Thursday, June 09, 2016

Millions of individuals infected with malware?  Now do you feel like a twit?  
Twitter credentials are being traded in the tens of millions on the dark web.  LeakedSource has obtained and added a copy of this data to its ever-growing searchable repository of leaked data.  This data set was provided to us by a user who goes by the alias “[email protected]”, and has given us permission to name them in this blog.
[…]
You may search for yourself in the leaked Twitter.com credentials by visiting our homepage.  If your personal information appears in our copy of the Twitter credentials, or in any other leaked database that we possess, you may remove yourself for free
[…]
This data set contains 32,888,300 records.  Each record may contain an email address, a username, sometimes a second email and a visible password.  We have very strong evidence that Twitter was not hacked, rather the consumer was.  These credentials however are real and valid.  Out of 15 users we asked, all 15 verified their passwords.
The explanation for this is that tens of millions of people have become infected by malware, and the malware sent every saved username and password from browsers like Chrome and Firefox back to the hackers from all websites including Twitter.
You can search for your info on LeakedSource’s home page, here.  Read more on LeakedSource’s blog post about Twitter, here.


For my Computer Security students.  Policies do matter. 
Matt Robinson reports that Morgan Stanley has been fined $1 million by the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission to settle allegations that it failed to protect customer data improperly taken by a former financial adviser, Galen Marsh.
Marsh pleaded guilty in September, 2015 to making thousands of unauthorized searches on his employer’s system and to copying information on  730,000 accounts.  Marsh somehow managed to avoid prison and was sentenced in December to three years’ probation and $600,000 restitution.
But the SEC went after Morgan Stanley for its failure to protect all that customer data.  Today, they issued the following statement:
The SEC issued an order finding that Morgan Stanley failed to adopt written policies and procedures reasonably designed to protect customer data.  As a result of these failures, from 2011 to 2014, a then-employee impermissibly accessed and transferred the data regarding approximately 730,000 accounts to his personal server, which was ultimately hacked by third parties. 


For my Computer Security students.  Please share with other students.
Has Your Facebook Been Hacked? Here’s How to Tell (and Fix It)
   Thankfully, there are a few things that you can do to prevent an attack, and a few things you can do to fix your Facebook account if it does get hacked.
   Go to Settings > Security > Where You’re Logged In and click edit.  The information contained in the section will show where you’ve logged in and with what devices you signed in with.  For example, my last log in was in Cologne, Germany on my iPhone, which sounds about right.


An Infographic (because lawyers like pictures?)
How is Social Media Being Used in Court?


I’ll add students to this also.
How Academics and Researchers Can Get More Out of Social Media
In today’s digital age, social media competence is a critical communication tool for academics.  Whether you’re looking to engage students, increase awareness of your research, or garner media coverage for your department, engaging in social media will give you a competitive edge.


THE NEXT BIG THING?  I like pretending that I’m social.  Telling my students about new stuff makes it seem like I care!
Why You Will Want to Join Imzy — and How to Get an Invite Now!
Imzy is the latest big social network to hit the scene — and it’s set to dominate.  Here’s everything you need to know about why Imzy will be huge.


Big.  Really, really Big.
Big Data and the recency bias
by Sabrina I. Pacifici on
Via BBC – Tom Chatfield 5 June 2016 – “You may be familiar with the statistic that 90% of the world’s data was created in the last few years.  It’s true.  One of the first mentions of this particular formulation I can find dates back to May 2013, but the trend remains remarkably constant.  Indeed, every two years for about the last three decades the amount of data in the world has increased by about 10 times – a rate that puts even Moore’s law of doubling processor power to shame…  Here’s the problem with much of the big data currently being gathered and analysed.  The moment you start looking backwards to seek the longer view, you have far too much of the recent stuff and far too little of the old.  Short-sightedness is built into the structure, in the form of an overwhelming tendency to over-estimate short-term trends at the expense of history…”


I’m sure there is a lot of detail here.  How I should use it is still a work in progress.
E-Stats 2014 Report: Measuring the Electronic Economy
by Sabrina I. Pacifici on
“This report summarizes 2014 e-commerce statistics on shipments, sales and revenues from four sectors of the economy: manufacturing, wholesale, services and retail.  The report and tables can be found on the U.S. Census Bureau’s website at www.census.gov/econ/estats/.”


How to Use the Virtuapedia


Never!  Keep coding, dudes.  Yes, the frequency of 100 million download Apps is down, but it will still happen as “the next big thing” offers their App.  And my students only need a few million downloads at $.99 each to make their hobby pay.
Everyone needs to tell their college friends building an app to stop right now
The era of mobile apps is over, and Facebook - with a touch of Snapchat - won.
The following chart, which comes to us from Anthony DiClemente at Nomura, shows how Facebook absolutely dominates the mobile app space, owning four of the top five most-downloaded apps in May, with only Snapchat breaking up its stranglehold on the space.
   Last month, my colleague Kif Leswing reported that the top 1% of publishers in Apple's App Store collect 94% of the revenue.  In other words, the App Store has effectively become a winner-take-all environment.
Matt Rosoff also noted last month that the average number of apps on mobile phones has been stuck at 27 for four years straight.
People already have the apps they want, or they at least are tapped out at using a certain total number of apps, and so with the pie for mobile apps not getting any bigger, the giants of the space are accruing the gains.
And a market that has stopped scaling is not a market you want to try to break into.

(Related) Subscribers download once, pay every year for life!
Apple Overhauls App Store With Search Ads, Offers 85% Revenue Cut For Devs On App Subscriptions
   Apple marketing chief Phil Schiller explained that developers will now have the option to sell subscriptions to customers for any of their apps.  This could drastically change the landscape of the App Store ecosystem and the expectations of iOS users that are used to paying a few bucks for an app, or at most $9.99 if they’re really committed.
In return, developers will get a larger share of revenue — if they manage to keep customers long-term.  Under the current revenue-sharing model, developers get a 70 percent cut, while Apple gets the remaining 30 percent.  Under the new rules, that split will still stay in place if developers decide not to deploy app subscriptions.  But if developers do offer subscriptions, and customers stick around for at least a year, Apple’s cut drops down to just 15 percent.

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