Sunday, November 15, 2015

An interesting description of a DDOS attack for my Computer Security students to ponder. Was attacker number two state sponsored?
Exclusive: Inside the ProtonMail siege: how two small companies fought off one of Europe's largest DDoS attacks
… Chillingly, "the second attacker has never made any demands or publicly taken credit," said Yen, describing the second, more massive attack wave. "Their sole intention was to keep ProtonMail offline."




Unfortunately a very common response. How will my Computer Security students find out about claims their security is inadequate?
Class 12 student finds Gauhati University website highly insecure, says can be hacked through phone
… Rony Das, a class XII student of Bongaigaon Railway HS School hacked into the servers of the Gauhati University website through his Android phone in December last year and informed the university registrar through a mail immediately. While Rony thought the vulnerabilities he pointed out to the university was rectified, he was shocked to find that the issue wasn't resolved till last week.




Your phone is taking calls from advertisers and not telling you? Perhaps we should keep phones in an audio (and radio?) proof container, taking it out only when we want to use it. How much surveillance will we tolerate?
Beware of ads that use inaudible sound to link your phone, TV, tablet, and PC
Privacy advocates are warning federal authorities of a new threat that uses inaudible, high-frequency sounds to surreptitiously track a person's online behavior across a range of devices, including phones, TVs, tablets, and computers.
The ultrasonic pitches are embedded into TV commercials or are played when a user encounters an ad displayed in a computer browser. While the sound can't be heard by the human ear, nearby tablets and smartphones can detect it. When they do, browser cookies can now pair a single user to multiple devices and keep track of what TV commercials the person sees, how long the person watches the ads, and whether the person acts on the ads by doing a Web search or buying a product.
The user is unaware of the audio beacon, but if a smart device has an app on it that uses the SilverPush software development kit, the software on the app will be listening for the audio beacon and once the beacon is detected, devices are immediately recognized as being used by the same individual. SilverPush states that the company is not listening in the background to all of the noises occurring in proximity to the device. The only factor that hinders the receipt of an audio beacon by a device is distance and there is no way for the user to opt-out of this form of cross-device tracking.




Interesting article. At least, I find it so.
IBM’s Design-Centered Strategy to Set Free the Squares
… IBM, like many established companies, is confronting the relentless advance of digital technology. For these companies, the question is: Can you grow in the new businesses faster than your older, lucrative businesses decline?
Mr. Gilbert answers that question with something called design thinking. (His title is general manager of design.) Among other things, design thinking flips traditional technology product development on its head. The old way is that you come up with a new product idea and then try to sell it to customers. In the design thinking way, the idea is to identify users’ needs as a starting point.
… . When Mr. Gilbert first showed up at the graduate design school at Stanford, he was greeted with skepticism. “These are millennials in Silicon Valley — they think Google is an old company,” Mr. Burnett said, recalling their first impression. “To them, IBM was a historical relic.”




I love it when my geeky students get all giggly. This kind of article can do that.
Want an open-source deep learning framework? Take your pick




One way to look at employee monitoring.


No comments: