It's not always people who don't know
any better...
California
DOJ notifies those affected by a hack of a retired agent’s email
accounts
May 15, 2012 by admin
Have I mentioned how valuable it is
when states post breach notices online? A reader points me to a new
addition to California’s security notices page from the DOJ’s
Computer and Technology Crime High-Tech Response Team (C.A.T.C.H.).
The incident they are reporting was a hack
by those affiliated with Anonymous in 2011:
In November 2011,
hackers affiliated with the group Anonymous accessed and released
private email accounts belonging to a retired agent for the
Department of Justice who was a member of the Computer and Technology
Crime High-Tech Response Team (CATCH). CATCH is a multi-agency task
force that was formed to apprehend and prosecute criminals who use
technology to prey on the citizens of San Diego, Imperial Valley, and
Riverside Counties. Some of emails that the hackers released
included data that contained your personal information including, but
not limited to, your name, address, date of birth, and Social
Security number (SSN).
Others received a letter that began:
In November 2011,
hackers affiliated with the group Anonymous accessed and released
private email accounts belonging to a retired agent from the
Department of Justice who was a member of the Computer and Technology
Crime High-Tech Response Team (CATCH). CATCH is a multi-agency task
force that was formed to apprehend and prosecute all criminals who
use technology to prey on the citizens of San Diego, Imperial Valley,
and Riverside Counties. Some of the emails the hackers released
included closed identity theft case files that contained some of your
personal information including, but not limited to, your name,
financial account information or credit card number, and possibly
your Social Security number.
The letter to those in the second group
also contained the following statement:
In addition,
although it appears that the identity theft case file in which your
information was contained has been closed, you may want to confirm
that your financial account has been closed. If it has not, we
suggest that you immediately contact the financial institution and
close your account. Tell them that your account may have been
compromised, and ask that they report it as “closed at customer
request.” If you want to open a new account, ask them to give you
a PIN or password. This will help control access to the account.
No explanation was provided as to why
there was such a delay between the incident and the notification
letters to individuals. Did they delay because it took them time to
figure out who had data exposed? Did they delay so that the
disclosure would not interfere with any criminal investigation? If
people’s accounts were exposed, I hope they contacted them all
promptly by phone if not by letter.
Keep in mind that entities only have to
file these breach reports with California if the breach affected more
than 500 individuals.
The 'gift card' that keeps on giving.
Another case of “further investigation” significantly increasing
the scope of the breach.
Global
Payments Breach Fueled Prepaid Card Fraud
… According to Fuller, Higgins said
the fraudsters were coming to the stores to buy low-denomination
Safeway branded prepaid cards, and then encoding debit card accounts
issued by USB onto the magnetic stripe on the backs of the prepaid
cards. The thieves then used those cards to purchase additional
prepaid cards with much higher values, which were then used to buy
electronics and other high-priced goods from other retailers.
… Initial
alerts about the breach from Visa and MasterCard stated that the
breach at Global Payments compromised both Track 1 and Track 2 data
from affected card accounts, meaning thieves could produce
counterfeit versions of the cards and possibly commit other acts of
identity theft against cardholders. Global Payments claims that only
Track 2 data was taken, and that cardholder names, addresses and
other data were not obtained by the criminals.
Yet, as USB’s story shows, the data
on Track 2 alone was enough for the crooks to encode the card number
and expiration date onto any cards equipped with a magnetic stripe.
The cards could then be used at any merchant that accepts signature
debit — transactions that do not require the cardholder to enter
his or her PIN.
Visa and MasterCard each have revoked
their certification of Global Payments as a compliant card processor.
Global Payments said it is still investigating the cause and extent
of the incident. The company maintains that fewer than 1.5 million
card accounts were stolen, but some in the industry now believe more
than 7 million card accounts may have been compromised.
Meanwhile, the card associations keep broadening the window of time
in which hackers likely had access to the processor’s network.
Initially, Visa and MasterCard said the breach window at Global
Payments was between January and February 2012, but in the latest
round of alerts sent to banks affected by the breach, the card brands
warned that the breach dates
back to at least early June 2011.
