While President Obama
tries to smooth over relations, North Korea reacts like a spoiled 6
year old (with nukes)
Obama
brokers Japan, South Korea talks as Pyongyang fires missiles
U.S. President Barack Obama brought together the leaders of Japan and
South Korea for their first face-to-face talks as a North Korean
ballistic missile launch underscored the need for Washington's two
key Asian allies to repair their strained ties.
Washington hopes the three-way summit will improve relations between
Seoul and Tokyo, which are clouded by the legacy of Japan's 1910-1945
colonial rule of the Korean peninsula and Seoul's concerns that Prime
Minister Shinzo Abe wants to rewrite Japan's wartime past with a less
apologetic tone.
ATM robbery? Dude,
there's an App for that!
ATM
Hackers Turn to Text Messages to Pull Bank Heists
According
to Symantec, a new variant of ATM malware discovered in 2013 has
been updated to allow hackers to withdraw cash using SMS messages.
… The
malware, known as Ploutus, first surfaced
last year in Mexico. At the time, the malware enabled attackers
armed with an external keyboard to make illegal withdrawals from ATM
machines. In the ensuing weeks however, a new variant appeared with
an evolved architecture.
"The
criminals can remotely control the ATM by using a mobile phone which
is connected to the inside of the ATM," Regalado explained.
"There are multiple ways to connect a mobile phone to an ATM. A
common method is to use a setup called USB tethering,
which is effectively a shared Internet connection between a phone and
a computer (or in this case, an ATM)."
Now do you believe me
when I say, “You have to be crazy not to encrypt your laptop!”
Stacia Glenn reports:
A
Gig Harbor psychologist who failed to immediately fess up that a
prostitute stole his laptop with medical
information about 652 state Department of Social and Health Services
clients must undergo a mental health evaluation if he wants to
practice again.
Sunil
Kakar was suspended
in October on charges ranging from unprofessional conduct to failure
to provide security safeguards. He remains suspended for not
protecting sensitive client information, according to records.
[...]
The
state said Kakar also remains suspended because he failed to take
part in a required substance abuse monitoring program ordered after a
2012 incident for which he was charged with unprofessional conduct.
Read more on the News
Tribune
(Related) And
encryption is not hard to implement!
Toshiba's
Self-Encrypting Hard Drives Get FIPS 140-2 Stamp
Toshiba
announced on Tuesday that its MQ01ABUxxxBW
series hard disk drives (HDD) has achieved validation to U.S.
Federal Information Processing Standard 140-2 (FIPS 140-2).
“Let's sue everyone
and see who settles?” OR “Why do they insist these systems are
secure when they clearly are not?” OR (Most likely) “Security
failed, therefore someone screwed up.”
Chicago's
Trustwave sued over Target data breach
… Although the most
serious allegations are leveled at Target, the suit alleges that
Trustwave failed to identify deficiencies in the retailer's IT
systems. Trustwave's software audits companies' IT systems to make
sure they comply with credit card security regulations.
The lawsuit is a blow
to Trustwave, which according to the complaint says it has “performed
more Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard (PCI DSS)
Certifications than all other companies combined.” [So
now they too are suspect. Bob]
… Trustwave has
been growing fast in recent years, swallowing
up smaller competitors. Earlier this month, it
bought Cenzic, Inc., a Silicon Valley-based company that specializes
in continuous automated security testing for cloud, mobile and Web
applications. Trustwave, which previously planned to go public but
had to pull the offering, has been seen as one of
Chicago's most likely candidates for a sale or IPO.
This is what my Ethical
Hackers call a “high value target.” I wonder how long it took
the average hacker to break in?
Dan Massoglia writes:
FirstNet
is a public/private cooperative surveillance and information exchange
enterprise—a vast
network to share Americans’ personal information—conceived by
and written into law with the Middle
Class Tax Relief and Job Creation Act of 2012. By law,
FirstNet’s purpose
is to “create a nationwide, wireless, interoperable, public safety
broadband network,” a euphemism that means, “increase the ease
with which government agencies share private and public information
about people.” By consolidating the placement of points of
reference and interoperability for each potential node of state,
local, commercial, and other communications networks, FirstNet is a
blueprint for making surveillance data-sharing national,
lightning-fast, and independent
from the insecure, heavily monitored public internet.
Read more on
PrivacySOS.
You didn't really think
they'd stop, did you?
Don’t
Listen to Google and Facebook: The Public-Private Surveillance
Partnership Is Still Going Strong
If you’ve been
reading the news recently, you might think that corporate America is
doing its best to thwart NSA surveillance.
Google just announced
that it is encrypting Gmail when you access it from your computer or
phone, and between data centers. Last week, Mark Zuckerberg
personally
called President Obama to complain about the NSA using Facebook
as a means to hack computers, and Facebook's Chief Security Officer
explained
to reporters that the attack technique has not worked since last
summer. Yahoo, Google, Microsoft, and others are now regularly
publishing "transparency
reports," listing approximately how many government data
requests the companies have received and complied with.
On the government side,
last week the NSA's General Counsel Rajesh De seemed to have thrown
those companies under a bus by stating
that—despite their denials—they knew all about the NSA's
collection of data under both the PRISM program and some unnamed
"upstream" collections on the communications links.
… The U.S.
intelligence community is still playing
word games with us. The NSA collects our data based on four
different legal authorities: the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance
Act (FISA) of 1978, Executive Order 12333 of 1981 and modified in
2004 and 2008, Section 215 of the Patriot Act of 2001, and Section
702 of the FISA Amendments Act (FAA) of 2008. Be careful when
someone from the intelligence community uses the caveat "not
under this program," or "not under this authority";
almost certainly it means that whatever it is they're denying is done
under some other program or authority. So when De said that
companies knew about NSA collection under Section 702, it doesn't
mean they knew about the other collection programs.
I think the best
rulings (and most amusing language) come when the Judge is angry or
frustrated.
Zoe Tillman reports:
A
federal magistrate judge in Washington wants to hear from Twitter
Inc. and Yahoo! Inc. before ruling on a request by federal
prosecutors to block those companies from disclosing information on
grand jury subpoenas.
In
two orders issued on March 21, U.S. District Magistrate Judge John
Facciola said he received applications from the government asking
that Twitter and Yahoo be barred from “notifying any person of the
existence or content of” the grand jury subpoenas.
Read more on Legal
Times.
[From
the article:
Twitter
and Yahoo
have a policy of notifying users about requests for information on
their accounts unless prohibited by law or a court order.
… "This Court
is increasingly concerned about the government's applications for
search warrants for electronic data," he wrote. "In
essence, its applications ask for the entire universe of information
tied to a particular account, even if it has established probable
cause only for certain information."
On March 11, he denied
applications for search warrants that would allow law enforcement
to search cellphones and other electronic devices seized in a child
pornography investigation, finding the government
used "inaccurate, formulaic language," failed to
limit the scope of the search to data for which it had probable
cause, and didn't explain how the search would take place.
On March 20, the judge
again
declined to sign search warrants for four more electronic devices
in a child pornography investigation. Facciola said the government
still failed to address many of the issues he raised in his March 11
order.
Prosecutors specified
what law enforcement would seize from the devices and, for the first
time, provided a search protocol, the judge said, but they still
failed to provide a detailed explanation of the search process.
"Since the
government has not taken the hint, the Court will be more explicit:
the government needs to provide a sophisticated technical overview of
how it plans to conduct the search," Facciola wrote. "It
need not be overly detailed—the Court is not asking for a list of
search terms—but the overview must provide this Court with
sufficient information such that it will not be authorizing the
'general, exploratory rummaging in a person’s belongings' that the
Fourth Amendment prohibits."
Not sure where Facebook
is heading with this. (Of course, I've been blind before.)
Facebook
Makes $2 Billion Virtual-Reality Bet With Oculus
Facebook Inc. is making
a $2 billion bet that a virtual-reality headset will one day become
the center of its users’ social lives.
… Facebook Chief
Executive Officer Mark
Zuckerberg is following Google in seeking growth beyond
smartphones and tablets. While Apple Inc.’s iPhone and Google’s
Android mobile devices dominate today, developers are looking for new
gadgets to showcase wares and are focusing on the more lifelike
experiences that Oculus provides, Zuckerberg said in a blog.
(Related) Content for
VR?
Disney
Agrees to Pay $500 Million for Maker Studios
Walt Disney Co. (DIS)
agreed to buy Maker Studios, a supplier of online video content to
YouTube, for $500 million, gaining technology and experience with
short-form entertainment.
Disney also agreed to
pay as much as $450 million more if Maker Studios meets “strong”
performance targets, the Burbank, California-based company said today
in a statement. That could boost the total to $950 million.
With Maker Studios,
Disney is following DreamWorks Animation SKG Inc. (DWA) into an
online video business with expanding audiences and
little profit. DreamWorks Animation, producer of the
“Shrek” movies, bought AwesomenessTV, a smaller competitor of
Maker Studios, for $33 million plus as much as $117 million in
incentives last year. The online outlets could help media companies
build awareness for films and TV shows.
Economics in the
current age. Disintermediation dude, look it up.
I'd say Tesla won in Ohio – New Jersey will fight to the last
bankruptcy. (What value do dealerships add for consumers?)
Compromise
to Limit Tesla to Three Stores
The arrival of Tesla
motors in the Ohio market stirred up local car dealers who sensed a
threat to their way of doing business. Tesla sells high-end
all-electric cars but does so without the use of franchise
dealerships. Ohio lawmakers are working to resolve the dispute.
There's no middleman at
Tesla. The company manufactures the cars and operates its own stores
where customers can shop and learn. There are no car lots full of
inventory to look at — each Tesla is made to order.
(Related) Some people
are recognizing the changing times...
