Saturday, September 03, 2016

The extent of a breach is not always clear.  I think most breaches are updated as more information becomes available.
Noble House & Resorts seems to have updated its disclosure concerning the payment card breach reported recently to include more properties and restaurants than they had known about at the time of their first public statement.  At that time, the only property that they had confirmed as compromised was Ocean Key Resort & Spa.


This is a rather extreme example of “clueless.”
Noble House & Resorts wasn’t the only hospitality sector issuing a breach disclosure in the past 24 hours   Hutton Hotel also broke news of a payment card breach to its customers, but whereas Noble House’s breach began in April 2016, Hutton’s appears to have begun in 2012.
NASHVILLE, Tenn., Sept. 2, 2016 /PRNewswire/ — Hutton Hotel values the relationship it has with its guests and understands the importance of protecting payment card information.  After being alerted to a potential security incident by its payment processor, Hutton Hotel began an investigation of its payment card system and engaged a leading cybersecurity firm to assist.  Findings from the investigation show that unknown individuals were able to install a program on the payment processing system at the Hutton Hotel designed to capture payment card data as it was routed through the system.  The program could have affected payment card data—including cardholder name, payment card account number, card expiration date, and verification code—of guests who used a payment card to pay for or place hotel reservations during the period from September 19, 2012 to April 16, 2015, or who made purchases at the onsite food and beverage outlets from September 19, 2012 to January 15, 2015 and from August 12, 2015 to June 10, 2016.


Update.  How much would you spend to avoid this big an impact to revenues?  I wonder if everything is backed up now? 
Delta outage price tag: $100 million
Delta Air Lines says the August computer outage that led to thousands of flight cancellations cost the company about $100 million in lost revenue.
The Atlanta-based airline, whose annual revenue is about $40 billion, included the estimate in a monthly performance report Friday.  The amount includes both cancellations — about 2,300 over four days — and recovery efforts, Delta said.
Delta offered $200 travel vouchers to passengers whose flights were canceled or delayed for more than three hours during the outage, but it hasn’t said how many have sought the vouchers.
   Delta said the outage occurred after a hardware breakdown led to a power failure at an Atlanta facility.  Some of the airline’s servers were not connected to backup power, preventing a smooth restart.


For my (you had better be) researching Computer Security students.
Internet Tracking Has Moved Beyond Cookies
   A new survey from a group of Princeton researchers of one million websites sheds some light on the cutting-edge tricks being used to follow your digital trail.  Rather than placing a tracker on your browser, many sites are now “fingerprinting” — using information about your computer such as battery status or browser window size to identify your presence.
On this week’s What’s The Point, Arvind Narayanan, one of the authors of the Princeton study, discusses his research, the latest in online tracking and what you (and our lawmakers) can do to counter the trackers.


The French are a bit different…
Claire Lintingre reports:
The French Supreme Court recently ruled that an employer could not rely on the report of a private detective it had hired to spy on one of its employees to obtain an injunction against him because this was a breach of the employee’s privacy and that could not be justified, however legitimate were its concerns.
Read more about the case and ruling on the National Law Review.


Proof that Europeans are more neutral than us here in the US? 
The EU really doesn’t want your ISP blocking adverts or pornography
The European Union has put its foot down and said that ISPs and mobile networks that block advertisements and pornography are in breach of rules published by BEREC – the Body of European Regulators for Electronic Communications.
Currently, the EU allows network-level content blocking for three reasons: for security purposes, to comply with a nation state’s laws, or to manage network traffic.
   These rules essentially clarify the EU’s position on network neutrality, and contain more robust explanations of the rules surrounding zero-rating and “fast lanes”, in addition to network-level content blocking.


I imagine there will be many stories like these.  Sounds like a lawyer being very defensive to me. 
The 5 most outrageous things Hillary Clinton said in her FBI interview
Hillary Clinton was already having a bad week as polls show Donald Trump closing the gap between them and, in a few polls, even pulling ahead.  It got worse Friday after the FBI released Clinton's answers to investigators' questions over her use of a private email server, revealing some pretty damaging responses from the former Secretary of State.  

(Related) The article kind of rambles about. 
Hillary Clinton’s Team Lost a Laptop Full of Her Emails in the Actual Mail

(Related) Check it out yourself.
FBI FOIA Release – Hillary R. Clinton documents
by Sabrina I. Pacifici on Sep 2, 2016
Via WSJ.com: “On Friday afternoon September 2, 2016, the Federal Bureau of Investigation released a summary of its investigation into allegations that classified information was improperly stored or transmitted on a personal e-mail server Hillary Clinton used during her tenure as secretary of state.  The FBI also released its summary of former Mrs. Clinton’s July 2, 2016 interview with the FBI.  The FBI concluded its probe earlier this year and recommended not bringing charges in the matter.
Here are the documents released Friday:


Have we moved beyond, “Open the pod bay door, Hal?”  For my Architecture students. 
CHATBOTS EXPLAINED: Why businesses should be paying attention to the chatbot revolution
Advancements in artificial intelligence, coupled with the proliferation of messaging apps, are fueling the development of chatbots — software programs that use messaging as the interface through which to carry out any number of tasks, from scheduling a meeting, to reporting weather, to helping users buy a pair of shoes.
Foreseeing immense potential, businesses are starting to invest heavily in the burgeoning bot economy.
·  AI has reached a stage in which chatbots can have increasingly engaging and human conversations, allowing businesses to leverage the inexpensive and wide-reaching technology to engage with more consumers.


For my student gamers.  (Remember my cut!)


It’s Saturday already?
Hack Education Weekly News
   Via The New York Times: “Broadband Law Could Force Rural Residents Off Information Superhighway.”  The headline should, perhaps, read “laws,” as it’s currently restrictive laws in North Carolina and Tennessee that are curbing city-run Internet service providers who are reaching customers in areas that corporate providers won’t go.
   Via the AP: “A judge ruled Friday that school districts [in Florida] can’t hold 3rd graders back just because they score badly on a mandated standardized reading test, saying that classroom grades and teacher evaluations have to be considered.”

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