For
my Ethical Hackers and my Computer Security students.
Map
of Industrial Control Systems on the Internet
- “What is an Industrial Control System? In a nutshell, Industrial control systems (ICS) are computers that control the world around you. They’re responsible for managing the air conditioning in your office, the turbines at a power plant, the lighting at the theatre or the robots at a factory.
- Power Plants on the Internet? Really? You’d be surprised! A lot of big industrial stuff that you wouldn’t expect to find on the Internet is being put online. And the problem is only getting worse as more people expect to be able to manage their business from their iPad. A few examples
- See the Presentation – The latest research that generated the above map is being presented at the 4SICS conference in Stockholm. Visit the website to see the video once it becomes available. 4SICS Conference
- Why are they on the Internet? The main reason these devices get put on the Internet is to save time and money so you can have a single technician maintain your infrastructure from anywhere in the world! [and you can have a single hacker disrupt your infrastructure from anywhere in the world. Bob] It saves a lot of money and is the way of the future, you just need to pay attention to how you do it.”
I'll
discuss this with my Computer Security students.
Cybersecurity
Requires Proactive Approach: Ernst & Young
That
the cyber threat landscape is growing increasingly rocky for many
businesses is difficult to dispute.
According
to a new
report from consulting firm Ernst & Young, addressing that
reality requires businesses take a proactive approach to security.
That begins with laying a foundation for security, starting with
conducting a security assessment, creating a roadmap and getting
board-level support. Unfortunately however, more
than half those surveyed by Ernst & Young said their
organizations are challenged by a lack of skilled resources,
and 43 percent said their total information security budget will stay
roughly the same in the coming 12 months despite increasing threats.
Not
doubt the FBI will start quoting this, if they didn't write the
script in the first place. “You don't want the US to fall behind,
do you Congressman?”
American
tech giants are making it easier for terrorists to go undetected, the
leader of a top British intelligence agency said on Monday.
The
head of the Government Communications Headquarters (GCHQ) — the
British equivalent of the National Security Agency (NSA) — called
for a new partnership between intelligence agencies and top tech
companies, which have grown increasingly distrustful of government
spying.
“[I]ncreasingly
[tech companies’] services not only host the material of violent
extremism or child exploitation, but are the routes for the
facilitation of crime and terrorism,” GCHQ Director Robert Hannigan
wrote in a Financial
Times op-ed.
(Related)
Eight
major tech industry groups are demanding that congressional leaders
allocate more money to deal with legal treaties that allow the U.S.
to share evidence with other countries.
The
Justice Department is under “a severe strain” to process requests
from foreign countries, the groups wrote to Capitol Hill leaders on
Monday, while the demand from abroad has grown.
As a
result, many foreign governments have tried to get digital evidence
directly from American companies’ servers and computers, putting
the tech companies in a legally tricky place where they could risk
violating the law.
What
have we been telling you?
Michael
Price writes:
I just bought a new TV. The old one had a good run, but after the
volume got stuck on 63, I decided it was time to replace it. I am
now the owner of a new “smart” TV, which promises to deliver
streaming multimedia content, games, apps, social media and Internet
browsing. Oh, and TV too.
The only problem is that I’m now afraid to use it. You would be
too — if you read through the 46-page
privacy policy.
The amount of data this thing collects is staggering. It logs where,
when, how and for how long you use the TV. It sets tracking cookies
and beacons designed to detect “when you have viewed particular
content or a particular email message.” It records “the apps you
use, the websites you visit, and how you interact with content.”
It ignores “do-not-track” requests as a considered matter of
policy.
It also has a built-in camera — with facial recognition.
Read
more on Salon.
[From
the article:
More
troubling is the microphone. The TV boasts a “voice recognition”
feature that allows viewers to control the screen with voice
commands. But the service comes with a rather ominous warning:
“Please be aware that if
your spoken words include personal or other sensitive information,
that information will be among the data captured and transmitted to a
third party.” Got that? Don’t say personal or
sensitive stuff in front of the TV.
…
The FBI will not have to bug your living room; you will do it
yourself.
