A
very strange thing to say – unless of course it's budget time.
US
Military Not Ready to Wage Digital Attack: Official
The
US military is well equipped to defend the country against
cyberattacks but is not yet ready to wage digital warfare, a senior
defense official told lawmakers on Tuesday.
The
military's cyber command, created in 2009, lacks the means to lead an
offensive campaign in a fast-moving digital conflict, said Eric
Rosenbach, the Pentagon's principal adviser on cyber security.
…
His
comments were unusual because officials
previously have suggested the military was ready
to lead an offensive digital campaign if necessary.
Rosenbach
told senators there was no
shortage of resources or funding for cyber command but
there were technical and manpower problems that had to be tackled.
Trust
no one! (Can millions of PowerBall, MegaMillions, etc. losers sue to
recover the cost of their tickets?) As I tell my Computer Security
students, conversion (getting the cash) is the hardest part of
computer thefts.
US
lottery security boss charged with fixing draw
Eddie
Raymond Tipton was the security director for the Multi-State Lottery
Association when he was arrested in January by the Iowa Division of
Criminal Investigations.
Prosecutors
said he had been caught on CCTV buying the winning ticket. The $14.3m
(£9.5m) prize was never claimed.
…
The offline computer is housed in a glass room and in theory can
only be accessed by two people at the same time. It is also
constantly monitored by a video camera.
It
is alleged Mr Tipton used his position as security director to change
the video camera settings and record only one second in every minute.
This would have given him enough time to enter the room and plug a
thumb drive into the computer.
…
The court filings suggest there was an attempt to claim the prize
just hours before it was scheduled to expire by a company
incorporated in Belize.
Emails
are expensive. They may cost you your job.
Email
Phishing Attacks Take Just Minutes to Hook Recipients
If
you work in IT security, you’ve got one minute and 20 seconds to
save your company from being hacked. This is not a drill. It’s
the median time it takes for an employee to open a phishing
email that lands on a company’s network and in their inbox,
setting in motion a race to prevent data from leaking. That’s
according to the new Verizon Breach Investigations Report,
…
Verizon noted that 23 percent of recipients open phishing messages.
But simply opening an email won’t necessarily install malware on a
machine. More dangerous are the 11 percent of recipients who go so
far as to click on malicious attachments.
…
“Unfortunately, the proportion of breaches discovered within days
still falls well below that of time to compromise,” Verizon notes
in the report.
Typically,
it takes months if not years to uncover a breach. In 2012, for
example, FireEye reported that the average
cyberespionage attack continued unabated for 458 days before the
victim discovered the hack. Prior to this, it was normal to find
attackers had been in a network two or three years before discovery.
Another
security report.
Report
Explores Evolution of Targeted Attack Tactics in 2014
As
user habits evolve, so do the tactics of attackers.
It
should come as little surprise then that as enterprises upgraded to
newer versions of Windows in 2014, the amount of 64-bit Windows
malware being used in attack campaigns increased as well.
According
to researchers at Trend Micro, this is just one example of how
targeted attacks are
evolving with the times.
…
"Government
agencies remained the most favored attack targets in 2014,"
Trend Micro blogged. "In the second half of the year, we saw a
spike in the number of attacks that targeted hardware/software
companies, consumer electronics manufacturers, and health care
providers."
The
full report can be read
here.
Coming
soon to a law school near me?
Pablo Palazzi writes
that providing data protection courses in law school is a growing
trend in Latin America. Of note,
In Chile there is a seminar taking place on April 22 and 23 in the School of Law of University of Chile, in Santiago (Chile).
This year I will be teaching for the first time a data protection seminar in San Andres University. It is an eight week course designed to cover the general principles of privacy and data protection plus some special sectors like telecom, internet, credit reporting and marketing. The course is part of a Program of Internet law that we are unveiling this year in the School of Law of San Andres University and that will cover also other courses.
The
medium is the message but not the person? Perhaps a bit more legal
research is indicated? (Digest Item 1)
Judge
Rules Against Content Owners
A
District Court Judge in Florida has dealt a serious blow to content
owners going after people pirating their movies. These filmmakers
and movie studios have long argued that an
IP address is evidence enough that someone has pirated a movie.
But Judge Ursula Ungaro fundamentally disagrees with this assumption.
According
to TorrentFreak,
Judge Ungaro refused to issue a subpoena against someone accused of
pirating action flick Manny based on nothing other than
their IP address. When she asked the company bringing the claim to
explain their thinking, they argued that doing anything other than
granting a subpoena would set a “dangerous precedent.” They
also suggested that “all other courts” have accepted the notion
that an IP address equates to a person.
