Monday, December 04, 2017

Do you have a procedure to handle situations for which you have no procedure? My Computer Security students will be writing one this week.
If you can’t prevent a breach, can’t you at least fake genuine concern? You know, the “At , we take your privacy and security very seriously” bit?
Mark Flamme reports on a Key Bank breach where the bank’s response to notification of a problem is at least as problematic as the breach itself.
After a customer found himself with access to another customer’s complete history and details, he attempted to alert the bank.
“They told me, ‘Don’t worry. Just don’t worry.’ That’s all I can get out of them,” Brito said. “I sat on hold for 45 minutes for, supposedly, a supervisor who said, ‘Don’t worry. We’re taking care of it.’ I can look at a Connecticut man’s bank statements for the past 10 years. How is that a ‘don’t worry’ situation?”
The Sun Journal didn’t have any better luck. A call to a 24-hour hotline was answered by a representative who passed on a number for the Key Bank Corporate Headquarters Customer Complaint Resolution Department. Calls to that number, and to a third number for bank executive relations, were not answered.
A message left at the Complaint Resolution Department was not returned.
Read more on Sun Journal.
Now maybe the employee intended to be reassuring with the “Don’t worry,” response, but that was unsatisfactory to the now-worried customers. Think about what you could say in that situation that might reassure a customer.




A minor, but rather interesting breach.
I should have posted this one a few weeks ago, but better late than never if you care about tracking breaches in the education sector. On November 16, Kara Seymour reported:
Two women, one from Yardley another from New Hope, have been arrested after police say they illegally accessed the Bucks County Community College computer network and changed student grades, Newtown Township Police announced Thursday.
Alesisha Morosco, 30, of New Hope, and Kelly Marryott, 37, of Yardley, were arrested Thursday. Police said Marryott got the personal information of the faculty member at her job at a medical office, and gave it to Morosco, who used it to access the college’s computer network and change grades, including her own.
Read more on Patch.




It seems (to me) that the evidence falls short.
DHS Says Drone Maker DJI Helping China Spy on U.S.
A memo from the U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) warns that China-based Da-Jiang Innovations (DJI), one of the world’s largest drone manufacturers, has been providing information on critical infrastructure and law enforcement to the Chinese government.
The Los Angeles office of Immigrations and Customs Enforcement (ICE), specifically its Special Agent in Charge Intelligence Program (SIP), issued an intelligence bulletin back in August claiming that DJI is helping China spy on the United States.
A copy of the memo, marked “unclassified / law enforcement sensitive,” was published recently by the Public Intelligence project. The document, based on information from open source reporting and a “reliable source” in the unmanned aerial systems industry, assesses with moderate confidence that DJI is providing data on U.S. critical infrastructure and law enforcement to the Chinese government. The authors of the memo provide several examples of law enforcement and critical infrastructure organizations using DJI drones. [No actual examples of data going to China? Bob]
The intelligence bulletin also points to a recent memo of the U.S. Army, which instructs units to stop using DJI drones due to cybersecurity vulnerabilities, and a U.S. Navy memo on the operational risks associated with the use of the Chinese firm’s products. DJI has taken some measures to improve privacy following the Army ban. [Poor security is not espionage. Bob]




This happens with a lot of senior managers. Secretaries reading and filtering emails. PR(?) handling social media accounts. In all cases, the simple solution is to make certain that the politician/executive/celebrity never has access to the password for that account. This article is definitely worth reading.
The Trouble with Politicians Sharing Passwords
Yesterday I had a bunch of people point me at a tweet from a politician in the UK named Nadine Dorries. As it turns out, some folks were rather alarmed about her position on sharing what we would normally consider to be a secret. In this case, that secret is her password and, well, just read it:
Nadine Dorries‏Verified account @NadineDorries
My staff log onto my computer on my desk with my login everyday. Including interns on exchange programmes. For the officer on @BBCNews just now to claim that the computer on Greens desk was accessed and therefore it was Green is utterly preposterous !!
10:03 AM - 2 Dec 2017


For context, the back story to this is that another British pollie (Damian Green) is presently in hot water for allegedly accessing porn on his gov PC and Nadine is implying it could have been someone else on his PC using his identity. I read this while wandering around in LA on my way home from sitting in front of US Congress and explaining security principles to a government so it felt like a timely opportunity to share my own view on the matter:
Troy Hunt‏Verified account @troyhunt
Troy Hunt Retweeted Nadine Dorries
This illustrates a fundamental lack of privacy and security education. All the subsequent reasons given for why it’s necessary have technology solutions which provide traceability back to individual, identifiable users.


