So now the question
becomes, are the UDIDs real? If so, where did they come from?
Apple:
We Didn’t Give FBI Any Device IDs
September 5, 2012 by admin
John Paczkowski got a statement from
Apple, denying that they provided the FBI with the database of device
IDs:
“The FBI has not
requested this information from Apple, nor have we provided it to the
FBI or any organization. Additionally, with iOS 6 we introduced a
new set of APIs meant to replace the use of the UDID and will soon be
banning the use of UDID,” Apple spokeswoman Natalie Kerris told
AllThingsD.
Read more on AllThingsD.
So now the FBI has denied the data were
in their possession, and Apple has denied providing it to the FBI.
Absent any proof from AntiSec that they obtained it from an FBI
notebook, it seems that they did obtain a database of real data, but
I remain unconvinced as to where/how they obtained it. Some people
are encouraging users who find their device IDs in the data dump to
compile a list of apps they’ve used so that perhaps, a common
culprit can be identified. Or perhaps the individuals who acquired
the data will provide more evidence as to where they obtained it.
Yes, the FBI could be lying. Yes, Apple could be lying. Hell,
everyone could be lying, but we appear to have a real
database and we don’t know who was in possession of it –
or even how many business, agencies, or individuals may be in
possession of it. Not a comforting situation.
Another fake or are we in for some
election year amusement?
A federal investigation has been
launched after hackers
claimed to have stolen Mitt Romney’s tax returns. The hackers
have given Romney until September 28th to pay $1 million in bitcoins
or they say they will release the returns. From the article: "The
claim was made in a post on the Pastebin site on Sunday that alleged
that Romney's federal tax returns were taken from the offices of
PriceWaterhouse Coopers in Frankin, Tenn., on August 25 by someone
who snuck into the building and made copies of the document.
[Unlikely? Bob] The message author threatened to release
the files publicly on September 28 and said copies of the files had
been given to Democratic and Republican leaders in that county.
Democrats have made Romney's refusal to release his tax returns a key
point in their criticism that he is not in touch with working class
voters."
All I ask is 10%...
Cybercrime
costs U.S. consumers $20.7 billion
U.S. consumers lost $20.7 billion to
cybercrime over the past 12 months, with 71 million Americans falling
victim to online perps, according to new research.
Meanwhile, worldwide losses resulting
from cybercrime including malware attacks and phishing hit $110
billion between July 2011 and the end of July 2012, a report by
security
company Symantec (PDF) has found.
At what point must we apply the rules
of war? If the CIA can do this can the DHS? Would they use one to
intercept another 9/11 plane?
29
Dead in 8 Days as U.S. Puts Yemen Drone War in Overdrive
29 dead in a little over a week. Nearly
200 gone this year. The White House is stepping up its campaign of
drone attacks in Yemen, with four strikes in eight days. And not
even the slaying of 10 civilians over the weekend seems to have
slowed the pace in the United States’ secretive, undeclared war.
At this week’s Democratic National
Convention in Charlotte, you’ll hear lots
of talk about the Obama administration’s pursuit of al-Qaida
and its allies — including, of course, the raid that ultimately
took out Osama bin Laden. But the hottest battlefield in this
worldwide conflict isn’t likely to receive much attention. It’s
a shame, because the fight in Yemen is one that demands discussion.
Not only does the White House consider al-Qaida in the Arabian
Peninsula to be the extremist group most likely to strike in the
United States. But the American response to that threat was been
widely questioned by regional experts, who wonder whether U.S. drones
and commandos aren’t being duped into fighting on
one side of a civil war.
For my Ethical Hackers. Your task: do
the same thing remotely
Widely
used fingerprint reader exposes Windows passwords in seconds
September 5, 2012 by admin
Dan Goodin reports:
Fingerprint-reading
software preinstalled on laptops sold by Dell, Sony, and at least 14
other PC makers contains a serious weakness that makes
it trivial for hackers with physical control of the machine to
quickly recover account passwords, security researchers
said.
