This is another hack-back. I would not assume
every subscriber is a terrorist.
Waqas reports:
A group of Muslim hacktivists from Ahlus Sunnah Wal Jamaah, the Sunni sect of Islam and going by the online handle of Di5s3nSi0N hacked the official website of ISIS/ISIL (Daesh) and leaked a list of more than 2000 people who had subscribed to the site’s newsletter and updates through email.
A week ago, the targeted website Amaq which also works as a news agency for the terrorist organization claimed that it was facing increasing cyber attacks against the agency and that it has increased its security and now their admins can tackle “any type of hack.”
Read more on HackRead.
Note that HackRead’s headline at the time of
this posting says that the hack exposed “20,000 subscribers list,”
but according to the story, that headline number should probably be
2,000.
Every time it happens, you promote the most nearly
“operationally ready” project.
… Current and former agency officials say the
Shadow Brokers disclosures, which began in August 2016, have been
catastrophic for the N.S.A., calling into question its ability to
protect potent cyberweapons and its very value to national security.
The agency regarded as the world’s leader in breaking into
adversaries’ computer networks failed to protect its own.
… With a leak
of intelligence methods like the N.S.A. tools, Mr. Panetta said,
“Every time it happens,
you essentially have to start over.”
Fifteen months into a wide-ranging investigation
by the agency’s counterintelligence arm, known as Q Group, and the
F.B.I., officials still do not know whether the N.S.A. is the victim
of a brilliantly executed hack, with Russia as the most likely
perpetrator, an insider’s leak, or both. Three employees have been
arrested since 2015 for taking classified files, but there is fear
that one or more leakers may still be in place. And there is broad
agreement that the damage from the Shadow Brokers already far exceeds
the harm to American intelligence done by Edward J. Snowden, the
former N.S.A. contractor who fled with four laptops of classified
material in 2013.
Something the FBI will need.
Hackers Say
They've Broken Face ID a Week After iPhone X Release
When Apple released the iPhone
X on November 3, it touched off an immediate race
among hackers around the world to be the first to fool the
company's futuristic new form of authentication. A week later,
hackers on the actual other side of the world claim to have
successfully duplicated someone's face to unlock his iPhone X—with
what looks like a simpler technique than some security researchers
believed possible.
(Related?)
Privacy
Fears Over Artificial Intelligence as Crimestopper
Police
in the US state of Delaware are poised to deploy "smart"
cameras in cruisers to help authorities detect a vehicle carrying a
fugitive, missing child or straying senior.
The
video feeds will be analyzed using artificial intelligence to
identify vehicles by license plate or other features and "give
an extra set of eyes" to officers on patrol, says David Hinojosa
of Coban
Technologies, the company providing the equipment.
… The
program is part of a growing trend to use vision-based AI to thwart
crime and improve public safety, a trend which has stirred concerns
among privacy and civil liberties activists who fear the technology
could lead to secret "profiling" and misuse of data.
Something for my Data Management class.
Government
Printing, Publications, and Digital Information Management: Issues
and Challenges
CRS Report – Government
Printing, Publications, and Digital Information Management: Issues
and Challenges, November 8, 2017. R45014
“In the past half-century, in government and
beyond, information creation, distribution, retention, and
preservation activities have transitioned from a tangible,
paper-based process to digital processes managed through computerized
information technologies. Information is created as a digital object
which then may be rendered as a text, image, or video file. Those
files are then distributed through a myriad of outlets ranging from
particular software application and websites to social media
platforms. The material may be produced in tangible, printed form,
but typically remains in digital formats. The Government Publishing
Office (GPO) is a legislative branch agency that serves all three
branches of the national government as a centralized resource for
gathering, cataloging, producing, providing, authenticating, and
preserving published information. The agency is overseen by the
Joint Committee on Printing (JCP) which in 1895 was charged with
overseeing and regulating U.S. government printing. GPO
operates on the basis of a number of statutory authorities first
granted in the 19th and 20th centuries that presume the existence of
government information in an ink-on-paper format, because no other
format existed when those authorities were enacted. GPO’s
activities include the Federal Depository Library Program (FDLP),
which provides permanent public access to published federal
government information, and which last
received legislative consideration in 1962. In light of
the governance and technological changes of the past four decades, a
relevant question for Congress might arise: To what extent can
decades-old authorities and work patterns meet the challenges of
digital government information? For example, the widespread
availability of government
information in digital form has led some to question whether paper
versions of some publications might be eliminated in favor of digital
versions, but others note that paper versions are still
required for a variety of reasons. Another area of concern focuses
on questions about the capacity of current information dissemination
authorities to enable the provision of digital government information
in an effective and efficient manner. With regard to information
retention, the emergence of a predominantly digital FDLP may raise
questions about the capacity of GPO to manage the program given its
existing statutory authorities. These questions are further
complicated by the lack of a stable, robust set of digital
information resources and management practices like those that were
in place when Congress last considered current government information
policies. The 1895 printing act was arguably an expression of the
state of the art standard of printing technology and provided a
foundation which supported government information distribution for
more than a century. By contrast, in the fourth or fifth decade of
transitioning from the tangible written word to ubiquitous digital
creation and distribution, the way ahead is not as clear, due in part
to a lack of widely
understood and accepted standards for managing digital information.
