who uses the handle “thedarkoverlord,” published
the premiere episode from the upcoming season of “Orange Is the New Black” on
Friday to the Pirate Bay.
… According to
“thedarkoverlord,” the hacker or hackers also have obtained unreleased shows
from ABC, Fox, National Geographic and IFC. The content appears to have been stolen in an
attack on post-production studio Larson Studios in late 2016, according to
piracy-news
site TorrentFreak.
Another tool for stalkers? Or your insurance company, local police
department and others. Also, a good
illustration of Big Data!
Your car will eventually live-stream video of your driving to
the cloud
… A single autonomous
car could generate as much as 100GB of data every second, said Barclays analyst
Brian Johnson, in a note published Wednesday.
If extrapolated out to the entire U.S. fleet of vehicles
-- 260 million in number -- autonomous cars and trucks could potentially
produce about 5,800 exabytes, Johnson stated.
In other words, on a daily basis, there would be enough
raw data to fill 1.4 million Amazon AWS "Snowmobile"
mobile data center tractor-trailer trucks with 100 petabytes of storage each,
for a convey reaching 11,000 miles long.
… Security will
also be a key area of concern for autonomous car makers. A modern car has 50 to 150 electronic control
units (ECUs) - or tiny computers -- with as much as 100 million lines of code. And for every 1,000 lines there are as many as
15 bugs that are potential doors for would-be hackers, analysts say.
I’m not sure who first said, “Generals prepare to fight
the last war,” but there is some truth there. Is something like that happening here? With all the money the government pays for
computing you think someone would sell them a ‘guaranteed update’ package.
Windows 95, 98 And XP Still Power Much Of The Pentagon’s
Critical Infrastructure
… Microsoft
ended support for Windows XP in 2014, but the Pentagon currently pays Microsoft to continue
providing support for the outdated OS.
… As
of last spring, the Department of Defense still uses Compass. This system is a command and control system
that is used for deliberate and crisis action planning, strategic mobility
analysis, and mobilization and deployment movement execution. It runs on a Windows 2008 Server and is
programmed in Java. It also uses a 2009 Oracle 11g database. The United States nuclear force still runs on IBM Series/1 computers and
uses floppy disks designed in the 1970's to coordinate some of its functions. These operational functions include
intercontinental ballistic missiles, nuclear bombers, and tanker support
aircraft.
From fashion advisor to personal shopper? Interesting article. Where does this go next? Can Amazon deduce my income from the clothes
I wear? My hobbies? My politics?
How Echo Look could feed Amazon’s big data fueled fashion
ambitions
… The Echo Look
app is where users can view the style selfies (and videos) they’ve asked Alexa
to record for them (she indefinitely stores a copy for Amazon too). But the flagship feature of the app is a
fashion feedback service, called Style Check, which Amazon says will
utilize machine learning to rate fashion choices and help users
choose between outfit pairs. And
ultimately, presumably, give their entire wardrobe a score. Albeit, the feature is using (human)
stylists too, at least for now, to help train what Amazon surely hopes will be entirely
robotic style recommendations down the line.
… “In clothing…
RRP, in general, the starting point of margin is towards 80 per cent. So manufacturing is only about 20 per cent of
that cost. But all of the retailers are
making around, at best, three per cent profit. You look at somebody like Asos
in the last four or five years, they’ve more than doubled sales but their
absolute profit number is the same. They’ve
added sales for no profit. So Amazon can
look at this and say: hold on, you’ve got 80 per cent profit and you waste it
all — this is our opportunity. Talk to a
manufacturer and they’ll say that inventory management and everything to do
with data is where the retailers are just lazy. They’ve been lazy for too long. And that’s where Amazon is really good. So, in my mind, I look at it and say Amazon could double manufacturing cost, take their
standard five per cent or less margin and still be half the price of everybody
on the retail market.”
(Related). Dilbert
shows us what is happening now that AI is learning what we like.
When techies (absolutely, positively do not) run for
office…
Mark Zuckerberg's surprise visit to Ohio family boosts rumor
of political run
An Ohio family said they learned just 20 minutes before
dinner on Friday evening that a planned mystery guest would be the Facebook
founder and billionaire Mark Zuckerberg.
… The Vindicator reported that
Zuckerberg dined with the Moore family in Newton Falls, about 55 miles
south-east of Cleveland. The newspaper
said Zuckerberg had asked his staff to find
Democrats who voted for Donald Trump. [See?
Nothing political at all! Bob]
Zuckerberg’s trek to Ohio is part of the Facebook
founder’s plan to visit and meet people in all 50 states, part of a string of moves which has lead to
widespread speculation about whether Zuckerberg intends to run for office
himself.
…and I’m not sure I care about most of them.
104 Facts You Didn't Know About Mobile Marketing
(Infographic)
I often find something amusing in lists like this.
101 Free Tech Tools for Teachers
Maybe you could turn some of these in to newspaper
clippings…
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