Somehow this strikes me as a really,
really bad idea. If it's a lie, what little credibility they had is
gone. If it's true, they just made a final, perhaps fatal error. Is
there an up-side?
When HackRead reported, #OpIsrael:
Mossad Website breached, Personal Details of over 30,000 Agents
Leaked by Anonymous, my first thought was that I wished they
didn’t just uncritically repeat claims.
Did they examine the database/spread
sheets before repeating tweets and claims? I did a random check of
the database, and frankly, I find it extremely unlikely that the
hackers obtained any information on Mossad agents, much less
all their agents as well as government officials and politicians.
The data seem to include the names,
addresses, phone and fax numbers, ID numbers, and email addresses of
approximately 35,000 individuals. Some of the individuals in the
database have multiple entries. Many seem to be merchants or others
with no connection to the government at all.
Maybe some of the data are from people
applying to become part of Mossad, but even that is a stretch when
you start Googling some of the individuals in the database.
Think what you want of Mossad’s
actions, but they are not stupid. They’ve known that they are
targets, and not just by Anonymous or hacker groups. Covert
operatives’ names and contact details thrown into a large database
connected to the Internet? Highly unlikely. So unless
someone has some proof that this database really has data on Mossad
agents, I remain skeptical, to say the least.
I’ve emailed the Prime Minister’s
Office on behalf of the Open Security Foundation to ask for their
response to the claimed hack and leak. If I ever get an answer, I’ll
post it.
Update: I’m not the
only one who doesn’t accept claims about what the data represents.
See this
article and this
one. Blog headline now revised.
Simple question: Is it your data or the
doctor's?
World’s
Health Data Patiently Awaits Inevitable Hack
Eugene Vasserman is uneasy about his
digital pedometer. The company that makes the thing doesn’t know
his name, age, or gender, but it does track his every step and his
location. “They know where I sleep. They know my address,” says
the Kansas State University cybersecurity and privacy researcher.
Some might think he’s paranoid. But
he hasn’t stopped using the device. It’s just that he sees the
worst-case scenario — and he’s adamant that the rest of us should
see it too. Once health data leaves your immediate possession, he
explains, it’s out of your control.
… What we do know is that security
breaches surrounding healthcare information have been on
the rise, according to the Ponemon Institute. And according to
the The Washington Post, there are “gaping
security holes” in many of the systems that hold our healthcare
data.
(Related) We're inventing new ways to
monitor our patients health...
This
Pill Bottle Is a Smartphone Wannabe
The technologies that made you fall
in love with your iPhone or Galaxy are now making their way into
pill bottles.
To help patients take their medications
on time, AdhereTech is remaking that ubiquitous orange bottle and
giving it a high-tech facelift with the addition of lights, speakers,
a 45-day-long battery, 3G and LTE capabilities, and sensors that
measure humidity and how many pills are left in the bottle.
“We’ve built cellphone technology
into the bottle,” said Josh Stein, the CEO of the New York
City-based startup. “The bottle [will be] constantly connected to
the cloud, just like a cell phone. Patients don’t have to link it
to WiFi or Bluetooth. They don’t have to set it up in any way.”
… Down the line, if users want to
merge their AdhereTech data with other apps or with their activity,
glucose or blood pressure monitors, they’ll be able to thanks to
AdhereTech’s open API. “It’s very important to us for patients
to own their personal adherence data,” Stein says. “We want
to be the pill bottle that plugs into other systems and integrates
with all these other apps.”
My students are always amazed at how
little data it takes...
Jason Palmer reports on a new study,
“Unique in the Crowd: The privacy bounds of human mobility:”
Individuals can be
uniquely identified with just four points of location data, a study
of mobile phone records shows.
Countless mobile
applications make use of location data, and such information is
increasingly used to tailor both services for users and
advertisements.
But a study in
Scientific Reports warns that human mobility patterns are unique
identifiers, even when data are scarce.
Read more on BBC.
Their link to the study doesn’t work for me, but you can access
the full study here.
Reference:
Unique in the Crowd: The privacy bounds of human
mobility Yves-Alexandre de Montjoye, César A. Hidalgo, Michel
Verleysen & Vincent D. Blondel; Scientific Reports 3, Article
number: 1376 doi:10.1038/srep01376 Received 01 October 2012 Accepted
04 February 2013 Published 25 March 2013
For years, SciFi has assumed all
journalists will be using drones. Just another tool for the
paparazzi...
