Sometimes, I’d really love to know why.
Caitlin Mota reports:
Apparently, someone really
doesn’t like Harrison.
Since the West Hudson town’s
website was initially hacked on July 7, Harrison’s website has been
infiltrated seven more times in the past two weeks, officials said.
“These are highly intelligent
criminals who seek to cause havoc and destruction in the cyber world,” said
Nick Ayala of Scan Worx, the company that has managed the town’s website for
eight years. “Unfortunately, these are
the times we live in.”
Harrison Mayor James Fife told
The Jersey Journal this morning that the town’s website does not contain any
private information and no “sensitive material” has been compromised.
Read more on NJ.com.
[From the
article:
Asked if he knew why his town's website -- which is
currently offline -- is being targeted, Fife said it was "almost
impossible" to determine.
"I don't know why, I don't think anyone knows,"
the mayor said.
Ayala said Scan Worx
has put in hundreds of hours working to repair the website, along
with adding extra security features. [A
typical response. Why were they not
there in the first place? Bob]
For my Ethical Hacking students. Yet another example of a “new” technology
that security has not caught up with.
Encrypting communications has been around for thousands of years, but no
one thought it might apply to them?
Hackers Can Spy on Wireless Keyboards From Hundreds of Feet
Away
… According to research published Tuesday
by Bastille, a cybersecurity company, eight wireless keyboards manufactured by
major electronics companies transmit information in a way that makes it
possible for a hacker to eavesdrop on every sentence, password, credit card
number, and secret typed on them.
(Related) Every new technology needs to re-invent the
security wheel.
Wearables could compromise corporate data
As smartwatches and other wearables gain popularity,
experts are warning of potential data security risks in workplaces.
… Gillespie is
concerned that as smartwatches are allowed to attach to emails -- or internal
productivity software in some cases -- vital corporate and personal data could
be lost, stolen or corrupted.
The problem is only just emerging and few companies seem
to understand the potential harms, Gillespie and others said.
"As of now, wearables and Internet of Things devices
are not getting attached to employer networks and so it's not been viewed as a
serious problem," Gillespie said in an interview. "But I do think employer IT and HR
departments should be aware that the consumer rollout of wearables has not been
designed with enterprise data security in mind."
This is in Chicago. Think it will spread?
Joe Cadillic writes:
Nearly 1,500 people were arrested
earlier this year, because they were put on a police ‘Strategic
Subject List‘ (SSL). The SSL was formerly called
the ‘Heat
List‘ which started in 2013. (SSL is
just another term for Predictive
Policing)
According to CBS
Chicago police are using an algorithm to predict who’ll commit a crime
in the future!
The SSL uses an algorithm to
try to predict who is most likely to be involved in a shooting – either as the
shooter or victim – by analyzing data such as gang affiliations, criminal
records, past shootings, and previous contact with police.
Read more on MassPrivateI.
Perhaps Bitcoin is becoming more acceptable?
Europe's first regulated bitcoin product launches in
Gibraltar
Europe's first regulated bitcoin product - an asset-backed
exchange-traded instrument that will invest exclusively in the digital currency - begins trading this week
on the Gibraltar Stock Exchange and Germany's Deutsche Boerse.
The Web-based currency can
be used to send money instantly around the world, free of charge and with no
need for third-party checks. It is accepted by several major online retailers and
is used in more than 200,000 daily transactions.
Its value has been highly
volatile, peaking at more than$1,200 in late 2013 before crashing after the
collapse of the Mt. Gox bitcoin exchange. It has since stabilized somewhat, trading at
around $655 on Monday, up more than 50 percent this year.
(Related) It’s not money, but it is currency and you can
buy stuff with it. Got it?
Bitcoin not money, Miami judge rules in dismissing laundering
charges
A Miami-Dade judge ruled Monday that Bitcoin is not
actually money, a decision hailed by proponents of the virtual currency that
has become popular across the world.
In a case closely watched in financial and tech circles,
the judge threw out the felony charges against website designer Michell
Espinoza, who had been charged with illegally transmitting and laundering
$1,500 worth of Bitcoins. He sold them
to undercover detectives who told him they wanted to use the money to buy
stolen credit-card numbers.
But Miami-Dade Circuit Judge Teresa Mary Pooler ruled that
Bitcoin was not backed by any government or bank, and was not “tangible wealth”
and “cannot be hidden under a mattress like cash and gold bars.”
“The court is not an expert in economics; however, it is
very clear, even to someone with limited knowledge in the area, the Bitcoin has
a long way to go before it the equivalent of money,” Pooler wrote in an
eight-page order.
… “This court is
unwilling to punish a man for selling his property to another, when his actions
fall under a statute that is so vaguely written that even legal professionals
have difficulty finding a singular meaning,” she wrote.
The ruling was lauded by Bitcoin experts who believe the ruling will encourage the use of the
virtual currency, and offer a roadmap to governments across the
world that have struggled to understand and regulate it.
… Law enforcement
has struggled to figure out how Bitcoin fits into illegal
activities, and Espinoza’s case was believed to be the first money-laundering
prosecution involving the virtual currency.
The
controversial virtual currency allows some users to spend money anonymously
and it can be also be bought and sold on exchanges with U.S. dollars and other
currencies.
… Regulated
services such as CoinBase, which operates similarly to PayPal, allow people to
buy, sell and use the Bitcoins. But authorities have raised concerns about the currency
being used in the anonymous black market.
Most notoriously, Bitcoins were used to traffic drugs in
the now-shuttered Silk Road network. In an unrelated South Florida case, a
Miramar man got 10 years in prison after using Bitcoins to buy Chinese-made
synthetic heroin from a Canadian prisoner.
