Part “free journals for research,” part
“looking for classified research?” i.e. Selling is not as
interesting as their ability to gather the information in the first
place.
Lisa Vaas reports:
Iranian hackers have reportedly breached top British universities – including Oxford and Cambridge – to steal what the Telegraph says are “millions” of papers and academic research documents that they then put up for sale via WhatsApp and websites.
The publication reported on Friday that much of the subject matter is bland, but some of the papers covered topics including nuclear development and computer encryption.
Whoever stole the papers is reportedly selling them on Farsi language websites in addition to the end-to-end encrypted WhatsApp messaging app, where they’re going for as little as £2 (USD $2.63).
Read more on Naked
Security.
Failing the “Caeser’s wife” test? Would
this ever be appropriate?
Simon Boazman & Jeremy Young report:
Long Beach, Southern California – Al Jazeera’s Investigative Unit has discovered that a self-deleting messaging app called Tiger Text has been adopted by at least one US police department, which may have used it to share sensitive and potentially incriminating information that they wouldn’t want to be disclosed to a court.
Current and former officers from the Long Beach Police Department in Southern California have told Al Jazeera that their police-issued phones had Tiger Text installed on them.
The Tiger Text app is designed to erase text messages after a set time period. Once the messages have been deleted, they cannot be retrieved – even through forensic analysis of the phone.
Read more on Al
Jazeera.
Clearly one election to watch (along with Russian
hackers).
Georgia's
Use of Electronic Voting Machines Allowed for Midterms
Judge
Amy Totenberg ruled Monday that the state of Georgia's existing plans
for the midterm elections to be conducted via some 27,000 Diebold
AccuVote DRE touchscreen voting machines must stand. Her remarks,
however, suggest that this should be the last time.
Plaintiffs,
comprising the Coalition for Good Governance and citizens of Georgia,
had filed a Motion for Preliminary Injunction
against the Secretary of State for Georgia, Brian Kemp, in an
attempt to force a switch to paper-based voting in time for the
November elections. The primary argument is that the
direct-recording election (DRE) machines to be used cannot produce a
paper-based audit trail to verify accurate elections.
This
coupled with the exposure of the registration details of 6.7 million
Georgia voters on an unprotected internet-facing database, repeated
demonstrations that such voting machines can be hacked, federal
government advice that audit trails are necessary, and the
constitutional right for citizens to vote was the basis of the
plaintiffs' argument.
The
Secretary of State's response, while insisting that the machines are
secure, was primarily
focused on the cost, lack of time, and potential confusion that such
a late switch could cause.
(Related) Voting is now social? (Perhaps not
voting is anti-social.)
Instagram
will promote mid-term voting with stickers, registration info
Facebook is getting ready to purposefully
influence the U.S. mid-term elections after spending two years trying
to safeguard against foreign interference. Instagram
plans
to run ads in Stories and feed powered by TurboVote that will
target all US users over 18 and point them towards information on how
to get properly registered and abide by voting rules. Then when
election day arrives, users will be able to add an “I Voted”
sticker to their photos and videos that link to voting
info like which polling place to go to.
Follow the law, expose yourself to lawsuits?
Spoiler: NO!
lex M. Pearce of Ellis & Winters LLP writes:
….. When a business suffers a data breach, state laws require the business to send a notice to affected individuals. Those laws typically prescribe the contents of the required notice—sometimes in detail. North Carolina’s data breach notification statute, for instance, requires the notice to include “[a]dvice that directs the person to remain vigilant by reviewing account statements and monitoring free credit reports.”
An interesting new decision from a federal court in California called Brett v. Brooks Brothers examines how this advice—which one might read as tacitly acknowledging that breaches create a risk of future fraud and identity theft—can affect a court’s standing analysis.
Read more on Lexology.
Perspective. A new record!
Visa,
Mastercard Face Next Fight After $6.2 Billion Settlement
In the
largest-ever class-action settlement of a U.S. antitrust
case, Visa
Inc. and Mastercard
Inc. agreed to pay between $5.54 billion and $6.24 billion to a
class of more than 12 million merchants who accept the payment
networks’ cards, according to a regulatory filing on Tuesday. The
total is in line with sums the companies previously set aside to
cover the costs of the litigation.
But retailers are gearing up for the next round in
their fight with the world’s biggest payment networks. Tuesday’s
settlement addresses only monetary damages associated with the
lawsuit. There’s a separate class of merchants fighting for
changes to Visa and Mastercard’s business practices.
(Related) On the other hand…
Yahoo
settles for $47 million in litigation following data breach of 3
billion accounts
Everyone remembers the Yahoo breach — it was
simply historical and created mass hysteria at the time. The company
ultimately confirmed in late 2017 that, following an alleged
state-sponsored attack, all user accounts had been breached – that
is 3 billion users. If you can’t really put your finger on what
that number means, 3 billion was the
world population in 1959.
… “We are also pleased to announce today
that we have reached an agreement in principle (subject to court
approval) to settle the consumer class action litigation related to
the Yahoo data breach,” reads the letter. “We have also received
final court approval of the securities class action settlement, and
we have negotiated an agreement to settle the shareholder derivative
litigation (subject to court approval). We estimate that the Company
will incur an incremental net $47 million in litigation settlement
expenses to resolve all three cases. Together, these developments
mark a significant milestone in cleaning up our contingent
liabilities related to the Yahoo data breach.”
Perspective. I don’t think of Amazon as an
advertising giant. Clearly, I should.
Amazon
becoming 3rd-biggest digital ad platform
Amazon’s ad business will bring in $4.61 billion
this year, according to a new eMarketer study, up a whopping 60% from
the projection of $2.89 billion in March.
Why it matters: The new projection puts Amazon
ahead of Microsoft in its share of the U.S. digital ad market. While
it's still a distant third behind Google and Facebook, Amazon's share
is growing so fast that some analysts argue it could one day catch up
with those leaders.
Sometimes, my classroom.
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