Friday, January 13, 2012


I hope these guys don't offer a Computer Security degree...
CA: Viruses stole City College of San Francisco data for over a decade before being detected
January 13, 2012 by admin
Nanette Asimov reports:
Personal banking information and other data from perhaps tens of thousands of students, faculty and administrators at City College of San Francisco have been stolen in what is being called “an infestation” of computer viruses with origins in criminal networks in Russia, China and other countries, The Chronicle has learned.
At work for more than a decade, the viruses were detected a few days after Thanksgiving, when the college’s data security monitoring service detected an unusual pattern of computer traffic, flagging trouble.
[From the article:
For now, it's still going on. So far, no cases of identify theft have been linked to the breach. That may change as the investigation continues, and college officials said they might need to bring in the FBI.
The college's payroll, admissions and accounting systems have yet to be analyzed for the viruses.
… It's likely that personal computers belonging to anyone who used a flash drive during the past decade to carry information home were also affected.
"These viruses are shining a light on years of (security) neglect." [Ya think? I'd also be interested in determining what change finally caught this virus Bob]
… Places like City College of San Francisco, where officials have done little to protect against cyber attacks over the years, are especially vulnerable, Hotchkiss said. He arrived at City College in July 2010, and was astonished to learn how porous its computer systems have been.
"When I found out they hadn't changed passwords in over 10 years, I hit the roof," said the tech expert, who ordered them all changed last summer.


Interesting because it is local and because it is the B school that did the study. Someone is thinking! (I'm gonna guess that dating sites were studied because porn sites have been done too often.)
Some dating websites do not remove GPS data from photos
January 13, 2012 by Dissent
While the majority of dating websites do a good job of managing the privacy of their users, a class research project at the University of Colorado Boulder’s Leeds School of Business found that 21 of 90 dating websites the class examined did not properly remove location data from pictures uploaded by their users.
Read more on PhysOrg.com
[From the article:
A complete list of all the websites examined by the class is available at http://leeds.colorado.edu/im/


I suspect that someone, somewhere has done a study to determine how many cameras are required to cover a given area. On the other hand, if they could get cameras for free from the equivalent of DHS, why not?
UK: Use of CCTV in Welsh schools: FOI request shows lack of compliance with fair processing and FOI
January 12, 2012 by Dissent
It may have sneaked under the radar in and around Xmas but an FOI request in Wales to schools produced some alarming stats.
There are at least 2,840 cameras in schools across Wales, one school in Cardiff has 40 cameras for around 190 pupils. Just over a third of all the schools in Wales responded to the Freedom of Information Act request asking about CCTV use on their premises. That means that two thirds don’t do CCTV or worse than that they didn‘t realise they had to reply to FOI requests.
Read more on Act Now Training

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