Any techie-stalker knows this. You can
use the cameras to find and follow anyone. Or, to remove your self
from the picture – how do you think I appear to move like the wind?
Popular
Surveillance Cameras Open to Hackers, Researcher Says
In a world where security cameras are
nearly as ubiquitous as light fixtures, someone is always watching
you.
But the watcher might not always be who
you think it is.
Three of the most popular brands of
closed-circuit surveillance cameras are sold with remote internet
access enabled by default, and with weak password security — a
classic recipe for security failure that could allow hackers to
remotely tap into the video feeds, according to new research.
The cameras, used by banks, retailers,
hotels, hospitals and corporations, are often configured insecurely —
thanks to these manufacturer default settings, according to
researcher Justin Cacak, senior security engineer at Gotham
Digital Science. As a result, he says, attackers can seize
control of the systems to view live footage, archived footage or
control the direction and zoom of cameras that are adjustable.
We should have seen this one coming...
Now my car can rat me out to billboards pointing to every donut shop
in Denver.
OnStar
Files Patents for Minority
Report-Style
Billboards
Two weeks ago, a patent filing by
General Motors was uncovered
that proposed using data collected from its OnStar service to tailor
public advertisements to individual drivers.
Like the billboards Tom Cruise
encountered in Minority Report, the OnStar-linked ads would
be tailored to passing motorists based on personal information they’d
shared with their telematics service. Perusing the patent’s text,
nightmare scenarios flooded our thoughts. Kids in the backseat? Be
prepared to see ads for Happy Meals and nearby amusement parks.
Headed to the doctor’s office? A friendly reminder to schedule a
colonoscopy, in flashing 40-foot letters.
Makes you think about sharing
information at sea.
Pentagon
Wants Web Apps to Stop Piracy, for Some Reason
The Navy’s far-out research wing
thinks it’s found a way to cut down on the scourge of maritime
piracy: apps. Commence the face-palming.
The Office of Naval Research announced
on Monday that it’s awarding $1 million in grants to develop a
suite of web applications to “analyze data and other information to
combat pirates, drug smugglers, arms traffickers, illegal fishermen
and other nefarious groups.”
Apparently there are a lot more
“security events” than TSA reports.
May 14, 2012
TSA's
Efforts To Identify and Track Security Breaches at Our Nation’s
Airports
- "Senator Frank Lautenberg requested an investigation into media reports focused on security breaches at Newark Liberty International Airport, including the contributing factors that led to the security breaches. He requested that we compare the incident rate of breaches at Newark to other airports in the region and comparable airports. He asked us to determine whether corrective action had been taken on the specific security incidents. We determined whether the Transportation Security Administration (TSA) at Newark had more security breaches than at other airports. We also determined whether TSA has an effective mechanism to use the information gathered from individual airports to identify measures that could be used to improve security nationwide."
Interesting concept. If you have a
simple way to excerpt the text, infringement is easier to prove...
McGruber writes with news of a ruling
in a copyright
case brought against Georgia State by several publishers over the
university's electronic reserve system:
"The
Atlanta Journal Constitution is reporting that a federal judge has
ruled
in favor of Georgia State University on 69 of 74 copyright claims
filed by Cambridge University Press, Oxford University Press, and
SAGE Publications. In a 350-page
ruling, Senior U.S. District Judge Orinda Evans found that 'fair
use protected a Georgia State University professor's decision to
allow students to access an excerpt online through the university's
Electronic Reserves System.' While the 69 of the 74 claims were
rejected, the judge also found that five violations did occur 'when
the publisher lost money because a professor had
provided free electronic access to selected chapters in textbooks.'
SAGE Publications prevailed on four of these five claims, while
Oxford University Press won the fifth claim. Cambridge University
Press lost all its claims."