These days the future of journalism may
look cloudy. But one thing about the future of the business is clear,
according to ABC News. It will be full of drones.
In fact, the emergence of drone
journalism is expected to become such a mainstay of the media
industry in the next few years that “undergraduate journalism
students at the University of Missouri Journalism School, in
Columbia, Mo., are now taking courses on how to use drones to report
stories,” ABC News reported
March 22.
Someone is practicing law without a
brain. A wise judge would recommend remedial law school...
Jessica Masulli Reyes reports that
Vernon Township in New Jersey is suing the
recipients of an inadequately redacted email attachment with town
employees’ Social Security numbers. They are also reportedly suing
the newspaper that published a story about the breach.
Riiiiight….
Reyes writes:
The lawsuit, filed
by Kevin Kelly in state Superior Court in Newton on Friday, is
seeking financial compensation, as well as stopping the individuals —
Sally Rinker, Jesse Wolosky, Curious George (anonymous name), Lynn
Van Gorder and Sandra Ooms — from disseminating the confidential
information.
The lawsuit stems
from an incident reported in the New Jersey Herald on Friday about
these individuals who made Open Public Records Act requests to the
township for payroll information. Municipal Clerk Sue Nelson
responded by sending an attachment that she believed redacted the
Social Security numbers and other personal information, but those
hidden columns in the document were still visible.
The town alleges that viewing all
columns and data on a spreadsheet sent them to is an “intentional
invasion of (employee’s) privacy and constitutional rights.” So
if you open a file the government sends you, you’re intentionally
invading privacy and constitutional rights? I don’t think so.
The judge was not convinced and
declined to issue the order sought by the township, although he noted
that anyone misusing the information might be subject to criminal
penalties and/or civil damages.
Herald Publisher
Jack Findley said, “I think that by trying to place the blame on
the recipients of these documents, Kevin Kelly’s lawsuit is
entirely frivolous. He should explain on what grounds he is pursuing
this lawsuit which does nothing but waste the taxpayers’ money and
township resources. If Kelly is trying to divert attention away
from himself, it looks like his tactic backfired.”
Jesse Wolosky and
Sally Rinker are also arguing that the blame should instead be placed
on Vernon, rather than on those who received the documents under
OPRA.
Indeed.
Read more on The
New Jersey Herald.
Tools for Stalkers or your local
surveillance hobbyist.
There are certain situations in which
you would want to take pictures through your phone discreetly. But
even if you turn your phone to silent and disable its flash, anybody
who is looking at your phone’s screen will be able to tell that you
are taking a picture. Offering a solution to that is a phone app
called Sneaky Cam.
Sneaky Cam is a free to use phone
application that is compatible with Android devices.
… The camera’s preview screen can
be replaced by a screen of your choosing, and the preview can be set
at a transparency level so you can see what you are photographing.
You can also opt to get a notification each time a photograph has
been successfully taken.
Similar tool: Gallery
Private.
For my amusement...
… The Utah
legislature has passed
a law that would create a “cloud-based student achievement
‘backpack,”” allowing students and parents to access
their education records from their entire school career, all in one
place. [Making hacking easier by placing all their eggs in one
basket. Bob] Utah has earmarked $250,000 for this — a
budget and a process to keep an eye on, particularly in light of the
$100,000,000 that the Gates Foundation has poured into its student
data infrastructure, InBloom.
Because I like lists (and I'm cheap)
Attention Trekies! It's couch potato
time!
Star Trek fans, you’re looking at the
best week of your lives. To celebrate William
Shatner’s birthday on March 22nd, Hulu has made every episode
of every Star Trek series available for free. Yes, you heard right,
every episode of The Original Series, The Next Generation, Deep Space
Nine, Voyager and Enterprise is now free on Hulu, until the end of
March.
According to a tally made by
TheNextWeb,
this makes a total of 693 episodes of Star Trek from 30 different
seasons, which means you’d have to watch over 69 episodes per day
to make it before April 1st.
(Related) Of course, if you can start
multiple sessions on each of your devices, you could grab everything
in an hour or so...
No comments:
Post a Comment