(Related). Thought it never happened here?
Looking for the Linguistic Smoking-Gun in a Trump Tweet
President Donald Trump’s behavior on Twitter routinely drives entire news cycles. This weekend, he showed that a single word within a single presidential tweet can be explosive.
Trump raised alarm bells in his published response to the news that his former national security adviser, Michael Flynn, pleaded guilty to lying to the FBI.
The tweet published to Trump’s account clearly implied that he already knew that Flynn had deceived the Feds when he fired him back in February: “I had to fire General Flynn because he lied to the Vice President and the FBI. He has pled guilty to those lies. It is a shame because his actions during the transition were lawful. There was nothing to hide!”
That unleashed a frenzy of speculation about whether Trump had just admitted to obstructing justice, since it seems he must have known that Flynn had committed a felony when he was pressuring then-FBI director James Comey to ease up on the Flynn case.
But then came word that maybe Trump didn’t write the tweet after all. The Washington Post reported that “Trump’s lawyer John Dowd drafted the president’s tweet, according to two people familiar with the twitter message.” The Associated Press also identified Dowd as the one who “crafted” the tweet, citing “one person familiar with the situation,” though Dowd himself declined to make a comment to the AP.




For my Data Management students: Another criteria for your backup system?
Banks Build Line of Defense for Doomsday Cyberattack
The Sheltered Harbor project is meant to ensure that every U.S. bank has a protected, unalterable backup that can be used to serve customers in case of a major hack
U.S. banks have quietly launched a doomsday project they hope will prevent a run on the financial system should one of them suffer a debilitating cyberattack.
The effort, which went live earlier this year and is dubbed Sheltered Harbor, currently includes banks and credit unions that have roughly 400 million U.S. accounts. The effort requires member firms to individually back up data so it can be used by other firms to serve customers of a disabled bank.




Indicating that my Data Management students might find jobs!
Giangiacomo Oliv writes:
Under the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), companies that process large amounts of sensitive personal data or consistently monitor data subjects on a large scale will be required to appoint a data protection officer (DPO).
As discussed in our previous posts, the DPO will have significant responsibilities, including reporting on data to the highest management level. While the DPO debate has so far been focussed on where to place the DPO within company structures, confusion remains over the DPO’s actual responsibilities.
Firstly, the GDPR does not provide for any specific liability for the DPO. However, the Art. 29 Working Party addresses this issue in its Guidelines on Data Protection Officers of 13 December 2016.
Read more on DLA Piper Privacy Matters.




Indicating that the world keeps changing? Does anyone remember when Doctors made house calls?
CVS to Buy Aetna for $69 Billion in a Deal That May Reshape the Health Industry
… The transaction, one of the largest of the year, reflects the increasingly blurred lines between the traditionally separate spheres of a rapidly changing industry. It represents an effort to make both companies more appealing to consumers as health care that was once delivered in a doctor’s office more often reaches consumers over the phone, at a retail clinic or via an app.
… A combined CVS-Aetna could position itself as a formidable figure in this changing landscape. Together, the companies touch most of the basic health services that people regularly use, providing an opportunity to benefit consumers. CVS operates a chain of pharmacies and retail clinics that could be used by Aetna to provide care directly to patients, while the merged company could be better able to offer employers one-stop shopping for health insurance for their workers.




Good to see that someone is thinking about this – even if they only came up with four.
4 Reasons Why Assassinating Kim Jong Un Could Become A Total Disaster
North Korea’s most recent intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) test has once again captivated the international community. Much less attention has been paid to how South Korea is responding to its neighbor’s military advances. Firstly, South Korea is acquiring the capabilities to conduct preemptive strikes against North Korea’s nuclear and missile sites under the guise of its “Kill Chain” strategy. Relatedly, Seoul is seeking the capabilities and simulating decapitation strikes against North Korea’s leadership—that is, South Korea wants the ability to assassinate Kim Jong-un and his inner circle.
Both capabilities pose enormous challenges that are not being acknowledged. For both scenarios, Seoul is failing to ask the simple question of whether the United States would back its actions. Washington itself does not appear to be contemplating this essential question, even though it would be directly implicated by South Korea’s policies.


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