Matt Egan reports:
St. Jude Medical rejected claims
made by a famous short seller on
Thursday that the company’s pacemakers and other lifesaving devices are
vulnerable to cyber attacks.
The allegations, made in a
detailed 34-page report by Muddy Waters founder Carson Block, were enough to
spook investors on Wall Street. St. Jude’s stock plummeted as much as 8% on
Thursday.
St. Jude’s chief technology officer Phil Ebeling called
the claims “absolutely untrue.”
Read more from CNN Money on WPTZ.
(Update) It’s even worse than I thought. Was St. Jude’s lying?
More on a situation I noted
yesterday. This approach to
using/monetizing vulnerability discoveries is downright scary…. but will it
work to improve security? Here’s one of
your must-reads for today.
Jordan Robertson and Michael Riley report:
When a team of hackers discovered
that St. Jude Medical Inc.’s pacemakers and defibrillators had security vulnerabilities
that could put lives at risk, they didn’t
warn St. Jude. Instead, the
hackers, who work for cybersecurity startup MedSec, e-mailed Carson Block, who
runs the Muddy Waters Capital LLC investment firm, in May. They had a
money-making proposal.
MedSec suggested an unprecedented
partnership: The hackers would provide data proving the medical devices were
life-threatening, with Block taking a short position against St. Jude.
[…]
MedSec is taking a path that some
frustrated security experts believe is the only way to create fundamental
change: find a way to impose significant monetary penalties on companies it
believes are negligent when it comes to protecting consumers. But the startup is doing so in ways that
violate some of the most basic standards of ethical security research and in an
industry where the stakes are especially high.
Read it all on Bloomberg.
Did I miss the memo?
Why would Homeland Security investigate this breach? Is there some national security angle I’m
missing? Did North Korea do it for some
reason? Is this covered by some secret
law?
Jones website hack reveals stars’ tricky cyber landscape
The hateful hack of comedian Leslie Jones’ personal
website reveals the tricky cyber landscape celebrities tread and the murky
legal protections that exist for personal digital content.
While Jones’ supporters have been vocal with their outrage
and Department of Homeland Security
investigators are looking into the breach of Jones’ website that
exposed intimate photos and personal documents
… Those who broke
into Jones’ site and replaced its usual content with naked photos, a driver’s
license and racist video are clearly breaking the law, said attorney Jonathan
Steinsapir, but “trolling” a celebrity with sexist or racist posts online is
not a crime.
… Most often,
though, technology moves faster than the law.
“The availability of media now and how quickly information
spreads — I don’t think the law has kept up with that,” said Steinsapir, who
specializes in intellectual property and copyright law.
For example, once stolen photos are disseminated online,
it’s not only tough to track who’s republishing them, it’s practically
impossible to prosecute.
… And all the
experts agree: Taking naked photos and storing them digitally is probably a bad
idea.
(Related?) What is they were given the information? What is they had not been “celebrities?”
Ray W writes:
Aller Media, the owner of Danish
gossip magazine Se & Hor, was fined 10 million kroner
[approximately $1.5 million] – and the magazine’s former managing editor, Kim
Bretov, and former news editor, Lise Bondesen, were each given suspended jail
sentences –on Thursday for illegally buying the credit card information of
celebrities.
Read more on CPH
Post.
(Related) This is how we do it in the US.
I approve!
Michael O’Keeffe and Ginger Adams Otis report:
Giants defensive end Jason Pierre-Paul scored a big
win Thursday in his invasion-of-privacy lawsuit against ESPN.
A Florida judge said Pierre-Paul can sue the sports
news network and reporter Adam Schefter for posting his private medical records
online for millions to see.
Read more on NY
Daily News. The NY
Post also covers the ruling.
“We have the technology, therefore we must use it!”
Joe Cadillic writes:
Police State America has devised
a new way to track dissidents or person’s of interest, they’re calling it
Pay-By-Plate. Raytheon’s Pay-By-Plate
system will allow police to “Hotlist” motorists across the country.
According to the Boston
Globe, officials are working with the Executive Office of Public Safety and
Security to draft a list of all situations that warrant “Hotlist” use.
[…]
Feds claim they’re only taking
pictures of our license plates
image credit: Boston
Globe
If you look closely at the above
picture, you can see two surveillance cameras, one that takes a picture of the
front of the vehicle, and one that’s aimed at the rear of the vehicle. Raytheon’s Vigilant Solutions, ‘National Vehicle Location
Service‘ cameras can identify drivers
and passengers faces in “near real time”, flagging any ‘person of interest’.
Read more on MassPrivateI.
Blockchain explained in 19 minutes. Another technology that removes
intermediaries.
How the blockchain is changing
money and business
What is the
blockchain? If you don't know, you
should; if you do, chances are you still need some clarification on how it
actually works. Don Tapscott is here to
help, demystifying this world-changing, trust-building technology which, he
says, represents nothing less than the second generation of the internet and
holds the potential to transform money, business, government and society.
This is the field I’m sending my Ethical Hacking students
out to conquer.
