e-Xtortion? Isn't the loss of customer
confidence worth more than the EUR 150,000? So they have already
paid the tax...
Hackers
demand EUR150K ‘idiot tax’ from Dexia in return for stolen
customer data
May 2, 2012 by admin
A group claiming
to have hacked a Dexia Bank subsidiary’s database is threatening to
post sensitive customer information unless it receives an “idiot
tax” of EUR150,000 by Friday.
In a pastebin
statement addressed to the media, the unnamed group says it has
“downloaded extensive confidential customer information” from
servers belonging to Elantis, a mortgage and consumer credit unit of
Belgium-based Dexia.
The data – a
sample of which has been posted in the message – apparently
includes loan applications featuring full names, job descriptions, ID
card numbers, contact information and income details.
Read more on Finextra.
The full media statement follows:
Dear members of
the media,
Last week, our
group downloaded extensive confidential customer information from
Elantis’ servers. Elantis is a money lending company which belongs
to renowned Belgian bank, Dexia (Do not bother trying to reach their
website, they disconnected their server after we hacked into it).
In addition to
database tables containing data such as internal login credentials,
we downloaded numerous tables which contain Internet loan
applications, as well as fully-processed applications. Those tables
hold highly-sensitive data such as the applicants’ full names,
their jobs, ID card numbers, contact information and details about
their income.
It is worth
pointing out that this data was left unprotected and unencrypted on
Elantis’ servers.
We contacted Dexia
over the weekend to offer them not to publicly release this data over
the Internet if they agreed to pay us the equivalent of roughly EUR
150,000 before Friday, May 4th. So far they have declined to do so.
While this could
be called ‘blackmail,’ we prefer to think of it as an ’idiot
tax’ for leaving confidential data unprotected on a Web server.
The only question
that remains now is this — After they carelessly treated their
clients’ data, will Dexia act to prevent their clients’ data from
being published online, or is their clients’ confidentiality worth
less to them than EUR 150,000?
Time is running
out.
The hackers involved did not identify
themselves or point to any Twitter accounts.
Update: Loek Essers of
IDG obtained some
additional details on the breach. The bank says it will not pay
blackmail, which is just as well as it seems the hackers didn’t
give them any instructions as to how they were supposed to make the
payment. It may well be that the hackers’ threat was just to call
more attention to the bank’s lack of security for their data, but
just making the threat could add years to any
sentence if/when the hackers are caught.
Same tools different payoff?
Hackers
Threaten University of Pittsburgh with Disclosure of Students’
Personal Info if Demands Are Not Met
May 3, 2012 by admin
Jacob Kleinman reports:
Members of the
hacktivist collective calling itself “Anonymous” are targeting
the University of Pittsburgh, and threatening to release a wealth of
private information regarding the school and its students, if the
University does not “apologize to your students, law enforcement,
and professors on your home page of your domain for a duration of no
less then fifteen days!”
In a three-minute
long video directly addressing the Computer Science (CS) and Law
departments in particular, Anonymous claims to have obtained every
students personal information including passwords, dorm information,
payment and credit information, parent information, coursework and
grades, as well alumni information. According to the video,
Anonymous has deleted the information, which was poorly protected,
from the University’s website, but will post it publicly online if
their demands are not met by Monday, May 6.
Read more on International
Business Times, where you can read the full text of Anonymous’s
statement.
[Video omitted Bob]
Sadly, I think Anonymous has just
played right into the hands of those who would promote CISPA and
broad information sharing by non–government entities with the
federal government. Anonymous is also showing no regard for the
privacy of students who have done nothing wrong but who may have
their details posted online.
The hack is reportedly in response to
the university being involved in the arrest of several supporters of
Anonymous. And while the university might be embarrassed or incur
expenses if the data are all posted online, I suspect there will be a
greater backlash against Anonymous for using the 99% as a mere tool
in their campaign.
The university already caved in to one
demand, dropping a posted reward for information resulting in the
apprehension of party or parties who pranked the university. Will
they cave in to this demand, too?
Interesting. Now I know how to build a
mailing list to advertise Privacy seminars.
Sixth
Circuit dismisses class action over personal information release
May 2, 2012 by Dissent
Jessica M. Karmasek writes:
A federal appeals
court this week upheld the dismissal of a proposed class action
lawsuit over the distribution of personal information from a state’s
motor vehicle records.
Plaintiffs Norma
Wiles, Thomas Wiles, Theresa Gibson and Wanta Evitt, all Kentucky
residents, filed the proposed class action against defendants Ascom
Transport System Inc., Downtown Owensboro Inc., Jones and Wenner
Insurance, Nationwide Debt Recovery Service Inc., Tennessee Valley
Authority and Xerox Corporation in January 2010.
Read more about the case on Legal
Newsline.
[From the article:
The district court ruled in December
2010 that the bulk purchase of such motor vehicle records without a
"specific need for every record" does not violate the DPPA,
and ultimately granted Ascom's motion to dismiss the plaintiffs'
third amended complaint.
Teachers are always enemies, never
friends.
"The New York City Department
of Education has issued rules
covering student-teacher interactions on social networking websites.
Following numerous [Could
be 9, could be 99 percent Bob] inappropriate
relationships between students and teachers that began on social
networking sites, the rules prohibit teachers from communicating with
students using their 'personal' accounts, and requires parental
consent before students can participate in social networking for
educational purposes. The rules also state that teachers
have no expectation of privacy online, and that principals and other
officials will inspect teachers' profiles. Oddly,
the rules do not address communication
involving cell phones, which the Department of
Education's own investigations have shown to be even more
problematic."
More about “reverse engineering”
than copying the code...
"The European Court of Justice
ruled on Wednesday that the functionality of a computer program and
the
programming language it is written in cannot be protected by
copyright. In its ruling on a a case brought by SAS Institute
against World Programming Limited (WPL), the court said that 'the
purchaser of a license for a program is entitled, as a rule, to
observe, study or test its functioning so as to determine
the ideas and principles which underlie that program.'"
I thought we had settled this a while
ago... (The order is included in the article)
Judge:
An IP-Address Doesn’t Identify a Person (or BitTorrent Pirate)
May 3, 2012 by Dissent
Ernesto reports on a federal court
ruling from Eastern District New York:
A landmark ruling
in one of the many mass-BitTorrent lawsuits in the US has suffered a
severe blow to a thus far lucrative business. Among other things,
New York Judge Gary Brown explains in great detail
why an IP-address is not sufficient evidence to identify copyright
infringers. According to the Judge this lack of specific
evidence means that many alleged BitTorrent pirates have been
wrongfully accused by copyright holders.
Read more on TorrentFreak.
[From the article:
Previous judges who handled BitTorrent
cases have made observations
along these lines, but none have been as detailed as New York
Magistrate Judge Gary Brown was in a recent order.
In his recommendation order the Judge
labels mass-BitTorrent lawsuits a “waste of judicial resources.”
For a variety of reasons he recommends other judges to reject
similar cases in the future.
Why didn't they ask for a copy of the
video to improve engine safety? More interested in enforcement of
(really silly) rules than airline safety?
FAA
issues warning to passenger who filmed bird strike
A Delta Air Lines passenger who
admitted using an electronic device last month to videotape a bird
strike minutes after takeoff has been warned by the Federal Aviation
Administration to follow the rules or face a penalty the next time.
Free and accessible.
"Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales
is helping
a UK government bid to make the results of Government
funded research available freely online. The move taps into a
popular protest at the restrictions which academic publishers place
on the availability of research. From the article: 'Almost 11,000
researchers have signed up to a boycott of journals owned by the huge
academic publisher Elsevier. Subscriptions to the thousands of
research journals can cost a big university library millions of
pounds each year – costs that have started to bite as budgets are
squeezed. Harvard University, frustrated by the rising costs of
journal subscriptions, recently encouraged its faculty members to
make their research freely available through open access journals and
to resign from publications that keep articles behind paywalls.'"
Attention publishers? Will
anyone/everyone follow?
Blurb,
The Custom Book Printing Startup, Is Tossing Its Hat Into The E-Book
Ring
Blurb
has had a good amount of success as a disruptive player in the
“traditional” publishing space. The San Francisco-based company,
which lets anyone write and publish a physical book at relatively
affordable prices, has built a profitable business with more than 100
staff and more than a million paying customers since it launched to
the public six
years ago.
… Blurb is expanding into the
e-book space this summer, gradually rolling out a software platform
developed in-house that will allow people to create and distribute
multimedia-enabled digital books.
Geeky (and not-so-geeky) stuff (Each
links to a full article)
10
awesome ways to use a USB flash drive
Tools for the artist...
For my students who already know
everything...
Google Search Education is a website that wants to help
students become better searchers. Aimed at educators,
this site provides lesson plans, video tutorials, and access to live
trainings to help show teachers how to empower their students to use
the tools that Google has to offer and make their search experience
stronger and more valid. A wonderful resource for teachers and
learners of all ages.
One possible direction for education?
EdX:
A Platform for More MOOCs and an Opportunity for More Research about
Teaching and Learning Online
At
a joint press conference today, Harvard University President Drew
Faust and MIT President Susan Hockfield announced a new nonprofit
partnership, edX, that would offer free open online courses.
…
But the east coast-west coast and/or the elite university rivalries
aren’t really the most interesting thing about the edX news.
Nor is it that Harvard says that it
will, just as MITx does, offer certification (but no college credits)
to those who complete the class.
Nor is the most interesting thing in
today’s news that we’re seeing institutions of higher ed,
reknowned for the glacial pace of their responsiveness and
transformation, move quickly – really really quickly – to embrace
MOOCs. Add to the list of MIT, Stanford, and Harvard are other US
universities too – the University of Pennsylvania, Princeton, and
the University of Michigan, now all offering courses via the Coursera
or the MITx platform, as well as open online courses at other
universities, including those offered at the University of Mary
Washington and the University of Regina.)
…
As
the MITx platform will be open source, universities will be able to
offer MOOCs on it without having to pay or license the similar
software from one of these other new for-profit education startups.
…
The edX platform will enable the study of which teaching methods
and tools are most successful. The findings of this research will be
used to inform how faculty use technology in their teaching, which
will enhance the experience for students on campus and for the
millions expected to take advantage of these new online offerings.”
Dilbert explains why Apps sell so well.
(For your Privacy Cartoon collection)
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