Virtual geopolitical boundaries for
Cloud Computing. Inevitable, I suppose.
Deutsche
Telekom Wants ‘German Cloud’ to Shield Data From U.S.
Deutsche Telekom
AG’s T-Systems information technology unit is pushing regulators to
introduce a certificate for German or European cloud operators to
help companies guard data from the U.S. government.
T-Systems plans to
lure customers by emphasizing the security of its servers, over which
it delivers its Internet- accessed computing services, Reinhard
Clemens, the division’s chief executive officer, told reporters in
Bonn on Sept. 12. This includes shielding clients from government
access such as that allowed by the U.S. Patriot Act, he said.
Is this a case of “techno-paparazzi,”
teenage testosterone, or orchestrated publicity? (I'm sure the
obvious solution has never occurred to these ladies...)
Celebs
Hacked: Which Hollywood Hottie Will Have Nude Pics Leaked Next?
It's probably not the biggest surprise
that some of Hollywood's biggest stars also happen to be
exhibitionists (see
Vanessa
Hudgens—and quite a lot of her, as it turns out).
But on the heels of news that no less
an authority than the FBI met with the clothes-eschewing starlet to
investigate her latest scandalous
nude
photo leak, several more names have emerged as possible targets
of the hacking ring.
Fifty names, to be precise. All
female. And all of whom are no doubt shaking in their Louboutins at
the prospect of becoming the next viral (and let's face it, in all
likelihood naked) victim.
(Related) Maybe the hacking is just
part of wholesale emails for sale?
New
emails found in News of the World hacking scandal
''MANY tens of thousands'' of documents
and emails that might be evidence of phone hacking have been found by
the publisher of the now-defunct News of the World,
Britain's High Court has been told.
The lawyer for News Group Newspapers,
which had been ordered to search its internal mail system for any
evidence of hacking of a list of public figures, said: ''Two very
large new caches of documents have been [found] which
the current management were unaware of.'' [That would be the
Management in place after the business was shut down and everyone was
fired? Bob]
The cost of Data Breaches. OR “How
not to win friends...”
Uni
hackers spoil exam
HACKERS from within the University of
Tasmania have breached online exam security, leaving 600 nursing
students without vital test results.
Angry students will be forced to sit a
longer end-of-year exam that will now be worth a greater share of
their final mark.
The closed-book test will now be worth
60 per cent instead of 40 per cent of their final mark for the
compulsory unit.
I had never heard of Missoni, but
apparently it is possible to generate as much excitement with fashion
as with the latest teenage movie heroes or world series tickets going
on sale.
Target’s
Missoni launch: empty racks, crashed website, furious eBay bidding
“Security is as security does” F.
Gump ...and it is much harder to retro-fit security than to design
it in at the beginning.
Slow
learning curve for DHS on infosec
September 14, 2011 by
admin
Aliya Sternstein reports:
Security
weaknesses in the computers that track money for the Homeland
Security Department could lead to a substantial mistake in the
agency’s financial statements, according to a federal audit.
KPMG analysts
hired by the DHS inspector general to assess the department’s
various financial systems for the fiscal year ending Sept. 30, 2010,
found about 160 deficiencies, or inadequate controls,
most
of which — 65 percent — were repeats of the previous year’s
problems. The IG office released a
redacted
version of the April 26 report on Monday.
Among the
information technology inadequacies highlighted: ex-employees
were still able to logon to their accounts and unauthorized outsiders
successfully acquired user passwords from DHS personnel.
Privacy costs sales?
National
Retail Federation opposes Sen. Leahy’s data breach notification
bill
September 14, 2011 by
admin
The National
Retail Federation today voiced concern over data breach legislation
set for consideration by a Senate committee, saying the bill is too
broadly written and would lead to “notice fatigue”
among consumers. [Assuming all retailers have lousy security? Bob]
[...]
French’s
comments came in a letter sent today to members of the Senate
Judiciary Committee. The panel is scheduled to consider S. 1151,
the Personal Data Privacy and Security Act of 2011, sponsored by
Chairman Patrick Leahy, D-Vt., Thursday morning.
The bill would
require businesses to notify customers when “sensitive personally
identifiable information” has been breached, such as in a number of
recent data breach cases targeting retailers along with universities,
government agencies, financial institutions and other businesses.
But French said the bill’s definition of such information “is far
reaching and covers common data items, the disclosure of which in
most cases is inconsequential or does not lead directly to identity
theft.” In one example, the breach of a customer’s name, address
and date of birth would be deemed sensitive even though that
combination of items alone “provides very little risk of leading to
identity theft.”