The UPEK
Protector Suite, which was acquired
by Melbourne, Florida-based Authentec two years ago, is marketed
as a secure means for logging into Windows computers using an owner’s
unique fingerprint, rather than a user-memorized password. In
reality, using the software makes users lesssecure than they
otherwise would be. When activated, the software writes Windows
account passwords to the registry and encrypts them with a key that
is easy for hackers to retrieve. Once the key has been acquired, it
takes seconds to decrypt the password.
Read more on Ars
Technica.
(Related) A fingerprint replacement
and another collection of biometric data?
"CNet reports that Google was
awarded
a patent yesterday for logging into a computing device using face
recognition (8,261,090).
'In order for the technology to work, Google's patent requires a
camera that can identify a person's face. If that face matches a
"predetermined identity," then the person is logged into
the respective device. If multiple people want to access a computer,
the next person would get in front of the camera, and the device's
software would automatically transition to the new user's profile.
... Interestingly, Apple last year filed
for a patent related to facial recognition similar to what Google
is describing in its own service. That technology would recognize a
person's face and use that as the authentication needed to access
user profiles or other important information.'"
TSA invents another
“screening technique?” Do they check the vendors too? (Is this
sanitary? Apparently not)
TSA
Moves On From Your Underwear to Your Starbucks
Not content with fondling your privates
and banning liquids from entering the concourse, the Transportation
Security Administration is apparently now also
screening liquids bought by passengers after
they’ve already gone through regular security screening.
A passenger flying from Columbus, Ohio,
to Oakland, California, over the holiday weekend captured
the practice on video while he was sitting with other
passengers in the airport’s embarkment lounge waiting to board
their flight.
As the unidentified passenger points
out in commentary posted with his video to YouTube, the liquid
testing is being done “well beyond the security check” and on
liquids that passengers have purchased inside the security perimeter
after they already passed through security screening and threw out
any drinks they might have brought with them to the airport.
… He concludes his post by asking,
“Whats next…perhaps the TSA will come to your home prior to your
drive to the airport? The police state of the US is OUT OF CONTROL!”
But the TSA says the
practice isn’t new — it’s been going on since 2007 —
and is part of random screening techniques designed to catch liquid
explosives that might slip through initial screening.
Changing the rules...
U.S.
Consumer Groups Endorse Proposed European Privacy Law
September 5, 2012 by Dissent
From EPIC.org:
In a letter
to members of the European Parliament, over twenty U.S. consumer
organizations expressed support for the new European data
protection law. The coalition, including Consumers Union,
Consumer Federation of America, and Public Citizen, said that the
proposed regulation “provides important new protections for the
privacy and security of consumers.” The groups also explained that
the European effort will raise privacy standards for consumers in
other parts of the world. The European Union privacy regulation is a
comprehensive update of the 1995
EU Data Protection Directive and adopts
innovative new approaches to privacy protection, such as “Privacy
by Design.” BEUC, the association of European consumer
groups, has also expressed support
for the new law. For more information, see EPIC:
EU Data Protection Directive
Plain sight? Digital
sight?
Police
seizure of text messages violated 4th Amendment, judge rules
September 5, 2012 by Dissent
Jon Brodkin reports:
At 6:08am, on
October 4, 2009, Trisha Oliver frantically called 911 from her
apartment in Cranston, Rhode Island when her six-year-old son, Marco
Nieves, stopped breathing. The Fire Department took Marco to Hasbro
Children’s Hospital, where he was found to be in full cardiac
arrest. He died 11 hours later.
By 6:20am, Sgt.
Michael Kite of the Cranston Police Department had arrived at the
apartment, where he found Oliver, her boyfriend Michael Patino, and
their 14-month-old daughter, Jazlyn Oliver. Kite observed a couple
of stripped beds and linens on the floor, a trash can with vomit
inside it, dark brown vomit in a toilet, and, crucially, a cell phone
on the kitchen counter. Kite picked up the cell phone, and it was at
that point—in the just-released opinion of a Rhode Island state
court—that police proceeded to mangle a murder case and violate
Patino’s Fourth Amendment rights by viewing text messages without a
warrant.
Read more on Ars
Technica.
Data Mining for teaching
evaluation? Probably a few privacy questions here too.
