Monday, August 16, 2021

Did T-Mobile notice the hack or the huge download?

https://gizmodo.com/hacker-claims-to-have-data-on-more-than-100-million-t-m-1847491056

Hacker Claims to Have Data on More Than 100 Million T-Mobile Customers, Asks for $277,000

A hacker is claiming to have data related to more than 100 million T-Mobile customers in the U.S. and is selling access to part of the information for roughly $277,000.

Motherboard reported on Sunday that the hacker revealed they had the data on an underground forum, although they didn’t specify the information was related to T-Mobile in the post. When contacted by the outlet, the hacker said in an online chat that they had compromised multiple T-Mobile servers and had “full customer info.” They claim the data include social security numbers, phone numbers, names, physical addresses, unique IMEI numbers, and driver license information.

Motherboard said it had seen samples of the data and confirmed they contained accurate information on T-Mobile customers.

… “I think they already found out because we lost access to the backdoored servers,” the hacker told Motherboard.

Nonetheless, the hacker said they wouldn’t be affected by T-Mobile’s actions because they had already downloaded and backed up the stolen data in multiple places.





I missed this one. I’m not clear, just an insider error? No backups?

https://apnews.com/article/texas-ee36d24e32f1dff69c2fa1c4b45a9e1e

Texas murder suspect granted bond after police data loss

A Texas man who was scheduled for trial on a murder charge this week was instead granted release on bond amid temporary concern that material in his case might be among troves of police data lost from the Dallas department’s computer system.

A Dallas County judge granted Jonathan Pitts bond Thursday after prosecutors asked the judge to delay his trial as they worked with police to determine whether case material was part of the information lost while the Dallas Police Department was moving data from a computer network drive. It was not immediately clear when Pitts would be freed from jail.

The release of Pitts, who is charged in the 2019 shooting of Shun Handy, was ordered as authorities race to determine how many cases may have had evidence vanish in the eight-terabyte data loss.

White granted Pitts release without paying bail because state law requires a person be freed if prosecutors aren’t ready at the time of the trial, his defense attorney, George Ashford III, told The Dallas Morning News.

City information technology officials became aware of the problem on April 5. But the police and city IT departments did not reveal it to the district attorney’s office until last Friday, after prosecutors inquired why they could not find computer files on pending cases.

The lost data included images, video, audio, case notes and other information gathered by police officers and detectives, police said in an earlier statement. A city IT employee was moving the files, which had not been accessed for the previous six to 18 months, from an online, cloud-based archive to a server at the city’s data center. The “employee failed to follow proper, established procedures, resulting in the deletion of the data files,” police said.





Not total agreement, but some common goals.

https://www.csoonline.com/article/3628188/cisos-15-top-strategic-priorities-for-2021.html#tk.rss_all

CISOs’ 15 top strategic priorities for 2021

Some 64% of CISOs fear their companies are at risk of a major cybersecurity attack in the upcoming year and 66% feel their organization is unprepared to handle it, according to the 2021 Voice of the CISO Report from security software maker Proofpoint.

Of course, each CISO has his or her own security roadmap, but common elements have emerged. According to CISOs, analysts and security leaders, the typical CISO priority list today has many or most of these 15 items:





I’m not convinced they are as bad at surveillance as they claim. Is it just about expanding coverage? What else might be going on here?

https://www.wsj.com/articles/homeland-security-considers-outside-firms-to-analyze-social-media-after-jan-6-failure-11629025200?mod=djemalertNEWS

Homeland Security Considers Outside Firms to Analyze Social Media After Jan. 6 Failure

Effort has spurred civil-rights debates at DHS and White House, would expand government’s handling of social-media data

The initiative comes after the nation’s intelligence community failed to sufficiently identify and share signs of the threats that led to the assault on the U.S. Capitol by a mob of Donald Trump supporters on Jan. 6.

John Cohen, a top DHS official, is spearheading the project, which he describes as part of an upgrade to the department’s capabilities in social-media analysis. Marshaling the expertise of outside companies and ramping up internal capabilities are central to that effort, he said.