This report examines three areas related to the production,
distribution, retention and management of government information in a
primarily digital environment. These areas include the Joint
Committee on Printing; the Federal Depository Library Program; and
government information management in the future.”
Keeping score?
CNN –
Deadliest Mass Shootings in Modern US History Fast Facts
CNN – “Here is a list of the deadliest single
day mass
shootings in US history from 1949 to the present. If the shooter
was killed or committed suicide during the incident that death is not
included in the total.”
See also Study:
Gun deaths, injuries in California spike following Nevada gun shows:
“More than 4,000 gun shows are held annually in the U.S., and gun
shows account for 4 to 9 percent of annual firearm sales. Some gun
shows draw thousands of attendees and hundreds of sellers, whose
transactions may not be subject to vigorous oversight. Some of these
transactions are between private parties and do not involve a
background check. Research has shown that firearms from gun shows
are disproportionately implicated in crimes. California has some of
the strongest firearm laws in the country, including a comprehensive
set of statutes regulating gun shows. Nevada has some of the least
restrictive firearm laws in the country and no explicit regulations
on gun shows.
“Our study suggests that California’s strict regulations — on firearms, generally, and on gun shows, specifically — may be effective in preventing short-term increases in firearm deaths and injuries following gun shows,” said the study’s lead author, Ellicott Matthay, a Ph.D. student in UC Berkeley’s School of Public Health.
Study
finds 3M Americans carry a loaded handgun daily –
“Approximately 9 million handgun owners in the United States carry
loaded handguns on a monthly basis—about 7 million of whom have
concealed carry permits—while 3 million report carrying on a daily
basis. These are among the findings from a new study led by
Northeastern professor Matthew Miller and his colleagues, published
Thursday afternoon in the American Journal of Public Health. The
study is the first of its kind in more than 20 years to assess why
and how often gun owners carry their loaded firearms…”
(Related). Also an article my Data management
students should read.
FBI
database for gun buyers missing millions of records
FBI
database for gun buyers missing millions of records by WaPo’s
Devlin Barrett, Sandhya Somashekhar and Alex Horton: “The FBI’s
background-check system is missing millions of records of criminal
convictions, mental illness diagnoses and other flags that would keep
guns out of potentially dangerous hands, a gap that contributed to
the shooting deaths of 26 people in a Texas church this week.
Experts who study the data say government agencies responsible for
maintaining such records have long failed to forward them into
federal databases used for gun background checks – systemic
breakdowns that have lingered for decades as officials
decided they were too costly and time-consuming to fix… The
FBI said it doesn’t know the scope of
the problem, but the National Rifle Association says about
7 million records are absent from the system, based on a 2013 report
by the nonprofit National
Consortium for Justice Information and Statistics.”
-
See also this Directory of National Criminal Justice Web Sites
Something for my geeks and gamers?
Everyone’s betting on artificial intelligence.
While some are warning that AI
poses serious risks, the fact is that artificial intelligence
programming is where many careers are headed.
The good news is that you can jump into AI
programming with widely popular languages like Python,
Java, C++, and even older languages like Lisp, so get back to the
screen and see if your skills are sharp enough to make your mark in
this budding and buzzing field.
In other
words, put your skills to the test in this AI programming challenge
— fly around a virtual universe, send ships to mine planets, and
grow larger fleets to defeat your opponents.
All my students should already know about these.
Tools and
Tips to Help Students With the Writing Process
There are so many tools that will help students
with the writing process. Some of these tools help organize research
while others help students organize their thoughts or locate
grammatical errors.
Grammarly-
Detect spelling, context, and grammatical errors.
EasyBib- Generate citations and see the credibility of sites you are using.
Diigo- Collect, organize and annotate resouces. Create an outline using the resources you have gathered.
Cite This for Me- Automatically create citations in the most popular citation styles.
Highlight Tool- This is an add-on for Google Docs that can be used to organize essays, categorize facts, and emphasize different sections of a document.
EasyBib- Generate citations and see the credibility of sites you are using.
Diigo- Collect, organize and annotate resouces. Create an outline using the resources you have gathered.
Cite This for Me- Automatically create citations in the most popular citation styles.
Highlight Tool- This is an add-on for Google Docs that can be used to organize essays, categorize facts, and emphasize different sections of a document.
Just a heads-up for ALL my students.
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