Tuoi Tre News reports:
Two Vietnamese commercial banks
have taken measures to protect customers who have used their cards in transactions
with Vietnam Airlines, in the wake of a breach concerning more
than 400,000 membership credentials of the national flag carrier.
An alleged group of Chinese hackers compromised the Vietnam Airlines
system on Friday, stealing information from some 410,000 VIP member accounts of
the carrier’s Lotusmiles program.
The data, including names,
birthdays and addresses of the members, were later made available for download
by the hackers, raising further security issues for those affected.
Read more on Tuoi
Tre News.
If they were really good, they would not have been
detected.
North Korea Hacked Into Emails of Seoul Officials: Report
Seoul prosecutors on Monday accused North Korea of hacking into the email
accounts of dozens of South Korean government officials this year, the latest
in the series of suspected cyber attacks by Pyongyang.
… "The
passwords of 56 accounts were stolen," the statement said.
The hackers set up 27 phishing sites in
January posing as popular portals like Google and South Korea's Naver, as well
as government and university websites, to steal the passwords.
The prosecutors said the malicious
codes used in the latest attack were the same as the ones used by North Korea
in previous attacks on the South. [Suggesting
they were following a script? Bob]
… The latest cyber
attack comes just days after South Korean police said the North stole the
personal data of over 10 million customers at South Korean online shopping mall
Interpark.
Interpark was unaware about the attack
until July 11, when it was blackmailed with threats to publicise the leaked
data unless the company paid three billion won (US$2.7 million).
The National Police Agency said the
North's main spy agency -- the Reconnaissance General Bureau -- had organised
the hack in a bid to earn hard currency.
A security company to watch?
Cybersecurity startup PhishMe raises $42.5 million to help
employees spot phishing attacks
PhishMe, a
cybersecurity startup that helps companies thwart phishing attacks among other
targeted malware, has closed a $42.5 million series C round led by existing
investor Paladin Capital Group, with participation from Bessemer Venture
Partners.
Founded in 2011, Virginia-based PhishMe provides the tools
to engage employees across an organization so that they can recognize malicious
phishing emails. Part of this involves conditioning them into being able to spot rogue
emails, but it also lets them easily report questionable emails to the
appropriate security teams internally.
… Cybersecurity
has emerged as one of the hottest categories for investment in recent times —
just yesterday, SafeBreach raised
$15 million to test companies’ cybersecurity from a hacker’s perspective. And in the past couple of months, other
notable cybersecurity investments include Bay Dynamics raising
$23 million for its risk analytics platform, Post-Quantum nabbing
$8 million, Darktrace securing
$65 million, SecurityScorecard closing
a $20 million round, and Cylance
attracting $100 million for its A.I.-driven security platform.
So what makes PhishMe stand out for its new investor?
“Despite the growing number of security vendors in the
market, we quickly realized the huge potential behind PhishMe’s business proposition,”
explained Alex Ferrara, partner at Bessemer Venture Capital. “The most damaging cyber-attacks almost always
involve phishing or spear phishing attempts and that is why empowering the
human element or employees to detect these phishing campaigns has become a top
priority for modern enterprises.”
Because Microsoft won’t hand over emails stored in Ireland?
On July 15, the Obama administration unveiled proposed
legislation designed to improve the process by which law enforcement agents
access digital evidence across borders. (David Kris has a superb summary of the
legislation here.)
This is something that the two of us
have long urged, and we were both pleased to see the administration’s
ultimate—and extremely thoughtful—proposal. (Indeed, the proposal reflects many of the
human rights and privacy protections that we
proposed several months ago.)
In this post, we seek to clarify what the legislation does
and why it is necessary—for our economy, our security, and perhaps most of all,
our privacy.
Attention Ethical Hacking students! You can’t use Watson to help with your final
exam! Can you? (This was the Best Use of Watson?)
How a Dev Got Watson to Play Pokémon GO For Him
Nintendo's
Pokémon GO has already overtaken Candy Crush Saga to become one of the
most-used apps. One of the main draws of
the game for many people is that it gets players off their couches and out into
the real world in search of Pokémon, and this
post by Lynne Slowey on IBM’s Internet of Things blog highlights an
impressive use of the Watson
API to help players find these virtual creatures.
… When approaching
a Pokéstop, the Watson API takes screenshots of the app in the background at
regular intervals. The screenshots are
sent to the Watson Visual Recognition API for analysis, with a trained
classifier able to tell if there are any Pokémon nearby from those screen
shots, with the location broadcast to nearby players.
Hsu’s
project ended up winning Best Use of Watson challenge at the
AT&T Shape Tech Expo Hackathon in San Francisco. While it certainly fits with the collaborative
gameplay ideal that encourages people to work together and help each other find
Pokémon, it also raises the potential for some innovative ways to monetize the
game, such as advertising, subscriptions, or to draw players to a physical
business location.