From Inside Higher Ed: "And the
judge also rejected
the publishers' ideas about how to regulate e-reserves — ideas
that many academic librarians said would
be unworkable. At the same time, however, the
judge imposed a strict limit of 10 percent on the volume of a book
that may be covered by fair use (a proportion that would
cover much, but by no means all, of what was in e-reserves at Georgia
State, and probably at many other colleges). And
the judge ruled that publishers may have more claims against college
and university e-reserves if the publishers offer convenient,
reasonably priced systems for getting permission (at a price) to use
book excerpts online. The lack of such systems
today favored Georgia State, but librarians who were anxiously going
through the decision were speculating that some publishers might be
prompted now to create such systems, and to charge as much as the
courts would permit."
(Related) If they can immunize ISPs,
why not me?
"In Finland, the operator of an
open WiFi access point was found
not guilty for copyright infringement allegedly committed over said
access point. The operation of such access points would
have become legally risky were this decided otherwise. Appeal by
the Finnish Anti-Piracy Center is still possible for this district
court ruling."
How to be a Government Twit?
May 14, 2012
Working
the Network: A Manager’s Guide for Using Twitter in Government
Working
the Network: A Manager’s Guide for Using Twitter in Government,
Ines Mergel - Maxwell School of Citizenship and Public Affairs,
Syracuse University. May 14, 2012.
- "As of this writing, the federal government operates over 1,000 Twitter feeds. Federal civilian agencies maintain over 360 Twitter feeds, while the Department of Defense hosts more than 650. In addition to its official English feed, the State Department produces Twitter feeds in Turkish, Farsi, Arabic, Spanish, and French. It is fair to say that the federal government is embracing Twitter as a tool for citizen engagement. But is government realizing the panoply of benefits that a comprehensive understanding of this tool promises? Beyond acting as a broadcasting channel—supplementing the website by promoting press releases or announcing new initiatives—Twitter can help agencies follow public conversations on issues relevant to their organizations."
The new legal specialty: e-State
Planning?
The
Social Media Will: An Expert Guide to Your Digital Afterlife
English teachers rejoice? Probably
best to search several ways to get elusive results.
May 14, 2012
Google
expands punctuation and symbols in search
Google Inside Search - "Punctuation
and symbols in search - Generally, most punctuation
and special characters are ignored in Google Search.
However, we’re expanding our search capabilities to support some
characters that modify search terms and help Google find exactly what
you’re looking for. Here
are some examples from the growing list of popular symbols that are
supported.." [Search Engine Showdown]
This could be extremely handy!
Monday, May 14, 2012
The web is full of webinars, webcasts,
and video lessons of all types. Searching the content of those
videos can be difficult and time-consuming if you can't find the
transcripts of those videos. That's a problem that can be addressed
by using a tool that Stephen
Ransom shared on Twitter this morning.
Talk
Miner is a tool for searching the contents of webinars, webcasts,
and video lectures. Talk Miner searches the slides, images, and text
within videos to take you to the scenes that match your search query.
Watch the video below to learn more about Talk Miner.
For my Intro students...
Hitch
a ride through Google's cloud
Your Gmail box lives somewhere in the
jumble of servers, cables, and hard drives known as the "cloud"
but it often migrates in search of the ideal location.
Google today released an animation
that answers the question: what happens when I press send on
Gmail? The company created the interactive feature called The Story
of Send to highlight the security and relatively low energy footprint
of its data centers. The graphics repeat Google's estimate that its
data centers use 50 percent less energy than a typical data center
and 30 percent of their data center energy is supplied from
renewable sources, including wind and solar.
Free is good, and eventually I'll move
to Windows 7
Get
Laplink PCmover Windows 7 Upgrade Assistant for free
Today
only, in honor of its 29th birthday, Laplink is offering
PCmover Windows 7
Upgrade Assistant absolutely free. It regularly sells for $29.95.
To get the software, click
here, then click the little "Add to cart" box in the
upper-right corner of the free-PCmover banner. Scroll down and click
"Proceed to Cart." Follow the instructions on the
following page.
… If you're an XP user, you can't
do an in-place upgrade -- meaning Windows 7 effectively wipes your
programs and data as part of the installation process. The same is
true if you're moving from a 32-bit version of Vista to 64-bit
Windows 7.
PCmover overcomes that limitation,
packaging up all your programs and data and then restoring them after
Windows 7 finishes installing.
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