Florida court says iPhone passcode must be revealed
A court in Florida has said a suspected voyeur can be made
to reveal his iPhone passcode to investigators.
The defendant was arrested after a woman out shopping saw
a man crouch down and aim what she believed was a smartphone under her skirt.
Previously, a judge said the defendant could not be made
to reveal the code, citing constitutional protections.
That decision has now been reversed by the Florida Court
of Appeal's Second District.
A Christmas present for my Ethical Hacking students. I wonder if we can make this work on a
Raspberry Pi?
MacBooks Leak Disk Encryption Password
… FileVault 2 is a
full-disk encryption program that uses XTS-AES-128 encryption with a 256-bit
key to prevent unauthorized access to the information on the startup disk. Frisk has demonstrated that an attacker with
physical access to a locked or sleeping MacBook can retrieve the FileVault 2
password in clear text by connecting a special device to the targeted system’s
Thunderbolt port.
… Since the
FileVault 2 password is stored in clear text in memory at predictable
locations, software running on the Thunderbolt device can retrieve the password
from memory before it is overwritten. The
attacker must gain access to a locked or sleeping MacBook, connect the
Thunderbolt device and reboot the computer. The attack does not work if the targeted
MacBook has been shut down as the password is no longer available in memory.
… The device that
can be used to carry out such an attack has been dubbed PCILeech, and
its source code and hardware requirements have been made available by Frisk.
For my Data Management students.
McKinsey Report – The Age of Analytics – Competing in a
Data-Driven World
by Sabrina
I. Pacifici on Dec 18, 2016
The Age of Analytics – Competing in a Data-Driven World,
December 2016 – Executive Summary; Full Report; Appendix (PDF)
“Data and analytics capabilities have made a leap forward
in recent years. The volume of available
data has grown exponentially, more sophisticated algorithms have been
developed, and computational power and storage have steadily improved. The convergence of these trends is fueling
rapid technology advances and business disruptions.
- Most companies are capturing only a fraction of the potential value from data and analytics. Our 2011 report estimated this potential in five domains; revisiting them today shows a great deal of value still on the table. The greatest progress has occurred in location-based services and in retail, both areas with digital native competitors. In contrast, manufacturing, the public sector, and health care have captured less than 30 percent of the potential value we highlighted five years ago. Further, new opportunities have arisen since 2011, making the gap between the leaders and laggards even bigger.
- Data is now a critical corporate asset. It comes from the web, billions of phones, sensors, payment systems, cameras, and a huge array of other sources—and its value is tied to its ultimate use. While data itself will become increasingly commoditized, value is likely to accrue to the owners of scarce data, to players that aggregate data in unique ways, and especially to providers of valuable analytics.
(Related). If you
don’t have the right data or enough data, go get it!
NYT – The Secret Agenda of a Facebook Quiz
by Sabrina
I. Pacifici on Dec 18, 2016
The Secret Agenda of a Facebook Quiz, McKenzie Funk, NY
Times, Nov. 19, 2016 [Commentary/Op-Ed] “For several years, a data firm eventually
hired by the Trump campaign, Cambridge
Analytica, has been using Facebook as a tool to build psychological
profiles that represent some 230 million adult Americans. A spinoff of a British consulting company and
sometime-defense contractor known for its counterterrorism “psy ops” work in
Afghanistan, the firm does so by seeding the social network with personality
quizzes. Respondents–by now hundreds of
thousands of us, mostly female and mostly young but enough male and older for
the firm to make inferences about others with similar behaviors and
demographics–get a free look at their Ocean scores. Cambridge Analytica also gets a look at their
scores and, thanks to Facebook, gains access to their profiles and real names. Cambridge Analytica worked on the “Leave” side
of the Brexit campaign. In the United States it takes only Republicans as
clients: Senator Ted Cruz in the primaries, Mr. Trump in the general
election. Cambridge is reportedly backed
by Robert Mercer, a hedge fund billionaire and a major Republican donor; a key
board member is Stephen K. Bannon, the head of Breitbart News who became Mr.
Trump’s campaign chairman and is [now]…his chief strategist in the White House… Cambridge
Analytica says it has as many as 3,000 to 5,000 data points on each of us,
be it voting histories or full-spectrum demographics–age, income, debt,
hobbies, criminal histories, purchase histories, religious leanings, health
concerns, gun ownership, car ownership, homeownership–from consumer-data
giants…”
For my Researching students. This might apply outside the legal field.
The Algorithm as a Human Artifact: Implications for Legal
[Re]Search
by Sabrina
I. Pacifici on Dec 18, 2016
Mart, Susan Nevelow, The Algorithm as a Human Artifact:
Implications for Legal {Re}Search (October 26, 2016). Available for download at
SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=2859720
“When legal researchers search in online databases for the
information they need to solve a legal problem, they need to remember that the
algorithms that are returning results to them were designed by humans. The world of legal research is a
human-constructed world, and the biases and assumptions the teams of humans
that construct the online world bring to the task are imported into the systems
we use for research. This article takes
a look at what happens when six different teams of humans set out to solve the
same problem: how to return results relevant to a searcher’s query in a case
database. When comparing the top ten
results for the same search entered into the same jurisdictional case database
in Casetext, Fastcase, Google Scholar, Lexis Advance, Ravel, and Westlaw, the
results are a remarkable testament to the variability of human problem solving.
There is hardly any overlap in the cases
that appear in the top ten results returned by each database. An average of forty percent of the cases were
unique to one database, and only about 7% of the cases were returned in search
results in all six databases. It is fair
to say that each different set of engineers brought very different biases and
assumptions to the creation of each search algorithm. One of the
most surprising results was the clustering among the databases in terms of the
percentage of relevant results. The
oldest database providers, Westlaw and Lexis, had the highest percentages of
relevant results, at 67% and 57%, respectively. The newer legal database providers, Fastcase,
Google Scholar, Casetext, and Ravel, were also clustered together at a lower
relevance rate, returning approximately 40% relevant results. Legal research has always been an endeavor
that required redundancy in searching; one resource does not usually provide a
full answer, just as one search will not provide every necessary result. The study clearly demonstrates that the need
for redundancy in searches and resources has not faded with the rise of the
algorithm. From the law professor
seeking to set up a corpus of cases to study, the trial lawyer seeking that one
elusive case, the legal research professor showing students the limitations of
algorithms, researchers who want full results will need to mine multiple
resources with multiple searches. And
more accountability about the nature of the algorithms being deployed would
allow all researchers to craft searches that would be optimally successful.”
Continuing our discussion about the capabilities (and
politics) of satellite technology.
Galileo! Galileo! Galileo! Galileo! Galileo fit
to go: Europe's GPS-like network switches on
The Galileo network will offer a free service with an
accuracy of one metre, and can pinpoint locations down to a few centimetres for
paying customers. The service has 18
satellites in orbit, with 30 projected by 2020 at the latest.
… "Galileo
will increase geo-location precision ten-fold and enable the next generation of
location-based technologies; such as autonomous cars, connected devices, or
smart city services. Today I call on
European entrepreneurs and say: imagine what you can do with Galileo – don't
wait, innovate."
… Galileo was
proposed in 1999 and almost immediately the US objected to the scheme, fearing it could be used by
terrorists to plan attacks. America was
also worried that the signals couldn't be jammed without also blocking its own
GPS system.
After years of negotiations and technical discussions, a compromise was
reached. Galileo can be blocked for
civilian use in an emergency, but still provide military and government users
access via an encrypted data flow.
Geeky, but interesting.
Data Science Central – Great list of resources: data science,
visualization, machine learning, big data
by Sabrina
I. Pacifici on Dec 18, 2016
Great list of resources: data science, visualization, machine
learning, big data Posted by Vincent Granville on December 17,
2016.
“Fantastic resource created by Andrea Motosi. I’ve only included the 5 categories that are
the most relevant to our audience, though it has 31 categories total, including
a few on distributed systems and Hadoop.
Click
here to view the 31 categories. You
might also want to check our internal resources (the first section below)…”
I haven’t noticed many deformed students but perhaps I
haven’t been watching closely enough.
Many of us use our phones, tablets,
and computers day in and day out. Unfortunately, the postures we hold when we’re
using these devices are contributing to serious problems for our spines.
While it’s unrealistic to suggest we stop using our
electronics entirely, there are some easy changes out there. By taking a load off your neck, shoulders, and
back, you’ll see immediate improvements in your posture and health. Not only that, but you will also be saving
yourself from tons of musculoskeletal problems down the road.
Bah, Humbug!
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