Startup Manipulated iPhone to Allow Government Spying, Report
Says
Security researchers say a little-known Israeli startup
exploited previously unknown bugs in Apple
Inc. ’s smartphone software to help
foreign governments spy on their citizens.
The researchers say the surveillance software was the work of
NSO Group Technologies Ltd., which sells primarily to government agencies. The researchers, at Citizen Lab, a group that
investigates surveillance technology, and at mobile-security firm Lookout Inc.,
say they discovered the software in a link sent earlier this month to the phone
of Ahmed Mansoor, a human-rights activist in the United Arab Emirates.
Their report sheds new light on the capabilities of
private security companies to produce sophisticated software for
state-sponsored spying. It also suggests
that the iOS operating system behind Apple’s iPhones isn't as impregnable as it
appeared earlier this year, when the Federal Bureau of Investigation struggled
for weeks and ultimately paid
$1 million to unlock a phone tied to the San Bernardino terror attack.
A bit technical, but still an interesting read.
This week, the Office of the Director of National
Intelligence declassified
a Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court of Review (FISCR) opinion that
has important broad implications for privacy and warrantless surveillance.
For my Data Management and Data Architecture students.
How Data Skills Help Firms Create Social Media That Matters
… In her
latest paper, “Data Analytics Skills and the Corporate Value of
Social Media,” Wu analyzed a large sample of businesses to determine
how they derived value from social media.
Eventually we may be able to automate this entire law
enforcement thing. You “register” your face
and fingerprints to unlock your phone, anyone else is a crook!
Apple's Patent Application Collects iPhone Thieves'
Fingerprints and Selfies
The U.S. Patent and Trademark Office on Thursday published
a patent application filed by Apple describing a method for the company to capture both a
thief’s picture, video, and fingerprints from the Touch ID home button, among
other identifying data.
This is rather sad actually. None of the government entities were willing
to put this into their budgets, so we need to force them to borrow money to do
it?
US chief information officer ups push to modernize government
tech
The United States chief information officer on Thursday
boosted his push for Congress to approve $3 billion in loans to modernize
government technology.
Tony Scott
emphasized the importance of a government-wide shift from obsolete technologies
to more secure, cheaper, modern options, calling for the creation of the
Information Technology Modernization Fund (ITMF).
… The ITMF,
currently under debate in Congress, would provide $3.1 billion in loans for
agencies to update technology. The money would be repaid through the cost savings
of using the more efficient technologies.
Advertising for the Pokémon generation? Clearly, these ads will not reach me.
Trump, Clinton boost Snapchat spending
Hillary Clinton and
Donald Trump are both ramping up their campaign
spending on Snapchat, according to a report
from Bloomberg.
My IT Grad students just can’t believe that Uber is not
profitable!
Uber reportedly lost at least $1.27 billion in first half
of 2016
Ride-hailing giant Uber lost at least $1.27 billion before
interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization in the first six months of 2016,
Bloomberg reported on
Thursday, citing people familiar with the matter.
What could my students do with this?
Facebook Gives Away Machine Vision Tools of the Future
Thanks to a form of AI
called deep learning, computers are now really good at telling the difference between
a dog and a cat. But Facebook’s
Artificial Intelligence Research (FAIR) lab wants to make machine vision far
more useful, going well beyond digital parlor tricks.
FAIR research scientist Piotr Dollar says the first step
lies in helping machines not just recognize that a particular thing appears in
a photo—say, a cat or a chair or a gun—but spot each individual detail in a
photo and understand where it sites in relation to everything else. His team has built a set of tools
that does just that.
… But Facebook
isn’t actually using these particular machine vision tools yet. As with FastText,
a set of tools that could be used for spotting spam and clickbait that the
company recently open source, the FAIR team opted to release its work to the
public early, before it’s found a particular application at the company.
Interesting.
Introducing Amazon Vehicles, a Car
Research Destination and Automotive Community
Amazon today announced Amazon
Vehicles, a car research destination and automotive community that makes it
easy for customers to get the information they need when shopping for vehicles,
parts, and accessories.
… Customers can begin researching vehicles today at www.amazon.com/vehicles.
My local library (Koelbel) is having a big book sale starting Sept 8th.
On Sunday, you can buy a grocery bag
full of books for $6. I can see that
this game might be worth $6 (or more) just to watch the kids play!
Belgians are hunting books, instead of Pokemon
Inspired by the success of Pokemon Go, a Belgian primary
school headmaster has developed an online game for people to search for books
instead of cartoon monsters, attracting tens of thousands of players in weeks.
While with Pokemon Go,
players use a mobile device's GPS and camera to track virtual creatures around
town, Aveline Gregoire's version is played through a Facebook group called
"Chasseurs de livres" ("Book hunters"). https://www.facebook.com/groups/554284188095002/
Players post pictures and
hints about where they have hidden a book and others go to hunt them down. Once someone has finished reading a book, they
"release" it back into the wild.
… Though it
was only set up a few weeks ago, more than 40,000 people are already signed up
to Gregoire's Facebook group.
The hidden tomes range from
books for toddlers through to Stephen King horrors, placed around Belgian towns
and countryside, often wrapped in clear plastic to keep off the rain.
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