For your security manager – You can't
trust files that are “certified” safe!
"Security researchers claim
that malware spreading via malicious PDF files is
signed with a valid certificate stolen from the Government of
Malaysia, in just the latest evidence that scammers are using
gaps in the security of digital certificates to help spread malicious
code. The malware, identified by F-Secure as a Trojan horse program
dubbed Agent.DTIW, was detected in a signed Adobe PDF file by the
company's virus researchers recently. The malicious PDF was signed
using a valid digital certificate for mardi.gov.my, the Agricultural
Research and Development Institute of the Government of Malaysia.
According to F-Secure, the Government of Malaysia confirmed that the
certificate was legitimate and had been stolen
'quite some time ago.'" [and
never canceled? Bob]
I don't know
but I can guess,
Breach Reporting
is a mess!
(Marching song at Bob's Security Boot
Camp) You could also say that government breach reporting has gone
from virtually non-existent to merely very poor...
Ca:
‘Insider’ government data breaches soaring
November 15, 2011 by admin
Emily Chung reports:
The proportion of
“insider” internet security breaches caused by employees are
rising quickly within Canadian government departments and agencies, a
new study shows.
Insider breaches
in the government sector grew by 28 per cent between 2010 and 2011
and are up 68 per cent since 2008, the fourth annual Telus-Rotman
joint study on Canadian IT security practices reported Tuesday. They
now make up 42 per cent of breaches reported by government
organizations, compared to 27 per cent of breaches at public
corporations and 16 per cent at private businesses.
Read more on CBC.
Dang! Now I have to fight this battle
for our Alumni Wiki... Fortunately, we have no “children”
graduates.
Does FERPA ban schools from allowing
students to post their schoolwork on the open Web?
Of the trio of laws that address
children’s and students’ privacy and safety online, FERPA is
often the one least cited outside of educational circles. The other
two, COPPA and CIPA, tend to be in the news more often; the former as
it relates to some of the ongoing discussions about privacy and
social networking, the latter as it relates to BYOD and filtering
programs. But in all cases, there seems to be a growing gulf between
the laws and their practical application or interpretation,
particularly since these pieces of legislation are quite old: COPPA
was enacted in 1998, and CIPA in 2000. FERPA, the Family
Educational Rights and Privacy Act, dates all the way back to
1974.
… The classic example used to
explain how FERPA works: you can’t post a list of students’ names
and grades on a bulletin board in the hallway.
But what about posting students’ work
publicly online?
… Yesterday, Georgia Tech deleted
all student history and participation from the school’s “Swikis,”
the wikis that students use for their coursework. Georgia Tech has
been using wikis for this purpose since 1997, pioneering the usage of
the collaborative tools for undergraduate education. One of the
features of the school’s wikis was that they allowed for
cross-course and cross-semester communication. You
could, should you choose, remain in a wiki for a class you’d taken
previously, for example.
I must have missed earlier reports n
this...
FTC
Welcomes a New Privacy System for the Movement of Consumer Data
Between the United States and Other Economies in the Asia-Pacific
Region
November 16, 2011 by Dissent
The Federal Trade Commission welcomed
the approval by the forum on Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC)
of a new initiative to harmonize cross-border data
privacy protection among members of APEC. The initiative
is designed to enhance the protection of consumer data that moves
between the United States and other APEC members, at a time when more
consumer information is moving across national borders.
On November 13, 2011, President Obama
and representatives from the other APEC economies endorsed the APEC
Cross-Border Privacy Rules at a meeting in Honolulu, Hawaii. The
APEC privacy system is a self-regulatory code of
conduct designed to create more consistent privacy
protections for consumers when their data moves between countries
with different privacy regimes in the APEC region.
… Companies that wish to
participate in the APEC privacy system will undergo a review and
certification process by third parties that will examine corporate
privacy policies and practices and enforce the new privacy rules.
Source: FTC
What a surprise! (If the RIAA fails to
stop them, I think I'll get into this business...)
"Ars Technica reports on the
developing story between the RIAA and music reseller ReDigi,
'the world's first online marketplace for used digital music,' who
first came online with a beta offering on October 11th, 'allowing
users to sell
"legally acquired digital music files" and buy them from
others "at a fraction of the price currently available on
iTunes.'' If the notion of selling 'used' digital content is
challenged in court, we may finally receive a judicial ruling on the
legality of EULAs that will overturn the previous Vernor
v. Autodesk decision."
(Related) I'm sure it's brain
damage...
An anonymous reader writes with a new
twist in the recently resolved Canadian
music label infringement lawsuit. From the article:
"Earlier
this year, the four primary members of the Canadian Recording
Industry Association (now Music Canada) — Warner Music Canada, Sony
BMG Music Canada, EMI Music Canada, and Universal Music Canada —
settled
the largest copyright class action lawsuit in Canadian history by
agreeing to pay over $50 million to compensate for hundreds of
thousands of infringing uses of sound recordings. While the record
labels did not admit liability, the massive settlement spoke for
itself. While the Canadian case has now settled, Universal
Music has filed its own lawsuit, this time against its insurer,
who it expects
to pay the costs of the settlement."
An interesting Tweet for the
e-Discovery lawyers out there...
IBM's Ferucci: where we're going with
Watson: Can we help people organize
evidence...collect it and assess it? #chm
#ibmwatson
#cnet
Imagine a computer systems that doesn't
second guess you! What a concept!
November 15, 2011
Google
- Search using your terms, verbatim
Official
Google Blog: "Behind the simplicity of Google search is a
complex set of algorithms that expands and improves the query you’ve
typed to find the best results. Automatic spelling correction
([vynal] to “vinyl”) and substituting synonyms (matching
[pictures] to “photos”) are just two examples of the improvements
we make...we’ve received a lot of requests for a more deliberate
way to tell Google to search using your exact terms. We’ve been
listening, and starting today you’ll be able to do just that
through verbatim search. With the verbatim tool on,
we’ll use the literal words you entered without making normal
improvements such as
- making automatic spelling corrections
- personalizing your search by using information such as sites you’ve visited before
- including synonyms of your search terms (matching “car” when you search [automotive])
- finding results that match similar terms to those in your query (finding results related to “floral delivery” when you search [flower shops])
- searching for words with the same stem like “running” when you’ve typed [run]
- making some of your terms optional, like “circa” in [the scarecrow circa 1963]"
Some of my 'adult learners' will
remember these – some don't remember these...
Play
Old Games On New Systems
Even though we have multi-core
processor videogame systems, high-definition, 3-D graphics rendered
in stunning quality, and online networks that allow us to play with
friends and enemies all over the world, we still reminisce over
filling our pockets with quarters at the arcade and blowing the dust
out of our old game cartridges. Unfortunately, our ancient hardware
may not be able to hold up against the test of time for much longer.
Fear not — it's possible to play basically any old game on a new
console, though technical issues can occur during setup. Thankfully,
there are a few tips, tricks and hacks you can use to re-live your
gaming glory days once again.
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