The number never seems to go down.
Equifax says that 2.5 million more Americans than
originally believed have been affected by the record-breaking cyber
attack on the firm.
The new additions bring the total of affected
Americans to 145.5 million. Names, social security numbers,
birthdates and other information were all compromised in the breach.
(Related).
Equifax
Announces Cybersecurity Firm Has Concluded Forensic Investigation Of
Cybersecurity Incident
Something for my Computer Security students to
kick around.
The
Increasing Effect of Geopolitics on Cybersecurity
The
effect of geopolitics on cybersecurity can be seen daily – from
Chinese cyber espionage to Russian attacks on the Ukraine and North
Korea’s financially-motivated attacks against SWIFT and Bitcoins –
and, of course, Russian interference in western elections and notably
the US 2016 presidential election.
The
primary cause is political mistrust between different geopolitical
regions combined with the emergence of cyberspace as a de
facto
theater of war.
"Of
course there is a connection between cybersecurity and geopolitics,”
Ilia Kolochenko, CEO of High-Tech Bridge, told SecurityWeek.
“Hackers are now acting as soldiers, and it's difficult to find a
country that has never used a cyber weapon.”
… Although
not necessarily recognized at government level, few people involved
with cybersecurity have any doubt that cyber warfare is current and
ongoing. Governments are reluctant to openly acknowledge this
reality for fear that recognition will require retaliation – and
the big fear then is that it could escalate into kinetic warfare.
Kinetic provocation leads to kinetic responses; cyber provocation
tends not to. Consider, for example, the U.S. response to North
Korea’s missile tests compared to the response to North Korea’s
cyber attacks against Sony
and SWIFT.
Cyber
warfare has further advantages: the difficulty of attribution
provides plausible deniability.
… The
first negative effect is already being felt: it is the balkanization
of the internet. There are two aspects to this: the first is to
protect the national internet from the global internet; and the
second is to promote the use of locally produced products over
foreign-produced, and therefore suspect, products. The Iranian,
North Korean and Chinese intranets are the best known examples.
(Related).
Should we assume this was at the direction of the President?
U.S. Cyber
Command Launched DDoS Attack Against North Korea: Report
The
United States Cyber Command has reportedly been engaged in offensive
activity, namely a DDoS attack, against North Korea's military spy
agency, the Reconnaissance General Bureau (RGB). The attack is
thought to have commenced on September 22, and continued until
September 30.
The
attack occurred just five weeks after President Trump elevated
U.S. Cyber Command to a Unified Combatant Command.
(Related).
Over the last two years, U.S. banks and government
agencies have enjoyed a notable respite from malicious Iranian cyber
activity. The timing of this drop-off happens to coincide with the
signing of the nuclear deal with Iran in 2015.
Now with U.S. President Donald Trump threatening
to walk away from the nuclear deal, cybersecurity experts say it is
likely Iran could resume its attacks against Western targets should
Trump actually follow through with his threat.
Think about this. If an IG finds a poorly managed
process in one agency, this website could provide everything other
agencies need to correct the problem! Or, we could find evidence
that management should have known about a particular problem
because it had been found in one or more other agencies.
New Website
Shows IGs Found More Than $25B in Potential Cost Savings in FY 2017
by Sabrina
I. Pacifici on Oct 2, 2017
“Oversight.gov
was created by the Council of the Inspectors General on Integrity and
Efficiency (CIGIE) to consolidate in one place all public reports
from Federal Inspectors General (IGs) in order to improve the
public’s access to independent and authoritative information about
the Federal Government. The site includes a publicly
accessible, text searchable repository of reports published by IGs.
The reports appearing on Oversight.gov, as well as the data
associated with them, have been posted directly to the site by the IG
that issued it. CIGIE operates and maintains the site. Reports on
Oversight.gov can also be accessed through the websites of the
individual Offices of Inspectors General (OIGs)…
The data presented in the charts on the Home and
Reports pages are from three sources:
-
CIGIE’s Annual Progress Reports the President, which present aggregate data about the annual accomplishments of Federal OIGs. This data is uploaded to Oversight.gov directly by CIGIE upon publication of a new annual report.
-
OIGs’ Semiannual Reports, which present data about the semiannual accomplishments of individual OIGs. This data is uploaded to Oversight.gov by each OIG.
-
Data from individual reports uploaded to Oversight.gov. This data is uploaded to Oversight.gov by each OIG…”
See also – Oversight
Garden – “a free and open source project of Eric Mill, David
Cook, Olivia Cheng, Steve Pulec, and other wonderful humans.
Original writing licensed under CC-BY 4.0…Gathers and allows users
to search for reports of every U.S. federal IG that publishes them..”
Perhaps we could train them to build robots?
Robots Are
Taking Americans’ Jobs. What Can Be Done?
… David
Besanko, the IBM professor of regulation and competitive practice
at the Kellogg School, says halting automation would only harm the
nation’s global competitiveness. Instead of banning
driverless trucks or hitting companies with a “robot”
tax, Besanko argues in a new
white paper cowritten with Max Meyers that the most strategic way
to protect workers is through policies that help them adjust to the
new economy. Such policies should be aimed at offering workers
better access to training and equipping them to build their own
businesses.
Thoughtful.
Mass
Shootings Are A Bad Way To Understand Gun Violence
See readers? You are not alone!
Why blogs
endure: A study of recent college graduates and motivations for blog
readership
by Sabrina
I. Pacifici on Oct 2, 2017
Why
blogs endure: A study of recent college graduates and motivations for
blog readership, Alison J. Head, Michele Van Hoeck, Kirsten
Hostetler. First Monday, Volume 22, Number 10 – 2 October 2017.
“This paper reports the results from a mixed
methods study of recent college graduates who were asked if and why
they used blogs as sources for continued learning purposes. Findings
are based on 1,651 online survey responses and 63 follow-up telephone
interviews with young graduates from 10 U.S. colleges and
universities. Despite the media’s declarations about the impending
demise of the blogosphere, almost two-thirds of the respondents (62
percent) had read blogs to fulfill their learning needs during the
past 12 months. Blogs were an affordable source of information to
these readers, especially for acquiring additional knowledge and
closing skill gaps in their personal lives after college. Results
from a logistic regression analysis indicated respondents were more
likely to have read blogs during the past 12 months if they needed
step-by-step instructions for hobbies, do-it-yourself household
repairs, or money management and creating a personal budget.
Respondents who used blogs were also more likely to also use
complementary sources, such as educational videos on YouTube, to meet
their learning needs. The concept of shared utility is introduced as
a basis for explaining reasons for use of the blog format, and
conclusions are drawn about why blogs, an early Web form, are still
useful to millennials as sources of continued learning.”
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