Monday, September 04, 2017

This was released Friday, no doubt hoping the news would be ignored over the holiday weekend.
Roughly four million records containing the personal details of Time Warner Cable (TWC) customers were discovered stored on an Amazon server without a password late last month.
The files, more than 600GB in size, were discovered on August 24 by the Kromtech Security Center while its researchers were investigating an unrelated data breach at World Wrestling Entertainment.
   Not all of the TWC records contained information about unique customers.  Some contained duplicative information, meaning the breach ultimately exposed less than four million customers.  Due to the size of the cache, however, the researchers could not immediately say precisely how many were affected.


Something my Computer Security students will need to defend against.
Junk call nightmare flooded woman with hundreds of bizarre phone calls a day
   "I am in the middle of a cell phone nightmare," France, who lives in Hilton Head Island, South Carolina, told Ars in an e-mail after three days worth of the calls.  "My phone started ringing three days ago and has continued to ring every few minutes since then.  Each time it is from a different number...  I can’t conduct a client call, can’t text because calls coming in interrupt the process, can’t even take photos for the same reason."
   US consumers receive 2.4 billion robocalls a month, and the ones from spoofed numbers are among the hardest to stop, according to the Federal Communications Commission.  Recognizing that today's robocall blocking systems are often useless against spoofed robocalls, the FCC recently called upon carriers to increase their efforts to block them.
France's case posed even greater challenges than usual because she may have been victimized by a targeted attack rather than a run-of-the-mill robocaller.  There's also a question about whether the calls received by France were technically "robocalls."


Endorsing a “filtered news” site.  (Is the article claiming that mainstream media loved Donald Trump “fake news?”)  At minimum, a bias for Hillary? 
Hillary Clinton endorsed a startup — and then it fell victim to a cyber attack
Hillary Clinton is allegedly at the center of another cyber attack — except this time it involves a startup that’s trying to become something of a social network for her political supporters.
The saga began Sunday night when Clinton — to the apparent surprise of her followers — took to Twitter to offer her personal endorsement of a new, relatively unknown website called Verrit.
I'm excited to sign up for @Verrit, a media platform for the 65.8 million!  Will you join me and sign up too?
In the words of its creator, Peter Daou, Verrit is his attempt to create an online hub for Clinton backers so that they can find easy-to-share facts, stats and other “information you can take out to social media when you’re having debates on key issues people are discussing,” he said in an interview.


Perhaps I can finally get my students interested in research?
Tech companies spend more on R&D than any other companies in the U.S.
   Led by Amazon, Alphabet, Intel, Microsoft and Apple, tech companies spent more on research and development than any other companies in the S&P 500 that reported such data, according to FactSet data from the most recent fiscal year.
Amazon spent $16.1 billion on R&D last year, a figure that should strike fear into its competitors, as these investments could make the online retailer even more dominant.


For my moody students.
This is Your Brain on Snapchat
Do you spend a lot of time on Facebook?  Do your students spend every spare minute on Snapchat?  Have you wondered how this affects your mood or your students' moods?  If so, KQED and PBS Learning Media have a resource that you should share with your students.
How Do Different Social Media Platforms Affect Your Mood? is a video produced by KQED.  The five minute video explains the findings of some research on the correlations between social media use and moods.  The correlation between mood and social media use is also explained.  The video correctly points out that correlation is not necessarily indicative of causation.


What would you do if I sang out of tune
Would you stand up and walk out on me?
Lend me your ears and I'll sing you a song
And I'll try not to sing out of key

No comments: