I was afraid this would happen.

http://www.pcworld.com/article/2159460/apple-devices-held-hostage-using-find-my-iphone.html

Apple devices held hostage using Find My iPhone

Hackers appear to be exploiting Apple’s “Find My iPhone” service to lock up phones and tablets and send ransom demands to their owners.

A number of reports on Apple’s support forum tell of devices displaying messages that they have been hacked by “Oleg Pliss” and demanding payment of a US$100 ransom via PayPal to unlock them. Most of the reports were from Australians but there were also reports from a Briton and a Canadian.

The hackers seem to have used the “Find My iPhone” feature or its equivalent for other Apple gadgets to lock the devices and send the message, according to the forum posts that were first highlighted by Australian newspaper The Age.

Wrong strategy or poor management?

http://www.securityweek.com/cyber-failures-spark-search-new-security-approach

Cyber Failures Spark Search for New Security Approach

With cybersecurity's most glaring failures in the limelight, many experts say it's time for a new approach.

In recent weeks, the security community has been rocked by news of a massive breach at online giant eBay affecting as many as 145 million customers, following another that hit as many as 110 million at retailer Target.

A US indictment earlier this month accused members of a shadowy Chinese military unit for allegedly hacking US companies for trade secrets, a charge denied by Beijing.

The incidents highlight huge gaps in cybersecurity, or the ease in which malicious actors can break into a single computer and subsequently penetrate a network or cloud.

… One of the dilemmas is that when people have a choice between security and utility, they often choose utility."

A survey released Wednesday by the security firm Trustwave said it identified 691 breaches across 24 countries last year, with the number of incidents up 53.6 percent over 2012.

… A report by security firm Symantec found a 91 percent increase in targeted "spearphishing" attacks in 2013 and said more than 552 million identities were exposed via breaches.

IBM recently unveiled a new cyber defense system aimed at thwarting attacks before they happen, with predictive analytics.

I have been teasing my lawyer friends – telling them I was working on an App to replace lawyers. That may be something to seriously consider if they change law schools like this paper suggests.

http://www.bespacific.com/legal-academy-erasure/

The Legal Academy Under Erasure

by Sabrina I. Pacifici on May 26, 2014

Redding, Richard E., The Legal Academy Under Erasure (2014). Catholic University Law Review, Forthcoming. Available at SSRN: http://ssrn.com/abstract=2433266

“We hear much about the crisis in legal education: high tuition costs, steep declines in law school enrollment, and graduates unprepared for practice who cannot find jobs. Proposals to address the crisis appear to enjoy wide support and may be poised to dramatically change the landscape of legal education. Such reforms will harm law students and the legal profession, placing the legal academy “under erasure,” by:

(1) reorienting it from an academically-grounded education towards vocational training,

(2) requiring just two years of study for the J.D. degree,

(3) allowing graduates of non-ABA accredited law schools to sit for the bar examination, thereby rendering accreditation a toothless mechanism for ensuring academic quality, and

(4) gutting faculty scholarship.

Instead, we must make the value of legal education worth its cost by doing a better job of educating and training our students. Legal education is broken because it fails to prepare students for the demands of modern law practice, which is more complex and interdisciplinary than ever before. We need a three-year program that is more robust, one that teaches the core first-year subjects as well as applications of other disciplines (e.g., accounting, economics, psychology) to everyday law practice, exposes students to a reasonable range of specialty areas, and integrates skills training (e.g., client counseling, advocacy, drafting) throughout the curriculum. To accomplish these goals, we should adapt the medical school model to legal education. This would entail a curriculum that provides a comprehensive foundation in basic legal subjects and legally relevant other disciplines, culminating in a series of clinical rotations where the basic doctrinal and interdisciplinary knowledge is applied in practice. I also explain why we should not gut support for faculty scholarship in the hopes that doing so will cut costs and encourage professors to focus on teaching. Contrary to popular claims, engaged scholars are better teachers, and legal scholarship can contribute meaningfully and substantially (though often in ways not readily apparent) to law practice and legal reform efforts. Finally, I suggest that we address the employment problem and improve educational quality by having fewer but better law schools, producing fewer attorneys.”

(Related)

http://blogs.hbr.org/2014/05/business-school-professors-should-be-like-movie-directors/

Business School Professors Should Be Like Movie Directors

As business school professors, we always ask ourselves why we are needed. Because we train future leaders and shape how organizations create value for societies. But will students need us in the same capacity in the future? Not if we don’t change to meet shifting educational needs.

A January Economist article on the Future of Jobs quoted experts saying that 47% of all job categories, including high-skill professions in medicine and law, will be automated within two decades. Among the professions that were said to be safe from automation (for the moment) are those that require human interaction and emotive and social competencies, such as management; those that rely on craft mastery, such as recreational therapists and actors; and those that involve understanding complex systems of human and institutional interaction, such as economists.

It apparently pays Microsoft to keep updating businesses that won’t pay to keep their software up to date.

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2014/05/26/german_tinkerer_gets_around_xpocalypse/

Windows XP fixes flaws for free if you turn PCs into CASH REGISTERS

A German web noticeboard has published instructions on how to keep getting the free Windows XP updates that enterprises are having to pay for.

According to this thread at Sebjik.com, all that's needed for 32-bit Windows XP installs is to edit the registry so that it tells Microsoft you're using POSReady 2009.

As Betanews notes, with the registry edit in place, you should receive updates for “Windows Embedded Industry (formerly known as Windows Embedded POSReady). This is based on Windows XP Service Pack 3”.

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AppGyver Composer

http://www.appgyver.com/composer

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