What we’re talking about now is dramatically expanding our focus,” Mr. Cohen said in an interview.

The basis of DHS’s legal authority for the proposed expanded effort remains murky, said one person involved in the discussions, in part because “the definition of what is public is not necessarily settled.”





Now that’s a good question. Start small, grow to wide acceptance before the lawyers start objecting?

https://www.bbc.com/news/business-58158820

Would you let a robot lawyer defend you?

Joshua Browder describes his app DoNotPay as "the world's first robot lawyer".

It helps users draft legal letters. You tell its chatbot what your problem is, such as appealing against a parking fine, and it will suggest what it thinks is the best legal language to use.

"People can type in their side of an argument using their own words, and software with a machine learning model matches that with a legally correct way of saying it," he says.

The 24-year-old and his company are based in Silicon Valley in California, but the firm's origins go back to London in 2015, when Mr Browder was 18.

Since then the app has spread across the UK and US, and it can now help the user write letters dealing with a range of issues; insurance claims, applying for tourist visas, complaint letters to a business or local authority, getting your money back for a holiday you can no longer go on or cancelling gym membership. Mr Browder says the last two uses soared during the pandemic.

DoNotPay now claims to have 150,000 paying subscribers. And while it has its critics, with some saying its legal advice is not accurate enough, last year it won an award from the American Bar Association for increasing legal access.

Mr Browder claims an 80% overall success rate, down to 65% for parking tickets, because "'some people are guilty".





A Financial Times Podcast.

https://www.ft.com/content/3633d8e7-774f-4432-a138-97e0c43976da

AI with military characteristics

Last year, the Pentagon watched closely as a human fighter pilot lost to an AI-powered adversary in a simulated dogfight. The US military is working to innovate faster as technology changes the nature of warfare. But many worry it has already fallen behind its main adversary, China. What does AI mean for military might, and how are debates over autonomous weapons unfolding in diplomatic backchannels? In the final episode of this season's Tech Tonic, FT innovation editor John Thornhill is joined by US-China correspondent Demetri Sevastopulo for a dive into military AI. We hear from Colonel Daniel “Animal” Javorsek, former deputy defence secretary Robert O Work, Elsa B Kania of the Center for a New American Security, and David Edelman, who works on AI and public policy at MIT.

https://sphinx.acast.com/ft-tech-tonic/aiwithmilitarycharacteristics/media.mp3





Were the drivers arrested/charged? A clear case of ‘undue reliance?’

https://apnews.com/article/technology-business-ap-top-news-61557d668b646e7ef48c5543d3a1c66c

US opens formal probe into Tesla Autopilot system

The U.S. government has opened a formal investigation into Tesla’s Autopilot partially automated driving system after a series of collisions with parked emergency vehicles.

The investigation covers 765,000 vehicles, almost everything that Tesla has sold in the U.S. since the start of the 2014 model year. Of the crashes identified by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration as part of the investigation, 17 people were injured and one was killed.

NHTSA says it has identified 11 crashes since 2018 in which Teslas on Autopilot or Traffic Aware Cruise Control have hit vehicles at scenes where first responders have used flashing lights, flares, an illuminated arrow board or cones warning of hazards. The agency announced the action Monday in a posting on its website.

The NTSB also recommended that NHTSA require Tesla to have a better system to make sure drivers are paying attention. NHTSA has not taken action on any of the recommendations.





I must ask, is there really a need? What works?

https://www.bespacific.com/can-technology-help-authors-write-a-book/

Can technology help authors write a book?

BBC – “Every year around the world a whopping 2.2 million books are published, according to the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (Unesco), which monitors the number. The figure includes both fiction and non-fiction titles. For most of these authors the writing process is relatively unchanged since Twain’s heyday in the late 19th Century. Plot outlines and ideas are written down to be deciphered, developed and refined over time. These days, however, technology is increasingly making the life of an author a little easier. For Michael Green, a US data scientist turned novelist, the need to use technology to simplify and streamline the writing process came when he was in the middle of writing his first book..”



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