Of
course, there is always the “dumb” option. Users
may have the ability to disable data collection, but it comes at a
cost. The device will not function properly or allow the
use of its high-tech features. This leaves consumers with an
unacceptable choice between keeping up with technology and retaining
their personal privacy.
(Related)
The default is always “full surveillance.”
Yael
Grauer reports:
Opening TextEdit in your MacBook to jot down some notes may feel like
the digital equivalent of scrawling on the back of an envelope.
Unfortunately, those unsaved notes may not be as private as you think
they are—and likely haven’t been for a while.
If you’re like the majority of Mac users, you may think your
in-progress files—the ones you haven’t explicitly saved—are
being stored directly on your hard drive. And with FileVault 2, a
full-disk encryption feature included with your OS, Apple has made it
easy to encrypt the contents of your entire drive, offering an
additional layer of security if your laptop is stolen—especially if
you store your own recovery key.
But security researcher Jeffrey Paul recently
noticed that Apple’s
default autosave is storing in-progress files—the ones you haven’t
explicitly saved yet—in the cloud, not on your hard drive.
(Surprise!) Unless you decided to hit save before you
start typing, or manually changed the default settings, those meeting
notes, passwords, and credit card numbers you jotted down in
“Untitled 17” are living in iCloud.
Read
more on Slate.
How
objective is this type of review. Does it take ethnic (or teenage)
slang into consideration?
Joanna
Rothkopf reports:
Last year, in an effort to improve security, the Huntsville City
School district paid
an ex-FBI agent Chris McRae $157,000 to monitor the social media
activity of its 24,000 students. The effort was part of a program
called SAFe, Students Against Fear, where students and faculty could
file anonymous tips to McRae who would look through their social
media accounts for any questionable material, including drugs,
weapons, gangs or sex.
Yes, the security program seems like an overreaction and a violation
of students’ rights. More alarmingly, however, is that of the 14
students who were ultimately expelled, 12 were black even though only
40 percent of the district’s students are black.
Read
more on Salon.
This
should be interesting.
Chad
Hatmaker writes:
The Employee Online Privacy Act of 2014 will take effect Jan. 1,
2015, and it will apply to any person or entity that employs one or
more employees. This includes state and local governments, as well
as private businesses, and any agent, representative or designee of
employers.
The
act prohibits employers from:
- Requesting or requiring employees or applicants to disclose a password to a personal Internet account;
- Compelling employees or a pplicant to add the employer or an employment agency to their contacts associated with a personal Internet account;
- Compelling employees or applicants to access a personal Internet account in the presence of the employer to enable the employer to observe its contents;
- Discharging, failing to hire, or penalizing employees or applicants for refusing to comply with any of the above prohibited actions.
Read
more on Knoxville
News Sentinel.
Something
for us non-lawyers?
Bork’s
“Legislative Intent” and the Courts
Ginsburg,
Douglas H., Bork’s “Legislative Intent” and the Courts
(November 3, 2014). Antitrust Law Journal, Vol. 79, No. 3, pp.
941-951, 2014; George Mason Law & Economics Research Paper No.
14-59. Available for download at SSRN:
http://ssrn.com/abstract=2518600
“Robert
H. Bork’s influence upon modern antitrust law is difficult to
overstate. One of his lasting legacies is his analysis of the
legislative history, text, and structure of the Sherman Act, which
led him to conclude the intent of the Congress passing it was to
maximize consumer welfare and economic efficiency. That conclusion
was adopted by the Supreme Court in 1979 and has formed the
foundation for antitrust policy and enforcement ever since. This
article explains the rationale for Bork’s “consumer welfare”
thesis, recounts the history of its rise and the
objections it engendered from other academics, and summarizes its
salutary effect upon antitrust law and business practices.”
We've
been saying this for years. Still no serious attempt at a solution.
Perhaps Ms. Swift can make one work?
Taylor
Swift Reminds Everyone How Broken Online Music Is Right Now
On
Monday, Taylor Swift removed her entire back catalog from the
streaming service. The change was announced in a Spotify corporate
blog post that even
the Gray Lady called passive-aggressive, entitled “On
Taylor Swift’s Decision To Remove Her Music from Spotify.”
