St. Jude Medical Sues Short Seller Over Device Allegations
St. Jude Medical Inc. on
Wednesday filed a lawsuit against Muddy Waters Capital LLC, claiming the
research firm intentionally made false and misleading claims about its heart
devices in order to profit from a decline in its stock.
The complaint, filed in U.S. District Court in Minnesota,
also names MedSec, a cybersecurity startup whose work was cited by Muddy
Waters, and some executives at both Muddy Waters and MedSec.
“We felt this lawsuit was the best course of action to
make sure those looking to profit by trying to frighten patients and
caregivers, and by circumventing appropriate and established channels for
raising cybersecurity concerns, do not use this avenue to do so again,” St.
Jude Chief Executive Michael Rousseau said.
For my Ethical Hacking students.
USB Hacking Devices Can Steal Credentials From Locked
Computers
Many users might think that leaving their computer
unattended does not pose any security risks as long as the device is locked. However, researcher Rob Fuller has
demonstrated that an attacker with physical access to the targeted device can
capture its login credentials in just seconds as long as the machine is logged
in.
The expert has tested the attack method using USB Armory
and Hak5 LAN Turtle, two flash drive-size computers designed for penetration
testing and various other security applications.
Fuller demonstrated how either of these devices can be set
up to capture credentials from a locked, logged-in system by disguising them as
a USB Ethernet adapter. Configuring the
USB device to look like a DHCP server tricks the connected computer into
communicating with it. These network
communications, which include usernames and passwords, can be captured by
installing Responder, an
open source passive credential gathering tool, on the hacking gadget.
You know the rules don’t apply to them!
Eric Katz reports:
Customs and Border Protection
released the personally identifiable information, including Social Security
numbers, of thousands of individuals to dozens of federal agencies during an
investigation of cheating on polygraph tests.
CBP violated some aspects of the
Privacy Act in distributing the information across government, the Homeland
Security Department’s inspector general found in its report.
The agency collected and distributed
information such as Social Security numbers, email and mailing addresses, and
phone numbers of individuals who had purchased materials from two individuals
who helped job applicants pass polygraphs.
Read more on Government
Executive.
Should the insurance industry support this study?
Katie Courage reports on some research by Yashwant
Malaiya, professor of computer science in the College of Natural Sciences at Colorado State University
and Abdullah Algarni, a doctoral researcher in the same department.
Their research is oriented to developing a standard,
public – and evolving – model that will permit more rigorous study on the costs
of a breach.
Their work on the
topic was published for the Second International Conference on
Information Management earlier this year in London.
Read more on CSU.
Security consultants may be the way to go. Are you ready to invest enough to provide “adequate”
security? (Is that the business you are
in?)
Managed Security Services, a Mission and Service Evolution
… To address these
new requirements for threat detection and incident response, as well as to help
organizations overcome the challenges they face, new managed security services
have emerged. Managed Detection and
Response (MDR) services differ from traditional managed security services in
three ways: speed, accuracy, and focus. Here’s
how.
Why can’t governments manage application development? Should they even try? That is not why they exist! Another topic my IT Architecture students will
debate.
Mike Lindblom reports:
Seattle’s new billing system for
utilities, already afflicted by delays and cost overruns, launched Monday
morning with a data flaw that sent 3,041 customers a link to other customers’
bills, including their names, addresses and energy or water use.
Along with the privacy breakdown,
the city sent six to 12 redundant email notices to those same customers,
marking new trouble for a computer
update, nearly a year late, $34 million over budget, and expected to reach $100
million.
Read more on Government
Technology.
The new normal?
Didn’t Mickey lose a finger this way?
Sandra Pedicini reports:
Walt Disney World has begun
requiring children from 3 to 9 years old to have their fingers scanned when
they enter the theme parks, just like older kids and adults.
Disney said the new process will help block the use of stolen and shared
tickets. Previously, kids’
tickets would have been easy to transfer because they had no finger images
attached to them.
Parents who feel uncomfortable with having their kids’ fingers scanned
can use their own instead.
Read more on Orlando
Sentinel.
Will this make it harder for our students to research
terrorism? If they persist, will they be
flagged as security risks?
