When
we say, “No one is safe,” we really mean no one.
Anthony
Noto, Twitter CFO, gets first-hand feel of hacking as account
breached
Anthony
Noto, Twitter’s
chief financial officer, got a first-hand feel for the pain a hacker
inflicts after discovering someone was tweeting out spam from his
account.
…
Twitter
spokesman Jim Prosser confirmed the account was hacked for a brief
time.
“His
account was sending spam tweets,” Mr. Prosser said, the New York
Post reported.
“We’ve locked the account down and deleted the tweets. There’s
no indication any account information was accessed.”
(Related)
Newsweek,
International Business Times Twitter Accounts Hacking By Cyber
Caliphate Makes Us Question Twitter's Cybersecurity Features
Newsweek's
Twitter account was commandeered by a group claiming to be connected
with the Islamic State Tuesday for about 15 minutes and spewed
threatening messages to First Lady Michelle Obama, with publication's
Twitter banner switched out for one featuring a Black Standard flag
and a masked man.
…
Also hacked Tuesday, by reportedly
the same group, was the Twitter account of a military veteran
organization called Military Spouses of Strength and the website of
International Business Times, was also hacked.
(Related)
Now this is just mean. Article 3
Forbes’
Hack of the Day
Forbes’
Thought of the Day, which is presented to readers when they first
land on the site, was used to send malicious code to visitors’
computers. As reported by The
Washington Post, security researchers have discovered the
widget was compromised for several days at the end of last year,
starting on Nov. 28.
It
is believed that Chinese
hackers used the Thought of the Day to launch an attack
primarily aimed at financial institutions and defense contractors.
Vulnerabilities in Internet
Explorer and Adobe Flash were used (surprisingly!), both of which
have since been patched.
“Existing
agencies don't share data, so we will rely on the data they share to
make this center work!” Typical politician thinking. Should I
think of this as a Library of Cyber Threats? More importantly, will
I be able to tap into it directly?
White
House to Create New Cyber Security Agency
The
new agency will be known as the Cyber
Threat Intelligence Integration Center (CTIIC)
…
its
focus will be integrating intelligence about cyber-threats and
providing analysis to policymakers and operators, she explained.
…
The
center will not collect intelligence; it will only analyze and
integrate information already collected by other sources, she added.
Perhaps
I should send all 10,000,000 an email to let them know?
Dan
Goodin reports:
A security consultant has published 10 million passwords along with
their corresponding usernames in a move he characterized as both
necessary and legally risky given a legal landscape he said
increasingly threatens the free flow of hacking-related information.
Most of the existing corpus of passwords exposed in hack attacks is
stripped of usernames, preventing researchers from studying the
possible relationship between the two fields.
Read
more on Ars
Technica.
Related:
Mark
Burnett’s blog post
When
everyone is required to report a breach, I'll release an App that
finds this information and delivers it to any Class Action lawyer who
pays my fee. (If I charge $0.99 per breach and there are a bazillion
security breaches each year, I should be able to buy my own brewery!)
Telecompaper
reports:
The lower house of the Dutch parliament has approved legislation
requiring businesses and organisations to report security breaches of
personal data they hold. The Law on Personal Information will be
expanded to include the new requirement, which applies to businesses
of all sizes as well as public sector agencies.
Read
more on Telecompaper.
Marketing
is always inventing new ways to intrude on any technological
experience. Imagine this coming in the middle of a sales pitch to
Coca Cola.
Samsung
Smart TVs 'inserting ads' into video apps
Users
of Samsung's Smart TVs are complaining that advertisements are being
inserted into their own locally-stored programmes and films without
their permission.
In a
post on the Reddit community website, several Australian users of the
Plex app on Samsung Smart TVs reported their viewing had been
interrupted half way through by a Pepsi video ad.
Unless
you opted out, Google is in (location) data gathering mode.
Use
this trick to see a map of everywhere Google knows you've been
If
you have a Gmail account or use any of Google's apps, there's a good
chance Google has some of your location data stored in its systems.
Luckily,
there's an easy way to see exactly what Google knows about where
you've been, and you can even see a map of past locations you have
visited.
This
all depends on whether you have enabled two settings tied to your
Google account: location reporting and location history. Of
course Google lets you turn these settings off at any time,
and it even
offers step-by-step instructions.
Google
is helping us move towards a healthier world! (Any liability here?)
Article 1
A
Healthier Google Knowledge Graph
Google
is adding a range of health-related
information to its Knowledge Graph. This means that when someone
searches for the answer to a common health question, Google will
present the relevant information at the top of the results page.
