Hot news du-jour. "Any Publicity is good publicity" "I don't care what they say about me as long as they spell my name right." "There is only one thing worse than being talked about and that is NOT being talked about." There is a really, really, really simple way to avoid this in future...

JLaw, Upton caught in celeb nude pics hack

Darren Pauli reports:

Naked photos of US celebrities including Jennifer Lawrence, Kate Upton and Ariana Grande have been published online by an anonymous hacker who reportedly obtained the explicit pics from the victims’ Apple iCloud accounts.

Nude photos of 17 celebrities have been published online. The anonymous hacker posting on grime-’n-gore board 4Chan claimed to have naked pics on more than 100 celebrities in total.

Lawrence’s publicist Bryna Rifkin confirmed the validity of the photos [Why? Bob] and condemned their publication.

“This is a flagrant violation of privacy. The authorities have been contacted and will prosecute anyone who posts the stolen photos of Jennifer Lawrence,” Rifkin told Buzzfeed.

Read more on The Register.

Yeah, it's that easy.

Clarification: Professor says Google search, not hacking, yielded medical info

Adam Greenberg reports:

Though unnamed in a breach notification and follow-up reports, a professor of ethical hacking at City College San Francisco (CCSF), Sam Bowne, has come forward on the internet to clarify that he did not demonstrate hacking a medical center’s server in a class, but rather came across sensitive information during a Google search.

In a Thursday post, Bowne said he performed the search and connected to an open FTP server full of medical information that ended up being from E.A. Conway Medical Center, a part of the University Health System. He explained that he was not teaching a class at the time and did not demonstrate it to anyone, as was indicated in a SCMagazine.com Data Breach Blog post and other published reports.

Read more on SC Magazine.

(Related) I won't say this makes a great target for my Ethical Hackers. I won't say it.

http://www.bespacific.com/fbi-digitizes-millions-files/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=fbi-digitizes-millions-files

FBI Digitizes Millions of Files

by Sabrina I. Pacifici on Aug 31, 2014

“The digital conversion of more than 30 million records—and as many as 83 million fingerprint cards—comes as the FBI fully activates its Next Generation Identification (NGI) system, a state-of-the-art digital platform of biometric and other types of identity information. The system, which is incrementally replacing the Bureau’s Integrated Automated Fingerprint Identification System, or IAFIS, will better serve our most prolific customers—law enforcement agencies checking criminal histories and fingerprints, veterans, government employees, and the FBI’s own Laboratory. The conversion from manual to digital systems began more than two decades ago, when paper files outgrew the space at FBI Headquarters in Washington, D.C. They were shipped to West Virginia, where the FBI built a campus in Clarksburg in 1992 for its Criminal Justice Information Services (CJIS) Division and leased warehouse space in nearby Fairmont for the burgeoning files. In 2010, CJIS broke ground on a new Biometric Technology Center and redoubled its efforts to digitize all the files. The most recent push—digitization of 8.8 million files in two years—not only added more data points to the NGI program, but also eliminated the need to move scores of cabinets full of paper into the new technology center.”

No big deal, other than as a “thought experiment.” What would happen if someone did this in the US?

Hacker ‘Rawshark’ disrupts NZ election campaign

Rob O’Neill reports that the hacking of blogger Cameron Slater’s Whale Oil email account, and the exposure of those emails (and other materials apparently not from his email account) in a book and to the media is disrupting national elections in New Zealand:

New Zealand cabinet minister Judith Collins resigned yesterday in what appears to be a direct response to the hacking of a controversial blogger’s email.

The resignation is a blow to the ruling National Party which, while well ahead in the polls, has seen its campign plan torn apart by a series of unexpected and unwelcome disclosures.

[...]

Ironically, the email that forced Collins to resign does not appear to have been part of that cache. It was received some time last week by the Prime Minister’s office from a source the office agreed to keep confidential.

Prime Minister John Key released the email when announcing Collins’ resignation yesterday, attracting one of a flurry of complaints to the Privacy Commissioner following the hacking, Whale Oil complained that in releasing it, Key himself breached New Zealand’s privacy laws.

Read more on ZDNet.

It's California, it doesn't have to make sense.

Can an Employee Really Can Steal Your Data and Then SLAPP You for It?

Shawn Tuma writes:

Yes, in California it just happened!

The fact that this happened in California should be of no comfort to Texas businesses, however, because the Texas Anti-SLAPP law comes from California and, therefore, California jurisprudence is considered persuasive authority in Texas. This means that in the not so distant future Texas employees could steal their employers’ data and then SLAPP them for it as well. Many other states have anti-SLAPP laws that are derivative of California’s as well.

Let’s look at a case study to demonstrate what I’m talking about.

Case Study:

Emanuel Medical Center, Inc. v. Dominique, 2014 WL 4239346 (Cal. App. Aug. 27, 2014)

Read more on ShawnETuma.com

Perspective.

http://money.cnn.com/2014/09/01/investing/alibaba-ipo/

3 things to know about the biggest IPO in a long time

… Analysts say Alibaba could be worth as much as $200 billion. That's roughly twice the market cap of Amazon and Ebay combined; or four times more than Lockheed Martin, the world's largest defense firm.

With those numbers, it's perhaps no surprise that the Chinese company's market debut might raise even more than Facebook's $16 billion IPO in May 2012.

Yet another tool for my student gamers.

http://www.perthnow.com.au/news/western-australia/new-social-media-sensation-twitch-creating-rock-star-gamers/story-fnhocxo3-1227044243860

New social media sensation Twitch creating ‘rock star gamers’

… Twitch is the Fox Sports of video games – letting users log on to watch the best players across thousands of titles or conquering the computer to set high scores.

Despite being relatively unknown to non “gamers”, it has more than 55 million users who watch more than a million gamers broadcast each month.

… Twitch is now the internet’s fourth biggest source of traffic during peak hours behind Netflix, Google and Apple.

… Some of Twitch’s most successful streamers make six figure salaries and have more than half a million followers.