How Google aims to disrupt the Islamic State propaganda
machine
… Jigsaw, the
advanced research outfit created by Google, has developed a technology that
would redirect anyone searching terms and phrases associated with supporting
the Islamic State (known as IS or ISIS) to instead see antiextremist messages
and videos.
… The effort dubbed the “Redirect
Method” placed Islamic State-related search results next to ads that
include links to videos denouncing the terrorist groups and its tactics from
leading Muslim clerics.
Interesting, but unlikely. Still, something for my IT Architecture
students to consider.
The Next Industrial Revolution
A “crisis of abundance” initially seems like a paradox. After all, abundance is the ultimate goal of
technology and economics. But consider
the early history of the electric washing machine. In the 1920s, factories churned them out in
droves. (With the average output of
manufacturing workers rising by a third
between 1923 and 1929, making more washing machines was relatively cheap.) But as the decade ended, factories saw they
were making many more than American households demanded. Companies cut back their output and laid off
workers even before the stock market crashed in 1929. Indeed, some economists have said that the
oversupply of consumer goods like washing machines may have been one of the
causes of the Great Depression.
What initially looked like abundance was really something
more harmful: overproduction. In economics,
as in anything, too much of a good thing can be problematic.
That sentiment is one of the central theses of The Wealth of Humans,
a new book by the Economist columnist Ryan Avent about how technology
is changing the nature of work. In the
next few years, self-driving cars, health-care robots, machine learning, and
other technology will complement many workers in the office. Counting both humans and machines, the world’s
labor force will be able to do more work than ever before. But this abundance of workers—both those made
of cells and those made of bits—could create a glut of labor. The
machines may render many humans as redundant as so many vintage washing
machines.
Another Architecture article.
India's richest man offers free 4G to one billion people
Indian consumers are already celebrating the arrival of
Mukesh Ambani's new Reliance Jio service, seizing on the billionaire's promise
to deliver rock bottom prices and download speeds that will enable streaming
video.
The 4G network, which reaches more than 80% of the
country, officially went live Monday with a set of generous introductory
offers. Indians will be able to use Jio
for free until the end of 2016, and pay as little as 149 rupees ($2.25) a month
for data after that.
… It's a market
that tech industry giants desperately want to crack. Google (GOOG)
has installed free Wi-Fi at train stations across India, and Facebook (FB,
Tech30)
tried to offer a free
version of its platform.
… Rival networks
have responded to the launch of Reliance Jio with special offers of their own,
making a price war a near certainty. Airtel
has slashed its prices for 3G and 4G service by 80%, and Vodafone (VOD)
has boosted the amount of data in its plans by nearly 70%.
For my geeks.
If it is not as successful as Pokémon, is it a failure?
Super Mario's iPhone Surprise Sends Nintendo Shares Soaring
… Investors are
betting the new game, Super Mario Run, will be another mobile hit for the
Japanese company akin to the wildly popular Pokemon GO, as it moves away from
its console-focused strategy and embraces on-the-go gaming.
Is that new term really new?
Google Books Ngram Viewer Overview
The Google Books Ngram Viewer is a search tool that displays
when and how often a term appears in books indexed by Google Books. By using the Ngram Viewer you can discover
when a term starts to appear in literature, how often a term appears, and when
a term loses popularity in literature.
Video Cliff Notes?
Two Crash Courses on Classic Literature
A few years ago John Green started a Crash Course series on classic literature. The early episodes featured Hamlet, The
Great Gatsby, and The Odyssey amongst about a dozen other works. That series is embedded below.
This summer John Green began publishing a new set of Crash
Course literature videos. The new series
includes videos about Huckleberry Finn, Lord of the Flies, and 100
Years of Solitude. The new series is
included in an oddly constructed playlist that for some unclear reason
includes videos about physics, the Olympics, and gaming. Sort through the playlist and you'll find the
literature lessons.
All of these videos include Green's commentary on the
stories along with the summaries of key points in the plots. Much like Cliff
Notes, watching these videos is not a replacement for actually reading the
stories. You may also want to remind
your students that Green's opinions about the stories are just that, opinions.
This makes me feel old.
Star Trek’s 50th Star Date Anniversary
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