Stranger
and stranger. Both North Korea and the FBI benefit by feeding the
“North Korea has powerful hackers” hype. Still no clear
indication what happened here.
North
Korea Issued A Mysterious Message About The Hack On Sony Pictures
North
Korea is not denying allegations made by US officials that the
country was behind a massive
hack on Sony Pictures last week that took down the company's
computer network.
When
contacted by the BBC, a North Korean government spokesman said:
"Wait and see."..
…
It's still not known exactly who the Guardians of Peace are. They
say they have a source inside Sony who had similar opinions and let
them inside the computer network. But US intelligence agencies
aren't buying that claim.
NBC
News says it has knowledge of classified briefings that suggested
North Korea was a possible source of the hack.
(Related)
The
FBI has issued a confidential report to businesses in the wake
of the Sony Pictures hack which explains that U.S. businesses
should remain vigilant against new malicious software that can be
used to launch "destructive" cyberattacks.
While
the report doesn't name the Sony incident, it describes an attack
that
cybersecurity experts tell Reuters is large-scale hack that took
down the Hollywood company. The hack is said to "mark [the]
first major destructive cyber attack waged against a company on U.S.
soil." Similar attacks have taken place in Asia and the Middle
East, but not the United States
“We
have no evidence the data was misused” would be much more
believable if they had discovered the hole in their security a couple
of years ago... If they can't recognize a security failure would
they recognize “evidence” of misuse?
Highlands-Cashiers
Hospital in North
Carolina is notifying more
than 25,000 patients after discovering that an error by their IT
vendor, TruBridge,
had exposed patient information on the Internet between May 2012 and
September 29, 2014. TruBridge is a wholly owned subsidiary of
Computer Programs
and Services, Inc.
Forensic investigation revealed that although patients’ names,
addresses, dates of birth, diagnoses and treatment information,
health insurance information, and in some cases, Social Security
numbers, were accessible, there was no evidence that they had been
accessed or misused.
You
can read the hospital’s full November 24th notification on their
web site, here.
What
do you do with your degree in computers and a degree in finance or an
MBA? You use your hacking skills to “analyze” the market.
For more than a year, a group of cybercriminals has been pilfering
email correspondence from more than 100 organizations — most of
them publicly traded health care or pharmaceutical companies —
apparently in pursuit of information significant enough to affect
global financial markets.
The
group’s activities, detailed in a report released Monday morning by
FireEye, a Silicon Valley security company, shed light on a new breed
of criminals intent on using their hacking skills to gain a market
edge in the pharmaceutical industry, where news of clinical trials,
regulatory decisions or safety or legal issues can significantly
affect a company’s stock price.
Starting
in mid-2013, FireEye began responding to the group’s intrusions at
publicly traded companies — two-thirds of them, it said, in the
health care and pharmaceutical sector — as well as advisory firms,
such as investment banking offices or companies that provide legal or
compliance services.
Should
we trust a politician where Privacy is at issue?
Christopher
Hope reports:
Facebook can gain direct access to a person’s mobile and take
pictures or make videos at any time without explicit consent, MPs
warn as they call on social media companies to simplify their terms
and conditions.
The MP said that they should simplify the conditions of using their
services, which are designed for US courts, because they are so
impenetrable that “no reasonable person” can be expected to
understand them.
Read
more on The
Telegraph.
Not
a computer security failure, but I want to make sure my students
picked up on this.
The
Denver Channel reports on an ID theft ring:
A Jefferson County grand jury has returned a 165-count indictment
against a suspected ID theft ring that operated for six months in
2013.
According to the indictment, members of the nine-member enterprise
obtained personal and financial information of people and businesses
and used this information to create checks and identification.
Read
more on The
Denver Channel.
As
data gets bigger, so too does the risk.
- Data loss and downtime costs enterprises $1.7 trillion1
- Companies on average lost 400%2 more data over the last two years (equivalent to 24 million emails3 each)
- 71% of IT professionals are not fully confident in their ability to recover information following an incident
- 51% of organizations lack a disaster recovery plan for emerging workloads4; just 6% have plans for big data, hybrid cloud and mobile
- Only 2% of organizations are data protection “Leaders”; 11% “Adopters”; 87% are behind the curve
- China, Hong Kong, The Netherlands, Singapore and the US lead protection maturity; Switzerland, Turkey and the UAE lag behind
- Companies with three or more vendors lost three times as much data as those with a single-vendor strategy
EMC
Corporation (NYSE: EMC)
today announced the findings of a new global data protection study
Read
through the complete findings at http://emc.im/DPindex
To
view the Global Results Infographic, visit http://emc.im/DPindex
...so
even if you wear your Star Wars StormTrooper helmet, the FBI will
know who you are.