For a second there, I thought LinkedIn was saying that
PowerPoint sucked. Apparently, PointDrive
is more about tracking customer eyes.
Send them a bunch of data, find out what they looked at and then sell,
sell, sell!
LinkedIn acquires Chicago-based PointDrive
PointDrive, a Chicago-based presentation-sharing software
startup, has been acquired by LinkedIn, the companies announced Tuesday.
… PointDrive,
which CEO Bill Burnett launched widely in 2014, lets users create presentations
and send them through its Web app or an email link. The goal is to present files in a more
organized, visually appealing manner than email attachments, and to collect analytics on when, for how long, and where
recipients look at presentations.
Perspective. Okay,
I admit this one snuck up on me.
Apple Pay Now Accounts for Three-Fourths of U.S. Contactless Payments
What do you bet that the US will double this amount next
year? (My tax dollars at work waste!)
U.S. Spent $1.4 Billion To Stop HIV By Promoting Abstinence.
Did It Work?
In the past 12 years, the U.S. has spent more than $1.4
billion funding abstinence programs in Africa. They're part of a larger program — called the
President's Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief — aimed at stopping the spread of
HIV around the world.
Many health officials consider PEPFAR a success.
It is credited with giving lifesaving HIV drugs to more than 5 million people
and preventing nearly 1 million babies from getting HIV from their mothers.
But a study, published
Monday in Health Affairs, finds the abstinence programs have been a
failure.
… The results were
clear: PEPFAR funding wasn't associated with changes in young people's choices
about sex. Bendavid and his team could find no detectable differences in the
rates of teenage pregnancies, average number of sexual partners and age at
first sexual intercourse in countries that had received PEFPAR money compared
with those that hadn't.
I could use this to plan my IoT class! Maybe.
Searching for the Internet of Things on the Web: Where It Is
and What It Looks Like
by Sabrina
I. Pacifici on Jul 26, 2016
Searching for the Internet of Things on the Web: Where It Is
and What It Looks Like. Ali
Shemshadi, Quan Z. Sheng, Wei Emma Zhang, Aixin Sun, Yongrui Qin, Lina Yao
(Submitted on 23 Jul 2016).
“The Internet of Things (IoT), in general, is a compelling
paradigm that aims to connect everyday objects to the Internet. Nowadays, IoT is considered as one of the main
technologies which contribute towards reshaping our daily lives in the next
decade. IoT unlocks many exciting new
opportunities in a variety of applications in research and industry domains. However, many have complained about the
absence of the real-world IoT data. Unsurprisingly, a common question that arises
regularly nowadays is “Does the IoT already exist?”. So far, little has been known about the
real-world situation on IoT, its attributes, the presentation of data and user
interests. To answer this question, in
this work, we conduct an in-depth analytical investigation on real IoT data. More specifically, we identify IoT data sources over the Web and develop a
crawler engine to collect large-scale real-world IoT data for the first time. We make the results of our work available to
the public in order to assist the community in the future research. In particular, we collect the data of nearly
two million Internet connected objects and study trends in IoT using a
real-world query set from an IoT search engine. Based on the collected data and our analysis,
we identify the typical characteristics of IoT data. The most intriguing finding of our study is
that IoT data is mainly disseminated using Web Mapping while the emerging IoT
solutions such as the Web of Things, are currently not well adopted. On top of our findings, we further discuss
future challenges and open research problems in the IoT area.”
Next best thing to having my students write their own
textbook,
Opening the Textbook: Educational Resources in U.S. Higher
Education, 2015-16
by Sabrina
I. Pacifici on Jul 26, 2016
Opening the Textbook: Educational Resources in U.S. Higher
Education, 2015-16 I. Elaine Allen,
Ph.D. Professor of Biostatistics & Epidemiology, UCSF Co- Director, Babson
Survey Research Group Jeff Seaman, Ph.D. Co- Director, Babson Survey Research
Group.
“Most higher
education faculty are unaware of open educational resources
(OER)–but they are interested and some are willing to give it a try. Survey results, using responses of over 3,000
U.S. faculty, show that OER is not a driving force in the selection of
materials – with the most significant barrier being the effort required to find
and evaluate such materials. Use of open
resources is low overall, but somewhat higher for large enrollment
introductory-level courses.”
“Lazy is as lazy does?”
I don’t play computer game (I stink at games) so this would be perfect
for me.
The tireless, automated bots that want to play Pokémon Go
for you
Last week, we took a look into the growing world of Pokémon
Go hacks that reveal
the location of usually hidden Pokémon nearby. Now, a new wave of PC-based Pokémon Go
"bots" take the hacking a step further, spoofing locations and
automating actions to essentially play the game for you while you sit in the
comfort of your own home.
There are a number of competing bots out there, from the open source Necrobot
to the pre-compiled Pokébuddy
to MyGoBot, which recently started charging
$4.99 for its automation tool following a three-hour free trial. All of them work on the same basic principles,
sending artificial data to the Pokémon Go servers to simulate an
extremely efficient, entirely tireless player.
(Related) Like “SWATting,
but for gamers.”
Pokémon GO users PRANKED into stampeding local park to catch
Mewtwo
(Related) …which
suggests this idea for a sting.
Cops should use the Pokemon Go craze to catch mobile phone
thieves, urge politicians
The calls come after a reported spate of crimes has seen
crooks mugging or attacking Pokémon
Go players, who travel to real locations to collect items and catch
monsters.
Vulnerable victims – many of whom are youngsters – are
likely to be distracted while playing and holding their phones out in front of
them, and they could be lured or tracked to isolated locations, a Tory warned.
Conservative London Assembly member Steve O’Connell said the Met should station cops near key “PokéStops”
locations, that are likely to be used by lots of players.
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