The Didi-Uber deal seems more an agreement not to compete
than a buyout or merger.
Did Apple just grab a slice of Uber?
A lot of people will be talking about news this morning that Didi
is to buy Uber China in a deal valued at around
$35 billion, a deal that puts Apple firmly in the ride-sharing market.What’s setting speculation free is Apple’s recent billion-dollar investment in Didi and its widely reported Apple Car plans.
… What that means
is that for the cost of its billion-dollar Didi investment, Apple now has a
stake in Uber and relationships with ride hailing services worldwide.
That’s a pretty useful position to be in when the company
appears to be heavily
invested in Apple Car.
It’s not Pokémon, but it might be some day.
Chinese consortium agrees to $4.4 billion deal for Caesars
online games
… Caesars
Entertainment’s main operating unit, Caesars Entertainment Operating Co Inc, is
currently involved in an $18 billion bankruptcy and is seeking creditor
approval for a restructuring plan. The
transaction between CAC and the Caesars Entertainment parent is part of a
complex web of deals that have come under scrutiny by CEOC’s creditors.
Chinese companies are eager to expand beyond their home
country, which boasts the world’s largest online gaming market. In June, Tencent Holdings, China’s biggest
gaming group, agreed to buy a majority stake in “Clash of Clans” mobile game
maker Supercell from SoftBank Group in an $8.6 billion deal.
Caesars’ online games business, known as Playtika, makes
its games such as Bingo Blitz and Slotomania available on Apple’s App Store.
Playatika will continue to operate independently with its own management team
and its headquarters remaining in Herzliya, Israel, following the deal, the
companies said.
Playtika players use virtual currency that cannot be
exchanged for real money, although players can spend money by buying items in
the games. Caesars’ World Series of
Poker and real-money online gaming businesses are not part of the deal,
according to the companies.
Shocking?
GSK and Google parent forge $715 million bioelectronic
medicines firm
… Galvani will
develop miniaturized, implantable devices that can modify electrical nerve
signals. The aim is to modulate irregular or altered impulses that occur in
many illnesses.
GSK believes chronic
conditions such as diabetes, arthritis and asthma could be treated using these
tiny devices, which consist of a electronic collar that wraps around nerves.
… GSK first
unveiled its ambitions in bioelectronics in a paper in the journal Nature three
years ago and believes it is ahead of Big Pharma rivals in developing medicines
that use electrical impulses rather than traditional chemicals or proteins.
The tie-up shows the
growing convergence of healthcare and technology. Verily already has several other medical projects
in the works, including the development of a smart contact lens in partnership
with the Swiss drugmaker Novartis that has an embedded glucose sensor to help
monitor diabetes.
I think that I shall never see
A poem lovely as a synthetic tree. Doesn’t work does it?
The ultimate “Green” technology?
Artificial Leaf That Produces Fuel From CO2 And Sunlight
… “The new solar
cell is not photovoltaic — it’s photosynthetic,” Amin Salehi-Khojin, assistant
professor of mechanical and industrial engineering at UIC, said. Salehi-Khojin,
who is also the senior author of a related study published in the Science
journal, added: “Instead of producing energy in an unsustainable one-way route
from fossil fuels to greenhouse gas, we can now
reverse the process and recycle atmospheric carbon into fuel using sunlight.”
The new solar cells can remove carbon dioxide, or CO2,
from the atmosphere — like trees do — and farms that use such cells as
artificial leaves “could produce energy-dense fuel efficiently,” according to
the UIC website. The
fuel produced by the cells is “synthesis gas, a mixture of hydrogen gas and
carbon monoxide,” which “can be burned directly, or converted into diesel or
other hydrocarbon fuels.”
As a blogger…
Fair Use issues for journalists, researchers, bloggers
by Sabrina
I. Pacifici on Jul 31, 2016
When Does ‘Fair Use’ Become Unfair? Copyright law allows
journalists to quote just enough — but not too much. Who draws the line? / By Paul Raeburn
“In the United States, copyright protection for authors and other creators comes with the explicit understanding that others have “the right to use copyrighted material without permissions or payment under some circumstances — especially when the cultural or social benefits or the use are predominant.” That seems straightforward enough. But it has puzzled and worried journalists for decades…Peter Jaszi and Pat Aufderheide at American University have written a “Set of Principles in Fair Use For Journalism,” which covers most of the questions likely to come up in a newsroom or at a freelancer’s desk…”
“In the United States, copyright protection for authors and other creators comes with the explicit understanding that others have “the right to use copyrighted material without permissions or payment under some circumstances — especially when the cultural or social benefits or the use are predominant.” That seems straightforward enough. But it has puzzled and worried journalists for decades…Peter Jaszi and Pat Aufderheide at American University have written a “Set of Principles in Fair Use For Journalism,” which covers most of the questions likely to come up in a newsroom or at a freelancer’s desk…”
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