Another victory for the hijackers. (And some
really bad reporting?)
WBTW reports that a South Carolina school district
is paying a ransom demand because
they have no way to access 25 servers with elementary
school data after their system was locked up by ransomware:
The Horry County school system remains locked out of several servers after a ransom computer virus got into the system last week.
Charles Hucks is the executive director of technology for Horry County Schools, he’s had non-stop 20 hour days this past week to try to restore locked up data. The virus was discovered last Monday. Servers were immediately shut down to stop the malware from spreading further, and that did interrupt some online services.
Hucks says HCS was not targeted to gain access to data, but a high-level encryption was used to lock up the data on the schools’ servers. As far as they can tell, nothing was stolen or removed, and staff and student information is safe.
Hucks says they have been able to back up most of the lost data, but 25 servers with information for elementary schools are still encrypted with no way to get in.
“And the only way we’ll get it back is to pay,” said Hucks.
Read more on WBTW.
[From
the article:
Administrators approved an $8,500 ransom to unlock
the servers, but they’ve had trouble making the payment. Hucks
says the ransom had to be paid in Bitcoins, but purchasing them is
more difficult than going to your local bank.
… “In the next few days we should know.
We’re going server by server, back up by back up, to see exactly
what we have and the time that it takes to back up, so that will be a
business decision,” said Hucks.
Hucks says they’re willing to pay because it’s
a small amount compared to the man hours already lost trying to solve
the problem.
Even if the ransom is paid, and the data restored,
there’s no guaranteed way to stop the same kind of thing from
happening again, although Hucks says a repeat attack is highly
unlikely.
Interesting what trickles out over time. Did
someone change the password and now forgets what it is?
Apple-U.S.
Escalate Battle Over San Bernardino Shooter's iPhone
… Apple executives said on Friday that they
tried to help law enforcement unlock the phone, including sending
engineers to San Bernardino. Apple employees attempted to help
investigators reconnect the handset to a Wi-Fi network that Farook
had used in the past, a move that would allow the data to be
available because the phone would automatically back up and move
outside Apple’s encryption barriers. But
the effort wasn’t possible because the iPhone’s Apple ID password
had been reset by a county official after the shooting.
Had the password not been changed, Apple said the
court battle wouldn’t have been necessary.
… The confrontation shows no signs of a quick
ending. Apple faces a Feb. 26 deadline to file its rebuttal to the
government’s argument in court, with a hearing scheduled for March
22. Apple and FBI officials have been asked to testify in at least
two congressional hearings.
… Apple has previously complied with
prosecutors when they had a court order under the All Writs Act, a
law that compels third parties to take “non-burdensome” steps to
help law enforcement carry out search warrants. Apple’s cooperation
changed recently when a judge in Brooklyn, in a case involving the
iPhone of an accused drug dealer, questioned whether the government
can still rely on that law.
… In the Farook case, the data the
investigators are after is stored locally on the iPhone -- Apple has
already provided the information that was backed up. The
government doesn’t have the password and said it can’t
keep entering random codes in hopes of eventually breaking in because
that would trigger a security feature that automatically erases all
the content on the phone.
(Related) Go to Harvard, learn how to state the
obvious? Still, it is amusing.
Apple vs.
the FBI Is Really, Really Complicated
… The lock-swapping mechanism required in this
case would require Apple’s engineers to sit down at a computer and
start writing. And that action, as courts recognized long ago, is
speech. In Bernstein v. Department of Justice, the Electronic
Frontier Foundation successfully argued that David Bernstein, then a
graduate student at Berkeley, had a constitutionally protected right
to publish his source code, despite the government’s efforts to
block it. (Fittingly enough, the code was for encryption software,
which the government tried to suppress on the theory that encryption
software is a munition subject to export controls.) If code is
speech, and the government is compelling Apple to code, then it looks
an awful lot like the government is compelling speech. That does not
resolve the issue, of course, but it opens up a new field for debate
– one that has not receive enough attention.
(Related) John may be a bit delusional. Read and
judge for yourself.
Why John
McAfee’s offer to unlock San Bernardino iPhone makes sense
… Yesterday he posted
an op-ed on Business Insider that explained his position on this
matter, and why he thinks his solution would appease all parties
involved.
The FBI's job is completely impossible – or am I
too optimistic?