In
response to these assertions, Judge Ungaro referenced other cases
where courts have ruled against IP addresses being sufficient
evidence, and dismissed the case against one particular IP address.
Which is a small but significant victory against copyright trolls who
maintain you’re guilty until proven innocent.
Perspective.
My students have never known otherwise (even if they don't know who
Moore is)
Report
– 50 Years of Moore’s Law
by
Sabrina
I. Pacifici on Apr 14, 2015
SPECIAL
REPORT: 50 Years of Moore’s Law The glorious history and inevitable
decline of one of technology’s greatest winning streaks, IEEE
Spectrum – “Fifty years ago this month, Gordon Moore forecast a
bright future for electronics. His ideas were later distilled into a
single organizing principle—Moore’s Law—that has driven
technology forward at a staggering clip. We have all benefited from
this miraculous development, which has forcefully shaped our modern
world. In this special report, we find that the end won’t be
sudden and apocalyptic but rather gradual and complicated. Moore’s
Law truly is the gift that keeps on giving—and surprising, as
well.”
I
found this on Google News.
This
is the most brutal quote from the EU investigation into Google's
alleged monopoly
The
EU handed Google a double headache today, by releasing a statement
alleging that its search
results were biased to illegally maintain Google's monopoly in
Europe, and by saying it had started a new probe into whether Google
uses restrictive, uncompetitive agreements to sustain Android's
dominant market share of the mobile phone business.
If
you want to get an idea of just how negatively the European
Commission on competition sees Google right now, then skip
to this section of its statement on how it believes Google
handles online shopping search results.
(Related)
There's
no way Google is going to pay Europe a $6 billion fine
…
The EU probably wants Google to make a simple change
Margrethe
Vestager, the member of the European Commission who issued its
statement of objection, said that the Commission doesn't want to
interfere with Google's design or search algorithm. Instead, it just
wants the company to put the relevant shopping results at the top of
its search pages — whether they're from Google or not.
I
guess we can't have nice things!
Segway
bought by Chinese rival Ninebot
For
all my students. Should everyone have this App on their phones for
emergencies?
FireChat:
How to Chat Without Wifi or a Signal
Slow connection? Can’t find Wi-Fi? No problem!
The FireChat app allows users to stay connected off the grid.
… Traditionally, users sent messages to each
other through data or Wi-Fi networks. The messages are sent through
a mobile network to a hotspot or cell phone tower. The data sent
through to these data towers or Wi-Fi hotspots are then relayed
through a centralized network and eventually the messages or data is
received. During all of this data transfer period, your VPN is
tracked. Though you can use a
VPN service to protect your mobile data, information about your
network can be tracked.
If you’re not sure how it works, read this
excellent article on how to add
security to your connection with a VPN.
Unlike most chatting apps, the FireChat app
doesn’t rely solely on Wi-Fi or data – it doesn’t even need a
hotspot or centralized mobile network to relay data. Instead, the
app relies on peer-to-peer connections through wireless mesh
networking via Bluetooth or Wi-Fi, technology built in the phone. As
long as the FireChat users are within 100 feet of each other, they
can connect and share massages.
Additionally, the ability to receive and request
data without a centralized mobile network allows users of the
FireChat app to stay “off the grid” and remain anonymous.
[Available
for bot iOS and Android: http://opengarden.com/FireChat/
Tools
for my students.
5
Minimalist RSS Readers Still in the News Feed Game
…
the numbers show that RSS
is still alive and will remain that way for years to come.
Plenty
of alternatives
to Google Reader have sprung up since its demise, but many of
them are packed with too
many features. Others, like Feedly, are still popular
despite some
shady history. But what if you want something simpler? A reader
that delivers news without any distractions?
That’s
when we turn to minimalistic RSS
readers, which may not be so popular but are definitely worth
trying. Here are a few that might work well for you.
Just
because... (Digest Item6)
Stephen
Hawking Does Monty Python
And finally, it’s not every day you see a
theoretical physicist singing a Monty Python song. But today is that
day. The theoretical physicist in question is none other than
Stephen Hawking, and the Monty Python song he’s singing is Galaxy
Song from The Meaning of Life.
Hawking has a close association with Python,
having appeared in their live shows in London last year. But it’s
still surprising to see and hear him performing Galaxy Song.
This cover version is being released on digital and vinyl this
weekend. Why? Why not?!
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