From
Digitally Disrupted to Digital Disrupter
by Sabrina
I. Pacifici on March 25, 2014
“Big companies are
back in the digital game. Procter & Gamble, Tesco, Disney,
GE—these are just a few of the global 2,000 that are now in a race
to become digital. Those that get there first will be able to
disrupt their existing markets and penetrate new ones. They will be
in control of their new digital destinies. This year’s report
represents the latest iteration of Accenture’s Technology Vision,
which declares that “every business is a digital
business.” In last year’s report, we laid out the
imperative for every business to reimagine itself in
this digital world, and we charted the increasing appetite
of leading enterprises for exploring the
opportunities that emerging technologies provide.” [One
of which is disintermediation. Bob]
Perspective. Cable
continues to die. Newspaper revenue continues to drop. News
“repeaters” replace news “Reporters.”
One
in three Americans view online news videos
More American adults
are watching news videos online than ever before. According to the
2014 State of the News Media report, released
on Wednesday, nearly half of people under 50 watch online news
videos, and one in ten adults have posted their own videos of news
events to social networking sites.
This year’s report is
the eleventh annual survey released by the Pew Research Center’s
Project for Excellence in Journalism, and it examines how newspapers,
magazines, websites and network and cable news fared over the course
of 2013.
… Americans are
increasingly
attached to their cellphones and the internet, and their news
habits are evolving. Thirty percent of the adults
Pew surveyed get some of their news from Facebook. Fifty
percent of social network users share or repost news content,
while 46 percent discuss news events on social media.
… Local and cable
television numbers were less encouraging. Nearly 300 local
television stations were sold in 2013, and more stations are being
managed jointly by large companies like the Sinclair Broadcasting
Group, and sharing content with each other than before. There are
joint service agreements (in which stations share news-gathering
resources) in nearly half of 210 local television markets nationwide,
up from 55 such agreements in 2011. Cable news audiences declined,
with the combined median prime-time viewership of CNN, Fox and MSNBC
dropping 11 percent to approximately three million, the smallest
since 2007.
Print and television
advertising are still the major sources for revenue in journalism,
making up more than half of the money supporting professional
journalism. Newspaper ad revenue in 2012 (the most
recent year data was available) was down 52 percent from 2003.
For my Math students.
This was a “Billion Dollar Sure Thing.” Expect more like it now
that Billion is the new Million.
Quicken
Loans' billion-dollar gamble pays off
Say what you will about
the Quicken Loans Billion Dollar Bracket Challenge with Yahoo Sports.
But the contest, which magically latched on to the mania of March
Madness with the promise of a possible $1 billion prize for anyone
who picked the winner of every tournament game, put Quicken Loans in
rare PR air.
How rare? Try 1 billion
social media and PR impressions since the contest began, estimates
Jay Farner, president and chief marketing officer, in an interview
with USA TODAY.
… What's more,
brand awareness for Quicken - the second-largest retail lender in
America, next to Wells Fargo - shot up a whopping 300% since the
contest began vs. prior to February, he says.
… Then there are
new customer leads. While Farner is reluctant to be specific on this,
he says the contest elicited "millions and millions" of new
customer leads - though that wasn't its focus, he says. The
focus, he says, was "engagement." [Right...
Bob] The contest, which was free to enter, had a limit
of 15 million entries - but he declined to state if it reached that
number.
For my geeky students.
Microsoft
releases source code for MS-DOS and Word
In recognition of their
historical importance and commercial irrelevance, Microsoft has given
the source code to MS-DOS 1.1 and 2.0 and Word for Windows 1.1a
to the Computer
History Museum (CHM) in Mountain View, California. The source is
now freely downloadable by anyone, though making practical use of it
is an exercise for the reader.
I may find a use for
this in my Statistics class, students beware! (Still in Beta and
rather slow)
Census
Data Mapper – Beta
by Sabrina
I. Pacifici on March 25, 2014
“The Census
Data Mapper is a web mapping application intended to provide
users with a simple interface to view, save and print county-based
demographic maps of the United States. The data are from the 2010
Census.”
For me and for my
students.
5
Tools To Migrate Your Data From Windows XP
With the
April 8, 2014 end-of-support date looming, it’s long past time
to upgrade
from Windows XP. If you have a Windows XP system filled with
your personal data and settings, upgrading can be daunting. These
tools will help you easily migrate your data from Windows XP to a
modern version of Windows, Mac OS X, or even Linux.
… Microsoft is now
providing a free
copy of LapLink’s PCmover Express to all Windows XP
users.
For my website
students.
FREE
EBOOK Learning Markdown: Write For The Web, Faster
Markdown is essentially
a syntax language for formatting text as you write. It’s fast, and
built for people who write for the Web.
If you want to learn
Markdown, but don’t know where to start, this free MakeUseOf Guide
is for you.
I'm shopping for
cellphone service. So far, I hate them all. Anyone have any advice?
Make
Your Calls for Free
Get more mileage out of
your minutes by making free calls whenever you can. Viber,
Skype
Mobile and Textfree
are all free apps that allow you to call anyone else who has the app
for free.
Don't Use 4-1-1
Dial 4-1-1 from a cell
phone, and it could cost you $1 or more. Crazy! Fortunately, you can
skip the charge and still get the information that you need by
calling 1-800-GOOG-411, a free 4-1-1 service provided by Google.
Another free 4-1-1
number to try: 1-800-free411
Use a Free Texting
Service
Or go one better, and
switch to free texting. Heywire
and Textfree
are two free apps that allow you to send texts and pictures for free.
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