Monday, May 30, 2016

Imagine this as practice for a serious attack.  If it was, they wouldn’t tell us how the servers were hacked. 
J.F.K. Computer Glitch Wreaks Havoc on Air Passengers
A Verizon service disruption unleashed travel chaos at a terminal at Kennedy International Airport on Sunday night, grinding the check-in process to a near halt and forcing airline employees to hand-write boarding passes for thousands of unhappy passengers.
   Mr. Buccino said the server that provided wireless Internet and other computer services for the terminal had “some kind of problem.”  An airport official said the services were provided by Verizon, which did not offer a comment when reached on Sunday night.


Consider that either these companies concealed the breach, or minimized it, or never knew it occurred in the first place.  Any way you look at it, we’ve been underestimating the success of the Dark Side. 
The emergence of historical mega breaches
Over the period of this month, we've seen an interesting trend of data breaches.  Any one of these 4 I'm going to talk about on their own would be notable, but to see a cluster of them appear together is quite intriguing.
For example, just yesterday I loaded the Fling database (you probably don't want to go to fling dot com until you're in a private setting).  That was over 40 million records and the breach dates back to 2011.
A few days before that it was LinkedIn which has been pretty comprehensively covered in the press by now.  There's 164 million unique email addresses (out of about 167 million records in total), and that dates back to 2012.
Just now, I've finished loading tumblr into Have I been pwned (HIBP) with a grand total of over 65 million records dating back to 2013.
   But all of these will pale in comparison when the much-touted MySpace breach of 360 million records turns up.  Whilst I've not seen a date on when the breach actually occurred, c'mon, it's MySpace and you know it's going to date back a way.
   But here's what keeps me really curious: if this indeed is a trend, where does it end?  What more is in store that we haven't already seen?  And for that matter, even if these events don't all correlate to the same source and we're merely looking at coincidental timing of releases, how many more are there in the "mega" category that are simply sitting there in the clutches of various unknown parties?
I honestly don't know how much more data is floating around out there, but apparently it's much more than even I had thought only a week ago.


Will any of these services refuse to comply and cut Iran off? 
Iran orders social media sites to store data inside country


Interesting.  A way for them to find firms they can use and who will eventually use them in return? 
Dentons launches free law firm referral network
by Sabrina I. Pacifici on
“Dentons, the world’s largest law firm, today announced that it has created the only free law firm referral network.  Named “Nextlaw Global Referral Network,” it is based on a new technology platform that will allow member law firms to easily connect and track referrals.  Nextlaw Global Referral Network avoids the problems of existing referral networks by not charging a fee for membership and by not being territorially exclusive.  With free membership, the ability to have multiple firms with differing strengths in any city, and a technology platform that promotes reciprocal repeat referrals, Nextlaw Network is committed to connecting clients with the top talent around the world, and connecting high-quality firms with opportunities everywhere…”


Perspective.  Are my Architecture students ready for this?
A third of new cellular customers last quarter were cars
With the U.S. smartphone market saturated, most of the growth in the cellular industry is actually coming from other kinds of devices including tablets, machine-to-machine connections and lots and lots of cars.
In the first quarter, for example, the major carriers actually added more connected cars as new accounts than they did phones.
   When it comes to new accounts added, so-called "net adds," things were fairly split among cars, tablets, phones and industrial connections, according to a new report from industry consultant Chetan Sharma.


Let me know if you choose to bid.
Ernst & Young to sell $16 million in confiscated Bitcoin at auction in Sydney
Around $16 million worth of Bitcoin is up for auction in Sydney next month after they were confiscated as proceeds of crime last year. 
   The 24,518 Bitcoins were seized last year and will be split into 11 lots of 2,000 coins and one lot of approximately 2,518. Bidders are able to bid on one lot or multiple lots and bidding registration opens on June 1 and closes on June 7.
The 48-hour sealed auction will take place at 12.01am on 20 June. 

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