September 04, 2012
Big
Data for Education: Data Mining, Data Analytics, and Web Dashboards
- "In this report, I examine the potential for improved research, evaluation, and accountability through data mining, data analytics, and web dashboards. So-called “big data” make it possible to mine learning information for insights regarding student performance and learning approaches. 1 Rather than rely on periodic test performance, instructors can analyze what students know and what techniques are most effective for each pupil. By focusing on data analytics, teachers can study learning in far more nuanced ways. 2 Online tools enable evaluation of a much wider range of student actions, such as how long they devote to readings, where they get electronic resources, and how quickly they master key concepts."
Does Social Media document
emotional distress?
Plaintiff
has to turn over emotional social media content in employment lawsuit
September 5, 2012 by Dissent
Evan Brown writes:
Plaintiff sued her
former employer for discrimination and emotional distress. In
discovery, defendant employer sought from plaintiff all of her social
media content that revealed her “emotion, feeling, or mental
state,” or related to “events that could be reasonably expected
to produce a significant emotion, feeling, or mental state.”
The case is
Robinson v. Jones Lang LaSalle Americas, Inc., 2012 WL 3763545
(D.Or. August 29, 2012), and the outcome is no surprise at this
point. If you make a claim in court, expect the
defendant’s lawyers to seek your social media content in discovery.
Read more on InternetCases.
This is difficult to
program.
The
Algorithmic Copyright Cops: Streaming Video’s Robotic Overlords
As live streaming video surges in
popularity, so are copyright “bots” — automated systems that
match content against a database of reference files of copyrighted
material. These systems can block streaming video in real time,
while it is still being broadcast, leading to potentially worrying
implications for freedom of speech.
On Tuesday, some visitors trying to get
to the livestream of Michelle Obama’s widely lauded speech at the
Democratic National Convention on Tuesday were met with a
bizarre notice on YouTube, which said that the speech had been
blocked on copyright grounds.
On Sunday, a livestream
of the Hugo Awards — the sci-fi and fantasy version of the
Oscars — was blocked on Ustream,
moments before Neil Gaiman’s highly anticipated acceptance speech.
Apparently, Ustream’s service detected that the awards were showing
copyrighted film clips, and had no way to know that
the awards ceremony had gotten permission to use them.
Last month, footage
from NASA’s triumphant Curiosity rover landing was blocked
numerous times on YouTube, despite being in the
public domain, because several companies — such as
Scripps Local News — claimed copyright on the material.
For my programming
students
FTC
Releases Mobile App Guidance
September 5, 2012 by Dissent
Andy Serwin writes:
The FTC has been
focused on mobile apps and the legal issues they raise, and that
focus continues to be shown by the most recent guidance from the FTC.
Marketing
Your Mobile App: Get it Right From the Start, offers guidance to
app developers regarding what the FTC believes should
be done to protect consumers in the mobile world.
The FTC clearly is
speaking to smaller, as well as larger companies that use the mobile
platforms to create apps, as the FTC clearly states up front its view
that the guidance, and the relevant laws, are equally applicable to
small and large companies.
Read more on The
Lares Institute.
A way to bug my students
24/7? I could record phrases like “Get to work!” “Do your
homework!” and the ever popular “Stop that!” and program them
to repeat a various times...
… Zello Walkie Talkie is a free to
use smartphone app for Android, BlackBerry, iOS devices, and Windows
computers. Being a cross-platform app, Zello will enable group
conversation between different mobile and computer users.
For my students
Tuesday, September 4, 2012
Evernote
is currently my favorite service for
note-taking and bookmarking. I
have Evernote installed on my iPad, my Android Tablets, my phone, my
computers, and I have the Evernote web clipper installed in all of my
browsers. Because of Evernote's versatility I highly recommend it to
anyone looking for a good note-taking and bookmarking tool. One
question that I often hear from first-time Evernote users is, there's
so many options, where do I start? Make
Use Of has just
released a new guide that will answer that question and many more.
How
To Use Evernote, The Missing Manual
is a free
34 page guide to using Evernote. The guide will help you use
Evernote in your web browser, on your iPad, on your Android tablet,
on your phone, and on your desktop. The guide is available to
download as a PDF or EPub.
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