University
of Adelaide reports:
University of Adelaide forensic anatomy researchers are making
advances in the use of “body recognition” for criminal and
missing persons cases, to help with identification when a face is not
clearly shown.
PhD student Teghan Lucas is studying a range of human anatomical
features and body measurements that can help to identify a person,
such as from closed circuit television (CCTV) security videos, no
matter what clothing the person may be wearing.
[…]
Part of Ms Lucas’s research has involved using a database of
anatomical measurements of almost 4000 US armed services personnel.
“We compared eight facial and eight body measurements to
investigate whether or not there is enough information on the body to
use for identification. Results consistently show that compared with
the face, less body measurements are needed before eliminating
duplicates and achieving a single ID match. The larger the range of
each of the measurements, the less chance there is of finding a
duplicate.
“With a combination of
eight body measurements it is possible to reduce the probability of
finding a duplicate to the order of one in a quintillion.
These results are comparable with fingerprint analysis,” she says.
Read
more on Medical
Xpress.
The
world is falling apart! Chicken Little
Ukraine,
Russia and the ceasefire that never was
When
1,000 people have died in less than three months, when civilians
cower in basements and tens of thousands more flee their homes we can
no longer speak of a ceasefire in eastern Ukraine.
It
is a fiction. All that has happened is that the front lines have
remained static. There are no big offensives going on - for the
moment.
(Related)
Their analysis does not match my analysis. Let's see who is right.
http://www.cnbc.com/id/102230820?__source=google|editorspicks|&par=google&google_editors_picks=true
As
ruble tumbles, what will Putin do next?
Against
the backdrop of a falling currency, the threat of capital controls
and a four-year low in the price of oil, analysts are wondering what
Russia's "superhero" President Vladimir Putin will do next.
The
Russian
ruble suffered its worst one-day decline since 1998 on Monday,
falling four percent to trade at over 53 rubles against the dollar as
oil prices tumbled to multi-year lows.
On
Tuesday, the ruble had weakened around 3 percent against the
greenback to trade at 52.89 but year-to-date, the currency has fallen
around 35 percent against the dollar on the back of a sharp decline
in the price of oil – Russia's main export and revenue source.
Adding
insult to injury, the Russian economy ministry now believes that the
country will enter recession next year, predicting that gross
domestic product (GDP) will shrink 0.8 percent in 2015, revising an
earlier forecast of 1.2 percent growth.
…
"I don't think the West either is in the game of regime change,
because they fear that someone after Putin might be much worse. At
least Putin is naturally cautious by instinct and very calculating,
or that is the view in the West," he told CNBC in an email on
Tuesday.
"But
I do think Putin is at a cross roads between isolation and
rediscovery of a new relationship with the West which could be better
for both sides. Unfortunately at the moment isolation from the West
looks more likely and that will be bad for Russia over the long
term."
Of
course they are...
The Justice Department appealed federal judge’s October ruling
that it must release documents on its policies and procedures for use
of location-tracking technology in Northern California.
SOURCE:
Courthouse
News.
(Related)
Of course the do...
Cyrus
Farivar reports:
Newly discovered court documents from two federal criminal cases in
New York and California that remain otherwise sealed suggest that the
Department of Justice (DOJ) is pursuing an unusual legal strategy to
compel cellphone makers to assist investigations.
In both cases, the seized phones—one of which is an iPhone 5S—are
encrypted and cannot be cracked by federal authorities. Prosecutors
have now invoked the All
Writs Act, an 18th-century federal law that simply
allows courts to issue a writ, or order, which compels a person or
company to do something.
Read
more on Ars
Technica.
Interesting.
Does this suggest that Brazil is the “most sociable country” or
should we be looking for the next Steve Jobs there?
The
Global Geography of Internet Addiction
Thanks
to its young population armed with smartphones, Brazil beat nine
other Internet-connected countries for its citizens’ frequency of
web use, according
to a new report from business consultancy A.T. Kearney.
The
study surveyed people who use the Internet at least once a week. The
respondents also skewed toward the young, with 64 percent aged 45 or
younger. In this survey, 51 percent of Brazilian Internet users said
they were online all day long, and 20 percent used the Internet more
than 10 times a day.
…
Social networking drives Internet use in the
top countries. In Brazil, respondents spend 58 percent of their
online time on social networking sites—a higher proportion than in
any other country.
For
my students.
ExamTime
Presents a Mind Map About Creating Mind Maps
ExamTime
is a service that students can use to create flashcards, mind maps,
and practice quizzes to help them study. After I published my chart
of free mind mapping tools, the folks at ExamTime shared with me
a mind map about creating mind maps. ExamTime's mind map on mind
maps outlines ideas and best practices for developing mind maps.
That mind map is embedded below.
For
my students.
Concerned
About Copyright? A Guide For Legally Using Images On The Web
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