Strange actions for a “bug.” Debit cards
would be an interesting infrastructure target for someone testing
CyberWar tools. Just saying...
Federal
Consumer Watchdog Investigating Russell Simmons’ RushCard
The federal consumer watchdog said Friday that it
has launched an investigation into RushCard, a prepaid debit-card
business co-founded by hip-hop music producer Russell Simmons after
thousands of customers lost access to funds in their accounts.
Mr. Simmons has said on RushCard’s Facebook
page that a technology update on Oct. 12 triggered a series of
problems that cut off some customers’ access to their money. Some
customers’ cards were deactivated and others saw the same
transaction appear twice in their statements, he said.
In a post on Wednesday, Mr. Simmons said the
company had been debugging its systems and that most customers’
cards should be working normally.
… Prepaid cards, which target low-income
consumers who lack regular checking accounts or credit cards, are
among the fastest-growing financial products in the U.S., with an
estimated 16 million cards in circulation.
Customers load cash or receive direct deposits
from employers, and use them to make payments, store funds or get
cash at ATMs.
Lots of interesting angles to this one. Is the
ransom demand from the hacker or someone pretending to be the hacker.
Are we headed toward “security by contract?” I guess we'll have
to stay tuned.
TalkTalk
attack: government urged to do more on cyber crime
… Police are investigating a ransom demand
sent to the telecoms company after its chief executive, Dido Harding,
said a person claiming to be the hacker had contacted her directly
and demanded money in exchange for the data.
Oliver Parry, the Institute of Directors’ senior
corporate governance adviser, told the BBC that police should make
cybercrime an urgent priority, but added that companies “are
ultimately responsible for protecting their customers’ data”.
There have been questions about how well TalkTalk
secured its customers’ data after Harding admitted she did not know
whether details including names, addresses and bank account numbers
were encrypted. It was the company’s third major data breach in
the past year.
… Proof
of adequate cyber security could be made a condition of government
contracts, said Hazel Blears, the former MP who has been
counter-terrorism minister and a member of the parliamentary
intelligence and security committee.
She said the UK had been “a little bit tardy”
in waking up to the scale of the threat but must now seek tougher
rules to ensure data was protected.
Seems to be a rather soft response to the OPM
hack.
Intelligence agencies are warning their staffers
about keeping safe on Facebook, Twitter and other social media sites
following the massive theft of government personnel files.
The Office of the Director of National
Intelligence released two videos and a poster on Friday as part of an
effort to keep intelligence agency staffers secure from foreign
spies.
The poster was released along with two YouTube
videos.
One
shows a man presumably working at an intelligence agency who
unknowingly passes information along to a “foreign intel ops
center” by looking for a new job on Facebook. Another
encourages intelligence officials to protect themselves from “social
media deception.”
Could this change how software is licensed?
Justice
Department Wants Court To Force Apple To Decrypt iPhones Because
Apple Licenses, Not Sells, iOS
… The feds want access to an iPhone 5s owned
by a man who's now a defendant in a drug case and currently facing
accusations of possessing and distributing meth. Apple has declined
to hand over the keys to iOS, stating that, among several reasons,
any backdoor access creates new vulnerabilities.
… Apple argued that giving the government
special access into iOS, which it touts as being out of reach of
federal snoops, would "tarnish the Apple brand."
"Absent Apple's assistance, the government
cannot access that evidence without risking its destruction. But
Apple can," states
the court brief (PDF).
Apple has assisted in federal cases before by
extracting the requested data and passing it along to law enforcement
agencies, the DOJ reasoned in the brief.
So with Apple unwilling to budge and court orders
falling flat, thus far, the department changed its tactics and is now
arguing that the company "is not far removed from this matter."
Apple designed, built and sold the iPhone 5s in
question. But that's just the beginning, the government stated.
"Apple wrote and owns the software that runs
the phone, and this software is thwarting the execution of the
warrant," the justice department added. "Apple's software
licensing agreement specifies that iOS 7 software is 'licensed, not
sold' and that users are merely granted 'a limited non-exclusive
license to use the iOS Software.'"
From there, the DOJ calls into question the legal
protection of Apple as a licensor of software.
… For privacy watchdogs, the above argument
might invoke goosebumps. If the DOJ's reasoning stands, it could
take up that strategy with other companies giving out licenses to
software.
Perspective. My students will go where the money
is.
