I guess Target didn't learn much from their
massive security breach. If I had been teaching Ethical Hacking this
Quarter, this would have made a nifty group project.
Dan Goodin reports:
According to researchers from security firm Avast, the database storing the names, e-mail addresses, home addresses, phone numbers, and wish lists of Target customers is available to anyone who figures out the app’s publicly available programming interface.
Read more on Ars
Technica.
[From
the article:
To our surprise, we discovered that the Target
app’s Application Program Interface (API) is easily accessible over
the Internet. An API is a set of conditions where if you ask a
question it sends the answer . Also, the
Target API does not require any authentication.
The only thing you need in order to parse all of the data
automatically is to figure out how the user ID is generated.
Once you have that figured out, all the data is served to you on a
silver platter in a JSON file.
Will reality match the dream?
Facebook,
Google and Twitter agree German hate speech deal
Facebook, Google and Twitter have agreed a deal
with Germany under which they will remove hate speech posted on their
websites within 24 hours.
German Justice Minister Heiko Maas said the
measures would ensure German law was applied online.
Social media cannot "become a funfair for the
far right," he said.
The agreement follows reports
of a rise [Rather
vague. “Yeah, I read all about it in some Blog. They said they
found more racist articles now that they can read.” Bob]
in online racism in Germany as the country manages an influx of up to
one million migrants and refugees in 2015.
… They would assess complaints using the
benchmark of German law "and no longer just the terms of use of
each network", he said.
"When the limits of free speech are
trespassed, when it is about criminal expressions, sedition,
incitement to carry out criminal offences that threaten people, such
content has to be deleted from the net," Mr Maas said.
Completely optional, for now. Soon, “What do
you have to hide?”
Rachel Emma Silverman reports:
Employers want workers to know what’s in their genes.
A handful of firms are offering employees free or subsidized tests for genetic markers associated with metabolism, weight gain and overeating, while companies such as Visa Inc., Slack Technologies Inc., Instacart Inc. recently began offering workers subsidized tests for genetic mutations linked to breast and ovarian cancer.
The programs provide employees with potentially life-saving information and offer counseling and coaching to prevent health problems down the road, benefits managers say.
Read more on WSJ.
What could possibly go wrong, right?
Perspective. That Internet of Things thing is
growing in importance. (No hints about how this will work.)
IBM Bets on
Watson With Global Research Center in Germany
… The company on Tuesday announced the opening
of a new global headquarters and research lab in Munich for a
division that will build Watson-based applications for Web-connected
devices. The facility and eight other global centers are part of a
$3 billion investment in the unit set out in March by Armonk, New
York-based International Business Machines Corp.
Looks like Heartland has recovered from the 2008
breach (~100 million cards)
Global
Payments to Buy Heartland Payment for $4.3 Billion
… “The combination of Global Payments and
Heartland will be transformative for the worldwide payments
industry,” Robert O. Carr, chief executive officer of Princeton,
New Jersey-based Heartland, said in the statement.
As consumers replace cash and checks with
electronic payments including credit cards and mobile phones,
companies that process transactions are rushing to consolidate.
Established firms are scooping up smaller competitors and merging
with companies abroad, repositioning themselves as technology for
handling transactions evolves.
… Global Payments had about 2.9 percent of the
global transactions processing market in 2014, while Heartland had
about 2.1 percent, according to the Nilson Report, an industry trade
publication and data service.
I didn't think this would go over too well.
Philips Hue
users outraged after firmware update blocks third-party light bulbs
There's an App for that! (Not really, but it
won't be long.)
SEC
Approves Plan to Issue Stock Via Bitcoin’s Blockchain
The Securities and Exchange Commission has
approved a plan from online retailer Overstock.com to issue
company stock via the Internet, signaling a significant
shift in the way financial securities will be distributed and traded
in the years to come.
Over the past year, Overstock and its
freethinking CEO, Patrick Byrne, have developed technology for
issuing financial securities by way of the blockchain, the vast
online
ledger underpinning the bitcoin digital currency. The blockchain
is essentially an enormous database that runs across a global network
of independent computers. With bitcoin, this ledger tracks the
exchange of money. But it can also track the exchange of anything
else that holds value, including stocks, bonds, and other financial
securities. Overstock has already used
the blockchain to issue private bonds, which did not require
explicit regulatory approval. Now, the SEC has told the company it
can issue public securities in much the same way.
Interesting (to me anyway) how closely this
parallels what Prof. Soma has done for years at the Privacy
Foundation seminars.
The
New Rules of Presentations
… Make no bones about it – the defining
factor in deciding where you sit on the presentation landscape is
your audience. This might sound like I’m stating the blindingly
obvious, but the reality is that few presenters make this leap.
They’re too busy thinking about their slides, [Slides
are forbidden. Bob] their breathing, or their attire to
take a moment to ask themselves the simple question – how would the
audience like to be presented to? Once you recognize that the
audience is the most important stakeholder in the whole presentation
process, it makes it a whole lot easier for presenters to focus on
engaging with the people in front of whom they are standing.
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