“We
love Taylor Swift, and our more than 40 million users love her even
more,” says
Spotify’s announcement. “We hope she’ll change her mind
and join us in building a new music economy that works for everyone.”
Swift’s
old albums—though not her newest, 1989—are still
available on smaller streaming services, like Rdio and Beats Music.
…
a Buzzfeed reporter couldn’t
figure out the per-stream price of Adele’s “Rolling in the
Deep.” One source told her it made 19 cents per 60 streams;
another said it made .91 of a cent.
…
By limiting fans’s effortless access to her entire discography,
they might be able to incentivize them to buy its newest member.
In
other words, writes
Kastrenakes, “Swift and her label are in the extremely uncommon
position of having the power to pull this off and likely benefit from
it.”
Strange
that we don't have majors in these technologies, yet.
Cell
Phones, Social Media and Campaign 2014
“Cell phones and social media platforms like Facebook and Twitter
are playing an increasingly prominent role in how voters get
political information and follow election news, according to a new
national survey by the Pew Research Center. The proportion of
Americans who use their cell phones to track political news or
campaign coverage has doubled compared with the most recent midterm
election: 28%
of registered voters have used their cell phone in this way during
the 2014 campaign, up from 13% in 2010.
Might
be useful for my “Intro to” classes.
Free
Webinar - Storyboards In the Classroom
Next
Tuesday at 7pm EST I will be hosting another webinar on using
storyboards in the classroom. In this free webinar sponsored by
StoryboardThat.com Aaron
Sherman and I will share strategies and resources for using
storyboards in your classroom. Click
here to register.
Webinar
highlights:
- The benefits of using storyboards and comics to illustrate ideas.
- How to use StoryboardThat.com to create storyboards.
Everyone
who attends the live webinar will be entered into a drawing for door
prizes from StoryboardThat.com
and FreeTech4Teachers.com
Registration
is limited to the first 200 people. Complete
the following form if you know that you cannot attend the live
webinar, but you would like to watch the recording.
More
hope for my education.
Learn
Almost Anything Online; Find Out Where With SlideRule
…
Which brings me to SlideRule.
This site acts as a search engine for online classes, with over
18,000 courses indexed. Some happen in real time,
others are on-demand; some are from universities, others from
nonprofit organizations. You can search classes, or browse them by
category, until you find something worth spending your time learning.
For
years we’ve been showing you how to take
free college courses online. If you want to take an online
course, but aren’t sure where to start looking, check Slide Rule
first.
For
my Marketing students. Harvard says so!
For
my geeks.
Mozilla
Teases Browser For Developers
Mozilla
is releasing a new Web browser designed specifically for
developers. The mysterious browser, currently known only as the
Firefox Developer Browser (#Fx10), will launch on November 10. In
the teaser trailer embedded above, Mozilla promises the new browser
will “debug the whole Web” and be “unique but
familiar.”
Mozilla’s
blog post goes some way to explaining the thinking behind the new
browser for developers: “When building for the Web, developers
tend to use a myriad of different tools which often don’t work well
together. This means you end up switching between different tools,
platforms and browsers which can slow you down and make you less
productive.” The new developer browser is designed to “make
your lives easier.”
Interested
parties are invited to sign up to the Mozilla
Hacks newsletter to be notified as soon as the Firefox browser
for developers is released.
There
are lots of tools like this online.
Block
Posters - Use Standard Printers to Print Posters
If
you have ever come across an infographic that you thought would make
a good classroom poster, you should take a look at Block
Posters. Block
Posters is a web-based tool to which you can upload a high
quality graphic then divide it into letter-sized chunks for printing.
Print out each section and put them together on a poster board to
make your own poster.
Applications
for Education
Most
teachers and students don't have ready access to printers that can
handle poster-sized paper, but they do have access to standard
letter-size printers. When you find a great infographic that you
want to display in your classroom, Block
Posters is a good tool to use to print it out. Want to create a
giant jigsaw puzzle? Block Posters could be useful for that too.
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