Has
anyone asked if there were any websites that “could not” be
hacked by a 12-year-old? Were any CIOs or even Computer Security
managers fired?
12-year-old
Canadian boy admits to hacking police and government sites for
Anonymous
… The boy pleaded
guilty to three charges related to hacking websites that included
those of Montreal police, the Quebec Institute of Public Health, the
Chilean government and some non-public sites.
The attacks took some
of the sites offline for up to two days, at what police estimated as
a cost of $60,000 in damages. A more detailed report will be handed
over next month when the boy is sentenced, according to the Toronto
Sun.
Local
interest. What made them look at Muhtorov? Nothing. So they looked
at everyone in Colorado and waited for something “interresting”
to pop up?
Robert Barnes and Ellen
Nakashima report:
The
Justice Department on Friday informed a terrorism suspect in Colorado
that it intends to use evidence against him gathered through the
government’s warrantless surveillance program, a move that will
likely lead to a constitutional challenge to the law.
It
is the first time the government has informed a criminal defendant
that it intends to use “information obtained or derived from
acquisition of foreign intelligence information conducted pursuant to
the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act.”
Read more on Washington
Post.
[From
the article:
The notification came
in the government’s case against Jamshid Muhtorov, a refugee from
Uzbekistan who lives in Aurora, Colo. He was charged in 2012 with
giving material aid to the Islamic Jihad Union, and he and another
man were suspected of trying to participate in a terrorist attack
planned by the group.
(Related)
It's only a concern if you rely on others to do your encryption.
You use an encrypted service to mask your encrypted messages, which
would stand out on an unencrypted service.
There’s a great
write-up by Jennifer Granick on the Lavabit case and its implications
for all of us. Do read it on JustSecurity.org.
(Related)
Lessons learned when the “black helicopters” drop in on
you? READ THIS ARTICLE
Mega
CEO: Forget anonymous e-mail. Think privacy (Q&A)
The future of secure,
private e-mail doesn't lie in Silicon Valley, or Silicon Alley, or
even in the Northern Hemisphere, but in New Zealand.
At least, that's what
Mega.co.nz Chief Executive Vikram Kumar wants to turn into a reality.
After Kim
Dotcom's Mega shook
up the secure storage world, offering a mind-boggling,
industry-leading 50GB of encrypted free space, the company startled
the world again by announcing that it would be building an encrypted
e-mail service -- but only after the unexpected closure of Ladar
Levinson's Lavabit.
In the wake of the
unexpected secure e-mail service closures by Lavabit and
Silent Circle, what does secure e-mail even mean? From his home
in windy Wellington, New Zealand, Kumar spoke over Skype about what
customers should and shouldn't expect from Mega.co.nz, and why he
believes in the service's approach.
We
can, therefore we must. Thinking is optional. (and “Thoughtful
Politician” is an oxymoron.)
David A. Lieb of
Associated Press reports:
Gov.
Jay Nixon’s administration displayed “indifference to the privacy
rights” of Missourians by gathering personal information about
driver’s license applicants, according to a report Friday from a
legislatively appointed panel.
Most
of the procedures chided by the report have already been halted, but
the panel nonetheless concluded that Nixon’s
administration disregarded state law by implementing them in the
first place.
Read more on
News-Leader.com.
I’m still trying to locate a copy of the report online. If anyone
has a link, please let me know.
So is the evil or is
they ain't?
Cory Scott of LinkedIn
responds to some of the privacy
concerns over their new product, Intro:
This
blog post is intended to provide more information and address
inaccurate assertions that have been made as a result of a product we
launched on Wednesday called LinkedIn
Intro. Many things have been said about the product
implementation that are not correct or are purely speculative, so
this post is intended to clear up these inaccuracies and
misperceptions.
When
the LinkedIn Security team was presented with the core design of
Intro, we made sure we built the most secure implementation we
believed possible. We explored numerous threat models and constantly
challenged each other to consider possible threat scenarios. Here
are some of the actions we took in advance of the launch
Read what steps they
took on LinkedIn.
For my students, who
(like Paul) should be thinking about this.
… It's a hard
problem, but it's one Allen is eager to solve. After years of
pondering these ideas abstractly, he's throwing his fortune into a
new venture targeted entirely at solving the problems of machine
intelligence, dubbed the Allen Institute for Artificial Intelligence
or AI2 for short. It’s ambitious, like Allen's earlier projects on
space flight and brain-mapping, but the initial goal is deceptively
simple. Led by University of Washington professor Oren Etzioni, AI2
wants to build a computer than can pass a high school biology course.
The team feeds in a textbook and gives the computer a test. So far,
it's failing those tests… but it's getting a little better each
time.
Do
you suppose Dilbert is commenting on government IT projects? (Me
too)
Every
week, intentional or not, humor.
… USA
Today covers the launch of Chartbeat,
a new non-profit news organization focused on education policy and
politics. Chartbeat is the result, in part, of the merger of New
York-based GothamSchools and Denver-based EdNews Colorado, and
the org is also building out local teams in Tennessee and Indiana.
… The price-tag for
LAUSD’s iPad program continues
to climb: $770 per tablet.
… UC Davis
officer John Pike, infamous for pepperspraying non-violent student
protesters in 2011, has been awarded
$38,000 “for psychiatric injuries for the way he was treated
afterwards.” UC Davis has also settled with the students who were
sprayed. They get $30,000 apiece. [Now I can define
'ironic' Bob]
… The Apollo Group
(parent of the University of Phoenix) says it will
lay
off 500 staff, on the heels of news that its enrollments have
declined almost 20%. But don't worry. The
stock market approved.
… The LMS
Instructure has launched a new grant
program, offering $100,000 in funding “to spur technological
innovation from within the educational system.”
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