Information
presented in this way includes “typical symptoms and treatments
… how common the condition is … whether it’s critical, if
it’s contagious, what ages it affects, and
more.” Some results will be augmented by helpful
illustrations.
The
good
news for hypochondriacs is that all the information has been
compiled, curated, and reviewed by real medical doctors. Even so,
Google is at pains to point out that the
medical information contained in its Knowledge Graph should only
be considered the first step, and people should still consult a
healthcare professional if they need to do so.
I
guess I knew that, just never heard it stated so clearly.
Ed.
Note, this post offers a preview of the authors’ upcoming
article in the Santa Clara Law Review: The Notice Paradox: Secret
Surveillance, Criminal Defendants & the Right to Notice.
…
Though few may realize it, the
public today depends on the people it is desperately trying to put in
prison—criminal defendants, often in terrorism cases no
less—to litigate the
privacy rights of millions.
Just
a thought, should all those “connected things” on the Internet of
Things have kill switches? (In case someone wants to steal my
refrigerator or my thermostat.)
Smartphone
theft in London down by half thanks to 'kill switches'
Thefts
involving smartphones have reportedly decreased by 50 per cent in
London, since manufacturers began implementing 'kill switches' that
allow the phones to be deactivated remotely.
Smartphone
theft has also dropped in San Francisco and New York by 40 per cent
and 25 per cent respectively, authorities said on Tuesday.
I
might use this then again I might make my students use it. Yeah, my
students.
Flipboard
launches a full web version with design cues from Medium and
Pinterest
Today
Flipboard is unleashing the full version of its magazine-aggregating
app on the web, in a sleek new interface that looks like a mix
between Medium and Pinterest.
…
In the new web version, rather than flipping pages, Flipboard serves
up content in modules containing pictures, headlines, and
occasionally a leading sentence.
Here
are a few examples that show off the platform’s new visual
capabilities:
- Designica, a magazine that combines trippy animated GIFs with trippy soundtracks from Soundcloud, curated by Flipboard CEO Mike McCue [You should sit down before viewing this one. Bob]
- The Hipster, a magazine of things that are too cool for you, by Gus Gostyla
- The Explorer, a magazine curated by former NFL player and NASA astronaut Leland Melvin
For
all my students.
Google
Celebrates ‘Safer Internet Day’ With Security Checkup, 2GB Of
Free Google Drive Space
While
it’s not quite the 100GB
of free One Drive cloud storage space that Microsoft is giving
away if you sign up for Bing Rewards, Google is giving away freebies
of its own to commemorate Safer Internet Day. In an effort to ensure
that users are protected against hackers and other cyber threats,
Google is asking its users to complete its Security
Checkup by February 17.
The
Security Checkup prompts you to verify your account recovery options
(email, phone), gives you a listing of recent sign-ins on your
account to help you spot any suspicious activity, and allows you to
confirm or remove app that have access to your Google account
information.
I
collect anything I can use to harass my Math students.
Insert
Graphs and Equations Into Google Docs and Forms
One
of the most frequently asked questions in my
webinars and workshops about Google Drive is, "how can I add
math problems to my Form?" Thanks to Google Forms Add-ons there
is a rather simple answer to this question now. g(Math)
is a Google Forms Add-on that allows you to insert graphs and
mathematical expressions into your Google Forms.
To
get the Add-on select "get Add-ons" from the Add-ons menu
in Google Forms. Then search for g(Math).
Click the install button, give the Add-on permission to access your
account, and then you're ready to go. To insert graphs and equations
into your Form select g(Math) from your Add-ons menu and follow the
directions that pop-up on the right side of the screen.
g(Math)
is also available as an Add-on for Google Docs. The process of
installing it and using it is the same as it is for the Google Forms
versions of g(Math).
Have
your phone read your textbook to you?
Read
& Write for iPad and Android - Text to Speech and More
The
popular Chrome app Read
& Write for Google is now available as a free
iPad app and as a free
Android app. According to the email I received from Read &
Write's product manager the new apps are essentially keyboards that
allow users to access the support tools that have made Read &
Write for Google popular over the last couple of years. Some of
those popular tools include text-to-speech, a talking dictionary, and
a picture dictionary.
The
Read
& Write iPad app and Android
app provide text-to-speech functionality for free forever. The
other features are free as a one month trial. But teachers
who use their Google Accounts to sign into the apps (use your
school-issued Google Account) can get all of the features for free.
Click
here for information on getting a Read & Write account with
your Google Apps for Edu account.
Undo
reliance, in one image.
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