An auditor should have known better...
http://www.pogowasright.org/article.php?story=20070923154219519
PA: Stolen laptop has IDs of West Mifflin teachers, bus drivers
Sunday, September 23 2007 @ 03:42 PM EDT Contributed by: PrivacyNews News Section: Breaches
The West Mifflin Area School District has advised teachers and bus drivers that a laptop computer containing their names, Social Security numbers and driver-license numbers was stolen from the car of an auditor with the state Auditor General's office.
... The agency's letter said the laptop also had information on Steel Valley School District employees.
Source - Pittsburgh Tribune-Review
...and the manager of the year is...
http://www.freenewmexican.com/news/69104.html
Contractor under investigation over data breach
By ELLEN NAKASHIMA AND BRIAN KREBS | Washington Post September 23, 2007
Hackers allegedly sent information to Chinese-language Web site
WASHINGTON — The FBI is investigating a major information technology firm with a $1.7 billion Department of Homeland Security contract after it allegedly failed to detect cyber break-ins traced to a Chinese-language Web site and then tried to cover up its deficiencies, according to congressional investigators.
At the center of the probe is Unisys Corp., a company that in 2002 won a $1 billion deal to build, secure and manage the information technology networks for the Transportation Security Administration and DHS headquarters. In 2005, the company was awarded a $750 million follow-on contract.
... As part of the contract, Unisys, based in Blue Bell, Pa., was to install network-intrusion detection devices on the unclassified computer systems for the TSA and DHS headquarters and monitor the networks. But according to evidence gathered by the House Homeland Security Committee, Unisys’ failure to properly install and monitor the devices meant that DHS was not aware for at least three months of cyber-intrusions that began in June 2006. Through October of that year, Thompson said, 150 DHS computers — including one in the Office of Procurement Operations, which handles contract data — were compromised by hackers, who sent an unknown quantity of information to a Chinese-language Web site that appeared to host hacking tools.
The contractor also allegedly falsely certified that the network had been protected to cover up its lax oversight, according to the committee.
... The FBI is investigating Unisys for criminal fraud, according to a committee aide. The panel began its inquiry into the matter in April. And Homeland Security’s Internal Affairs division is conducting a probe as well.
... The House panel said its investigation has yielded the following results:
It is not clear how the hackers breached the DHS systems. But once inside, they used special software to crack a user account password for a network administrator who had privileges to modify key system files on thousands of computers on the DHS network.
Then the attackers began installing malicious software on dozens of computers that not only masked the intrusion but also copied and transferred files to an outside Web site.
In July 2006, a Unisys employee detected a possible intrusion but “downplayed it and low-level DHS security managers ignored it,” the committee aide said.
It was not until Sept. 27, 2006, that two DHS systems managers noticed that their machines had been accessed with a hacking tool.
Competition for the Unisys managers? After all, a manager should be required to approve any communication with customers, right? Attention Class Action lawyers?
No, *really*, DirecTV -- don't call me!
Sep 23, 2007 | Bugs | Commerce
I received the oddest phone call yesterday, a robocall from DirecTV (from whom we currently receive our television service). It went more or less exactly like this:
Hello, my name is Diane, and I’m with DirecTV. From time to time, we like to call our customers with information about our latest promotions and specials, but we cannot call you with these, as you’re on our do-not-call list. We’d like to offer you the opportunity to update your status with us; press 1 if you want to remove your listing on our do-not-call list, or press 3 if you want to stay on the list.
Does anyone else find this the slightest bit weird — receiving a call from a company which acknowledges that they shouldn’t be allowed to call you, and asking if you still want that to be the case? In any event, the phone call is in explicit violation of DirecTV’s own “Do Not Call Policy”, which in part reads:
DIRECTV’s Outbound Telesales Department is a department within DIRECTV that engages in telemarketing to existing DIRECTV customers. The Outbound Telesales Department will not call any DIRECTV customer who has communicated his or her desire not to be called.
This article sure makes me wonder...
http://it.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=07/09/23/141225&from=rss
Homeland Security's Tech Wonders
Posted by CmdrTaco on Sunday September 23, @12:49PM from the segways-and-calculator-watches dept. Security United States
Lucas123 writes "The multi-billion dollar budget of the Department of Homeland Security has spawned a myriad of new, whiz-bang technology that includes things like keychain-size, remote-controlled aerial vehicles designed to collect and transmit data for military and homeland security uses. It also includes infrared cameras that capture license plate images to match them in milliseconds to police records. "Seventy percent of all criminal activity can be tied to a vehicle," [I wonder where he got that statistic? Bob] says Mark Windover, president of Remington ELSAG Law Enforcement Systems, which is marketing its product to 250 U.S. police agencies."
[From the article: "We can read fingerprints from about five meters .... all 10 prints," said Bruce Walker, vice president of homeland security at Northrop Grumman Corp. "We can also do an iris scan at the same distance."
Free is good, eavesdropping is trivial
Google reads your emails and selects ads, what's different here?
http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/A/ADS_THAT_LISTEN?SITE=VALYD&SECTION=HOME&TEMPLATE=DEFAULT
New Service Eavesdrops on Internet Calls
By PETER SVENSSON AP Technology Writer Sep 24, 7:35 AM EDT
NEW YORK (AP) -- A startup has come up with a new way to make money from phone calls connected via the Internet: having software listen to the calls, then displaying ads on the callers' computer screens based on what's being talked about.
... That is, if the system works. It's notoriously difficult for computers to recognize speech. A test of Puddingmedia's beta software was a mixed success: Relevant ads appeared when this reporter talked about restaurants and computers, but the software was oddly insistent that he should seek a career as a social worker, showing multiple ads and links pointing to that field.
... On Monday, the Silicon Valley-based company is launching a public trial of the software on its Web site, http://www.ThePudding.com . Visitors will be able to place free calls to U.S. and Canadian phone numbers from their computers using headsets or microphones. The phone numbers are entered via a Web browser, which is also where the ads and links show up.
Something for everyone? Accounting through Web Browsers
http://digg.com/linux_unix/OPEN_SOURCE_GOD_480_Open_Source_Applications
OPEN SOURCE GOD: 480+ Open Source Applications
Open source software is booming: here we round up over 480 open source applications for you to use or build upon.
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