What is there about “It’s not just
about ID theft” that the NRF refuses to acknowledge?
Didn't take long for this brilliant
idea to go south...
AU:
Westfield Bondi caught in ‘find my car’ privacy flap
Less than one week
after Ben Grubb
reported
privacy concerns or the potential for abuse of a new mobile app,
he reports that there’s been a breach:
Westfield’s new
mobile app has been caught leaking customers’ car number plate data
on to the public internet, allowing for “anyone with the knowhow”
to monitor when cars entered and exited its Bondi Junction shopping
centre car park.
Sydney software
architect Troy Hunt discovered the leak and
posted
about it on his blog yesterday, saying the hole could
have potentially been used by stalkers, a suspicious husband tracking
his wife, an aggrieved driver holding a grudge from a nearby road
rage incident and a car thief with their eye on a particular vehicle.
Shortly after his
blog was posted Westfield and the developer of the app’s
technology,
Park
Assist, closed the hole.
I don't think this is how it's supposed
to work. But then, Texas is “a whole other country”
(Update)
EPISD Lawyer: District Is Not Legally Liable For The Hacking
September 14, 2011 by
admin
Gaby Loria reports:
El Paso
Independent School District trustees heard from concerned employees
and parents at a Tuesday evening board meeting regarding the
hacking
situation that put more than 70,000 students and employees at
risk for identity theft.
[...]
The district
alerted the community about the breach the day it found out about it
and negotiated a deal with a credit monitoring company to offer a 50
percent discount on anti-identity-theft services.
[...]
The school board’s
attorney, Anthony Safi, explained the district is not
legally liable for the hacking and is therefore limited in
the options it can offer the community. “The district does not
have any liability for what occurred due to the
doctrine of governmental immunity,” Safi said. “Because
there is no liability, to pay (for services) could very well be
considered a gift of public funds, which is prohibited.”
No liability? Did the Veterans
Administration have no liability for the incident involving 26.5
millions’ veterans data or did they wind up having to compensate
people for it in a huge settlement?
And if there is no liability under a
theory of governmental immunity, then what recourse is there for
individuals who now have incurred out-of-pocket expenses for
something that they had no responsibility for?
(Related) I don't think government
immunity even came up in this one...
Court:
FERPA Doesn’t Shield Settlement Over Student Strip-Search Lawsuit
Matthew Heller writes:
After winning a
public records lawsuit, On Point has learned that an Arizona
school district paid a $250,000 settlement to a former student who
was illegally strip-searched by school officials looking for
prescription drugs.
An Arizona judge
recently ordered the Safford Unified School District to produce the
settlement
agreement, finding that the privacy interest of the former
student, Savana Redding, “is minimal when weighed against the
greater public interest for transparency in the expenditure of public
funds by the district.”
I can remember a day when lawyers knew
very little about technology... Oh wait, that day was today.
September 14, 2011
University
of Victoria Law Student Technology Survey 2011
Via Rich McCue:
UVic
Law Student Technology Survey 2011 - "In addition to the
technology questions we’ve been asking UVic Law students over the
past nine years, we decided for the second year in a row to ask some
extra questions about the mobile technology that students are
arriving at Law School equipped with. This survey was completed by
139 incoming and transferring law students, which is a strong 90%
plus response rate. Executive Summary:
84% of incoming law students
own “Smart
Phones” that can browse the internet (up dramatically from
50% last year), with 42% of the total being iPhones, 13% Android and
27% Blackberry’s.
19% of students own tablet devices
or ebook readers.
98% of students own laptops,
and 16% own both a laptop and a desktop computer.
50% of student laptops are Mac’s,
up from 44% last year.
The average laptop price stayed
basically the same as last year at $1,186, which is down from $1400
in 2007, and from $2,100 in 2004.
The students’ average typing
speed was was 60 wpm. [Impressive, since I don't think they teach
typing any more... Do they? Bob]
72% of all students bring their
laptops to school almost every day.
55% of students use
Gmail
as their primary email account (up from 49% last year), 9% use
UVic
email and 22%
Hotmail.
60% of students identified MS Word
as their favorite tool for collaborative document editing (down from
67%). 30% favor
Google Docs
(up from 27%) and 2%
OpenOffice.
58% of students report backing
up their primary computer on a regular basis. 60% of those
backing up do so to an external hard drive and 25% to a cloud
storage solution.
97% of students use Facebook
(up from 91%) and 92% (up from 80%) would like to see law school
events and activities published on Facebook as well as through the
online faculty calendar