'Ricochet',
the Messenger That Beats Metadata, Passes Security Audit
Although users are now
saturated with options on mobile and desktop for encrypted
messaging, very few of the tools available deal with the core problem
of metadata. Even if the content of your messages is kept from
prying eyes, it may still be possible for a resourceful attacker to
see who you are, and who you're talking to.
Now, one program designed to tackle that problem
head-on has passed its first professional security audit, signaling
that it is on the right track for wider use. Ricochet, which is
available for Windows, Mac and Linux, announced
the audit results on Monday.
No doubt we (the university) will want to look
into this. (There is an Education membership)
Microsoft,
Intel, Samsung, & others launch IoT standards group: Open
Connectivity Foundation
The Open Connectivity Foundation (OCF)
is touted as an open IoT standards group to unify standards, expedite
innovation, and “create IoT solutions and devices that work
seamlessly together,” according to a press
release. Founding members include
Microsoft, Cisco, Electrolux, General Electric, Intel, Qualcomm,
Samsung, ARRIS, and CableLabs, who will work together to create
specifications and protocols to ensure devices from a myriad of
manufacturers work in harmony.
Worth watching the video?
A Crash
Course on Philosophy
Last fall I shared more than 100
animated lessons about philosophy. This week, through Open
Culture, I learned about a new Crash
Course in philosophy. The new video course stars Hank Green
talking about the origins of philosophical thinking. As I've come to
expect with Hank and John Green there is a fair amount of sarcasm in
the videos. So far two segments of the course have been published.
Both segments are included in the playlist embedded below.
Tools & Techniques Because we no longer teach
cursive? I'll mention this to my students because I still pretend
they take notes in my classes.
Microsoft
fields another notetaking app: Plumbago
Microsoft has released a
new notetaking app for WIndows 8.1 and Windows 10 tablets called
Plumbago.
… Plumbago "is a digital notebook with
technology that smooths out handwriting so your scribbles are easier
to read later," explained Microsoft execs. The "handwriting
beautification" technology involves matching strokes across
the thousands written by a user in order to create more consistent
handwriting.
Not just templates…
5 Sites
with Microsoft PowerPoint Templates, & Other Tools
Participoll
(Windows): Poll Your Audience During Your PowerPoint Presentation
Office
Mix (Windows): Turn PowerPoint Presentations into Interactive
Websites
Not just a screenshot.
The
Instructional Technology Tool I Recommend in Email More Than Any
Other
Every week I receive at least a handful of emails
from readers who have watched one of my Practical
Ed Tech tutorial videos and wanted to know how I created the
video. Often those people want to know how I get the yellow circle
to appear around my cursor in my videos. The answer to both
questions is, I use Screencast-o-Matic
to create my instructional videos.
Screencast-O-Matic is available in a free version
and a pro version. The
free version allows you to record for up to fifteen minutes at a time
(that is plenty of time for most screencasts), publish to YouTube in
HD, and save videos to your computer as MP4, AVI, and FLV files.
The pro version ($15/year) includes video editing tools, unlimited
recording lengths, a script tool, and removal of the
Screencast-O-Matic watermark. Both versions of Screencast-O-Matic
include a highlighted circle around your cursor so that viewers can
easily follow your movements on the screen. A webcam recording
option is included in the free and pro versions of
Screencast-O-Matic.
… Screencast videos can be helpful in
delivering instruction on how to use a program on a computer or how
to use a website. You can also use screencasting tools to create
short flipped lessons by capturing yourself talking over a set of
slides that you display on your screen.
Ah good. It must be Saturday.
Hack
Education Weekly News
… Via
Education Week: “CoSN Calls Broadband Access Outside School a
‘Civil Right’ for Students.”
The
report, which calls the matter an issue of "civil rights,"
indicated that 75 percent of school district leaders have no data on
their students' Internet access outside of school, while 70 percent
of teachers nationally report assigning homework that requires
access.
… Via
the Independent: “Pirate website offering millions of academic
papers for free refuses to close despite lawsuit.”
… “MOOC provider Coursera claims it can
identify test takers uniquely through its patented keystroke
biometrics system.” Paul-Olivier
Dehaye looks “under the hood.”
… Via
Inside Higher Ed: “Study suggests acceptance of online
education still lags among high school students.”
… Via
the Daily Camera: “Conflict between Shakespeare and the Dead
will cost CU athletics
$100K.” (That’s the surviving members of the Grateful Dead, to be
clear.) [Colorado
kulture? Bob]
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