Researchers Hijack Tesla Car by Hacking Mobile App
In a video released this week, experts showed how they
could obtain the targeted user’s credentials and leverage the information to track
the vehicle and drive it away. There are several conditions that need to be
met for this attack and the victim must be tricked into installing a malicious
app on their mobile phone, but the researchers believe their scenario is
plausible.
Politics or mere amusement?
European Commission target of DDoS attack
by Sabrina
I. Pacifici on Nov 25, 2016
Via Politico: “This afternoon, the European Commission was subject to a cyberattack
(denial of service) which resulted in the saturation of our Internet
connection.”
For my Governance and Software Architecture classes.
The Secret Ballot At Risk: Recommendations for Protecting
Democracy
by Sabrina
I. Pacifici on Nov 25, 2016
“The right to cast a secret ballot in a public election
is a core value in the United States’ system of self-governance. Secrecy and privacy in elections guard against
coercion and are essential to integrity in the electoral process. Secrecy of the ballot is guaranteed in state
constitutions and statutes nationwide. However,
as states permit the marking and transmitting of marked ballots over the
Internet, the right to a secret ballot is eroded and the integrity of our
elections is put at risk. Thirty-two states and the District of Columbia allow
some form of Internet voting–transmitting votes either via email,
electronic fax, or Internet portal–typically for use by overseas and military
voters. Because of current technological limitations, and the unique challenges
of running public elections, it is impossible to maintain separation of voters’
identities from their votes when Internet voting is used. Most states that offer Internet voting
recognize this limitation and require voters to sign a waiver of their right to
a secret ballot. The authors
believe that Internet voting creates a second-class system for some voters–one
in which their votes may not be private and their ballots may be altered
without their knowledge. This report
examines state laws regarding the right to a secret ballot and the ways in
which states are asking voters to waive that right. We also offer recommendations for how voters
and officials can preserve privacy in voting while making use of the Internet
and technological advances. Our findings
show that the vast majority of states (44) have constitutional provisions
guaranteeing secrecy in voting, while the remaining states have statutory
provisions referencing secrecy in voting. Despite that, 32 states allow some voters to
transmit their ballots via the Internet which, given the limitations of current
technology, eliminates the secrecy of the ballot. Twenty-eight of these states require the voter
to sign a waiver of his or her right to a secret ballot. The remainder fail to acknowledge the issue…”
Worth a try, but I bet the courts won’t allow it.
Wells Fargo Wants Claims Over Fake Accounts Decided Out of
Court
Wells Fargo & Co. is trying to keep dozens of
customers suing over bogus accounts opened by its employees out of court,
saying they agreed to resolve any disputes in arbitration when they began doing
business with the bank.
The lender also asked for the lawsuits, filed by 80
customers in federal court in Salt Lake City to be thrown out.
(Related) "It depends on what the
meaning of the word 'is' is.”
Uber seeks EC ruling that it is a digital service, not a
transportation company
Uber will seek to convince Europe’s top court next week
that it is a digital service, not a transport company, in a case that could
determine whether app-based startups should be exempt from strict laws meant
for regular companies.
The European Commission is trying to boost e-commerce, a
sector where the EU lags behind Asia and the United States, to drive economic
growth and create jobs.
The U.S. taxi app, which launched in Europe five years
ago, has faced fierce opposition from regular taxi companies and some local
authorities, who fear it creates unfair competition because it is not bound by
strict local licensing and safety rules.
The downside of ‘really fast access to news!’
The CNN porn scare is how fake news spreads
Last night, a twitter account by the name of @solikearose
tweeted out a surprising image of CNN broadcasting porn instead of Anthony
Bourdain’s scheduled show Parts Unknown. And then without really much questioning,
a bunch of news sites ran with it, claiming that the network showed the footage
for about 30 minutes.
… It looks like
the chaos all started when The Independent wrote up a story from this
person’s tweets, which was then tweeted
out by the Drudge Report. After
that, it spread fast. Mashable, The New York Post, The Daily Mail, Esquire, and Variety have all published a story, and
pretty much all of these articles are based on one or two tweets from
@solikerose. Plus, many of the original
stories didn’t include statements from CNN or RCN, the cable company that
supposedly aired the porn.
Fact-checking
largely didn’t begin until the stories were published.
(Related) Did the Post get suckered too? Surely not just bad reporting?
No, Russian Agents Are Not Behind Every Piece of Fake News
You See
One of the themes that has emerged during the controversy
over “fake news” and its role in the election of Donald Trump is the idea that
Russian agents of various kinds helped hack the process by fueling this barrage
of false news. But is that really true?
In a recent story, the Washington Post says that this
is definitely the case, based on information provided by two groups of what
the paper calls “independent researchers.” But the case starts to come apart at the seams
the more you look at it.
A billion-dollar niche?
I wonder how many there are and how I could start my own.
Amazon in Talks to Buy Dubai’s Souq.com in $1 Billion Deal
Amazon.com Inc. is in talks to acquire Dubai-based online
retailer Souq.com FZ
for about $1 billion in a deal that will give the e-commerce giant a footprint
in the high-growth Middle East market, according to people familiar with the
matter.
One of my students is building one of these for a
demonstration in my January Computer Security class.
$5 PoisonTap Tool Easily Breaks Into Locked PCs
Proving once again that you can do a lot of damage with a
little investment and a lot of ingenuity, security researcher Samy
Kamkar recently managed to take down a locked, password-protected
computer armed with only a US$5 Raspberry Pi.
The low-tech cookie-siphoning intrusion is one of Kamkar's
simplest hacks ever. He previously has
unlocked car doors, garages, wireless remote cameras and other devices, with
MacGyver-like precision.
Trivia for my geeky students.
Will the TSA open a video feed at US airports?
Update: I couldn’t find a link to the report the first
time I posted about this study.
A Stanford University team won a lot
of attention
this week by releasing a
study on how badly teenagers assess information online. “Evaluating
Information: The Cornerstone of Civic Online Reasoning” examined more than
7,000 students to check their information literacy skills.
My industry.
Hack Education Weekly News
[This blogger is not happy with anything Trump. You can tell by the icon she uses for the ‘Trump
news’ section. Bob]
… “The United
States Department of Education’s Office of Inspector General
has found in a recent report that the department’s overall information
technology security is ‘not generally effective’ in meeting several
federal requirements,” Campus
Technology reports. “The ed
department (ED) and its Federal Student Aid (FSA) office scored only 53 points
out of 100 in a recent security audit.”
… “Attorneys for
Gov. Rick Snyder and state education officials say no fundamental right
to literacy exists for Detroit schoolchildren who are
suing the state over the quality of their education,” The
Detroit News reports.
… Via
the Lansing State Journal: “An email sent to Michigan State
University last weekend attempting to ‘extort money’ helped the
university identify a data breach that affected about 400,000
records and included names, Social Security numbers and MSU identification
numbers, a university spokesman said Friday evening.”
… Via
EdWeek’s Market Brief: “Two recent reports that track K–12 spending
reveal schools’ strong interest in purchasing security-related
hardware, products, and technology.” One of the most popular pieces of technology: gun
detectors. Yes, gun detectors
are ed-tech.
