This hack should work in any situation where money
is to be transferred.
Hackers
Target Real Estate Deals, With Devastating Impact
James
and Candace Butcher were ready to finalize the purchase of their
dream retirement home, and at closing time wired $272,000 from their
bank following instructions they received by email.
Within
hours, the money had vanished.
Unbeknownst
to the Colorado couple, the email account for the real estate
settlement company had been hacked, and fraudsters had altered the
wiring instruction to make off with the hefty sum representing a big
chunk of the Butchers' life savings, according to a lawsuit filed in
state court.
A
report by the FBI's Internet Crime Complaint Center said the number
of victims of email fraud involving real estate transactions rose
1,110 percent between 2015 to 2017 and losses rose nearly 2,200
percent.
Nearly
10,000 people reported being victims of this kind of fraud in 2017
with losses over $56 million, the FBI report said.
… The
problem is growing as hackers take advantage of lax security in the
chain of businesses involved in real estate and a potential for a
large payoff.
Are we finally getting serious? Do we sense some
vague future threat or have we experienced an event that really got
our attention? Has someone crossed the line?
Britain to
create 2,000-strong cyber force to tackle Russia threat
Britain is significantly increasing its ability to
wage war in cyberspace with the creation of a new offensive cyber
force of up to 2,000 personnel, Sky News understands.
The plan by the Ministry of Defence and GCHQ comes
amid a growing cyber threat from Russia and after the UK used cyber
weapons for the first time to fight Islamic State.
The new force – expected to be announced soon –
would represent a near four-fold increase in manpower focused on
offensive cyber operations.
If surveillance equates to more revenue, we’re
doomed.
DutchNews.nl reports:
The tax office is to be given new powers to check car owners have paid road tax by scanning every car on the Dutch roads and comparing the number plate to a data base, RTL reported on Friday. The measure is included in the government’s tax plans for 2019 but was hidden away under ‘other fiscal measures’, the broadcaster said. The tax office will make use of footage taken by speed cameras and cameras used to monitor road conditions using technology known as ANPR. There are some 800 ANPR cameras monitoring Dutch roads.
Read more at DutchNews.nl.
I have been saying this for at least 30 years.
Hannah Martin reports:
Do you remember when the floppy-disk was more than the ‘save’ button in Microsoft Word? Or the goose-bump inducing sound of dial-up internet ringing through your ears?
Technology has come a long way since then.
In a New Zealand hospital today a surgeon can assist a robotic operation; an anxious child can go through a procedure before it happens through a virtual-reality headset – and down the corridor, a doctor will pick up a patient’s sensitive medical information from an antiquated, stuttering fax machine.
Today, the fax machine – or the ‘electric printing telegraph’ as it was patented in 1843 – has all but disappeared, but lives on in our hospitals.
Read more on Stuff.
Given all of the breaches that still occur because
of misdirected faxes, I agree it would be better for faxes to be
retired from use.
Similar to what Amazon wants to do?
App-Only
Banks Rise in Europe and Aim at Traditional Lenders
Greg Stevenson was trying to refinance the
mortgage on his four-bedroom home in eastern England when things
started going awry. An attempt by his bank, TSB, to shift data to a
new computer system had gone spectacularly wrong. For several
maddening days, he could not connect to his account, transfer funds
or reach anybody at the bank for help.
“I felt abandoned,” said Mr. Stevenson, a
31-year-old software developer. “I needed to be moving money
around, and I needed access to my bank.”
The systems failure in April, affecting nearly two
million TSB customers, was a breaking point for Mr. Stevenson. He
moved his money to Monzo, a British start-up that is among a growing
number in Europe offering checking accounts and A.T.M. cards, but
lack physical branches —
everything is done through an app.
For my architecture students.
How
Platform Strategies Continue to Create Value
Platforms were once considered small and even
quirky additions to business strategy. This is no longer the case:
In 2018, companies deploying platform business models continue to
surprise and challenge conventional approaches to creating value.
Typical. “Let me be perfectly clear. This
started as 40 pages, then we ran it through the new AI powered
‘Obfuscatry Engine.’ Ain’t science wonderful?”
After What
Congress Did at 2:52 A.M. Saturday, Life May Change Radically for
Airline Passengers and Flight Attendants. Here Are the Details
Literally in the middle of the night this weekend,
Congress released
a bill to reauthorize the Federal Aviation Administration, which
has to be passed by Sept. 30. It's 1,200 pages long and packed with
things, including some truly radical changes for airline
passengers and flight
attendants.
I find the variety of formats interesting. While
neither difficult nor expensive, few other organizations would
bother.
The 2019
Medicare & You Handbook is now available
Your
online connection to the “Medicare & You” handbook.
Several formats are available: PDF,
Large Print PDF, eBook, Audio, Braille, Paper handbook.
Perspective. Who knew? I wonder if that spike is
due to a very small fraction of Facebook’s users.
When
Facebook goes down, people go read the news
What happens when internet users can’t go on
Facebook? Some turn to other social media platforms to joke
about it. A lot of them, it turns out, spend that time reading
the news.
When Facebook experienced a 45-minute outage on
Aug. 3 in
many parts of the world, traffic to news websites sharply spiked,
according to a data from Chartbeat, a firm used by many major news
publishers to track traffic to their websites.
Confusion? The way I read it is that some in each
group prefer both YouTube and books.
YouTube is
replacing textbooks in classrooms across America
Generation Z students, classified as being between
the ages of 14 and 23, believe that YouTube is a bigger contributor
to their education than textbooks, according to a
study by Pearson Education.
… YouTube was the preferred education method
for Gen. Z students, but was less prevalent among Millennials.
-
59% of Gen. Z students preferred to learn from YouTube, while only 55% of Millennials preferred it.
-
60% of Millennials said they preferred to learn from textbooks, while 47% of Gen. Z students preferred the same.
Dilbert explains…
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