The Cloud
Is Raining Cash on Amazon, Google, and Microsoft
Amazon.com, Google, and Microsoft all topped
profit estimates last quarter, highlighting the widening gulf between
companies that deliver computing via server-laden warehouses and a
generation of latecomers to the cloud boom. Together, the three
companies added $86 billion in market cap following their earnings
reports on Thursday.
The trio shares a reliance on technology that
comes from powerful machines lashed together in bunkers the size of
football fields. These data centers are capable of providing a broad
range of services at a low cost—be it Microsoft's personal and
business software, Amazon's e-commerce and computing power, or
Google's Web search and advertising algorithms. Contrast that with
technology firms, such as IBM, Hewlett-Packard, EMC, and Oracle,
which are suffering from slowing growth or declines as cloud
operators shun traditional hardware, software, and services.
Perspective. One site to rule them all? (Sorry
J.R.R.)
72 Hours
With Facebook Instant Articles
On Tuesday, Facebook debuted its long-awaited
Instant Articles feature to all users of its iPhone app. Now, when
someone taps a story in their News Feed from a select group of
publications—including The New York Times, The Washington Post,
Buzzfeed, and The Atlantic—they
access a version stored directly on Facebook’s servers, not on the
publication’s own. The company has started to test the
feature on Android phones as well.
With the formal release of the feature, Facebook
formally ends one era in the platform wars and begins another.
Since August 2013, when
it adjusted the algorithm of its News Feed to favor “quality
content,” Facebook has been the major referrer to news
sites—either the fastest-growing or the just-plain biggest. Over
the summer, the analytics company Parsely said that its proprietary
data confirmed that Facebook
now directs more traffic to news sites than Google.
“The list is a lot longer than is publicly known of those that have
Facebook delivering half to two-thirds of their traffic right now,”
said Justin Smith, the CEO of Bloomberg Media, in
February of this year.
… Very soon, every digital publisher,
journalistic or non, that wants to be a serious online player will
host a large portion of their content on Facebook’s servers. The
Instant Articles is just too good to resist, and I think the penalty
for resisting will be too high. And then we all, Facebook and the
media sector alike, will have to deal with the consequences—whether
the comparisons to feudalism are correct or not.
Amusing. I don't always have the time to read the
longer articles, but I know where to look when I do. It's in my RSS
feed.
JSTOR Daily
– free online magazine
by Sabrina
I. Pacifici on Oct 23, 2015
“JSTOR
Daily offers a fresh way for people to understand and
contextualize their world. Our writers provide insight, commentary,
and analysis of ideas, research, and current events, tapping into the
rich scholarship on JSTOR,
a digital library of more than 2,000 academic journals, dating back
to the first volume ever published, along with thousands of
monographs, and other material. In addition to weekly feature
articles, the magazine publishes daily blog posts that provide the
backstory to complex issues of the day in a variety of subject areas,
interviews with and profiles of scholars and their work, and much
more. Our idea of a good story is one that:
- tells thought-provoking stories that appeal to a general reader
- draws on scholarly research to provide fresh insight into the news media and current affairs
- deepens our understanding of our world
- highlights the amazing content found on JSTOR
- exposes the work of scholars who are using JSTOR to conduct their research”
The weekly low-lights.
Hack
Education Weekly News
… Via
Vox: “What Scotland learned from making college tuition free.”
… Via
Inside Higher Ed: “On Wednesday 72 women’s and civil rights
organizations urged the
U.S. Education Department to tell colleges that they must monitor
anonymous apps like Yik Yak – frequently the source of
sexist and racist comments about named or identifiable students –
and do something to protect those students who are named. The groups
said they view anonymous online abuse as an emerging issue under
provisions of the Title IX of the Education Amendments of 1972.”
… Via
Inside Higher Ed: “The University of Kentucky is asking a small
distillery, Kentucky Mist Moonshine, to stop using the word
‘Kentucky’ on T-shirts and other materials, saying that the word
is covered by a university trademark.”
… From a paper titled “Changing
Distributions: How Online College Classes Alter Student and Professor
Performance”: “Using an instrumental variables approach and
data from DeVry University, this study finds that, on average, online
course-taking reduces student learning by one-third to one-quarter of
a standard deviation compared to conventional in-person classes.
Taking a course online also reduces student learning in future
courses and persistence in college.”
Wally illustrates “objection to change #47.”
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