Donald Trump’s Twitter Account Is A Security Disaster Waiting
To Happen
The most powerful publication in the world today is Donald
Trump’s personal Twitter account. In the
past six weeks, it has moved
markets, conducted
shadow foreign policy, and reshaped the focus of media around the world. Just today, it
caused Toyota’s stock to drop. It is
also shockingly insecure.
… That’s
especially true because there is a large fortune that could be made in a single
140-character message. If someone were
able to gain access to Trump’s Twitter, they could tweet approvingly or
disapprovingly about a company (as Trump has done) and play the stock market
accordingly — or cause others to do so. A market-tracking app called Trigger has
already set up an alert that responds whenever Trump tweets about publicly
traded companies.
If the hacker were geopolitically motivated, they could
tweet favorably or unfavorably about a country or a leader (as
Trump has done) and alter foreign affairs. Or if the hacker had a grudge, they could call
their enemy out in a tweet (as Trump
has done) and unleash the rage of Trump’s nearly 19 million followers. Plus, who knows what’s in Trump’s DMs? [Direct
Message (I had to look it up.) Bob]
… This is not a
far-fetched scenario. Putting aside the specter
of state-sponsored Russian hacking, in the past year alone, the Twitter
accounts of Kylie Jenner, Mark Zuckerberg, Keith Richards, Sundar Pichai,
Drake, Travis Kalanick, the National Football League, and the foreign
minister of Belgium (to name a few) were hacked or accessed by someone who
wasn’t supposed to have access.
We’re starting to figure out “what could possibly go
wrong?” I can see TV ads ending with, “Be
sure to say, “Alexa, order a ______!”
San Diego News Anchor Mistakenly Triggers Amazon Alexa To
Order Dollhouses For TV Watchers
San Diego channel CW6 was reporting about a child who
“accidentally” bought a dollhouse and four pounds of cookies through their Amazon Echo. News anchor Jim Patton remarked, “I love the
little girl, saying ‘Alexa ordered me a dollhouse’”. Viewers soon started calling into the station
complaining that Patton’s statement made their devices try to order a
dollhouse.
Accidental orders happen surprisingly often. Alexa does adapt to speech patterns and
vocabulary, but is unable to completely differentiate between users.
… For those
concerned about accidental purchases, shopping settings can be managed through
the Alexa app. Users can turn off voice purchasing and create a confirmation
before every order.
Would this reduce the liability of self-driving software
enough to offset the increase in remote-driver liability? What if the car (owner or software) failed to
ask for help? (Or got a message that, “all
of our agents are currently busy, please hold and the next available agent will
take you call.)
Nissan’s Path to Self-Driving Cars? Humans in Call Centers
… Even a system
that could handle 99 percent of driving situations will cause trouble for the
company trying to promote, and make money off, the technology. “We will always need the human in the loop,”
Sierhuis says.
But Nissan has a solution: a call center with human
meatbags ready to take command via remote control.
Would this model also work for other business data?
… Google’s public
mission is to “organize the world’s information and make it universally
accessible and useful”. Many, but not
all, of the company’s present-day projects focus on this mission — a mission
reliant on gathering, organizing, and interpreting millions of gigabytes of
data.
... At a very
basic level, Google Maps has taken a huge amount of offline information and
published it online. We’re talking
things like highway networks, road signs, street names, and business
names. But as I hint below, Google hopes
that Maps will be able to do a lot more in the future.
… But what
actually goes into making sense of all that data?
This largely boils down to the kinds of algorithms that
make up the bedrock of Google as a company. These algorithms, which happen to be extremely
complex and secretive, work to clean the data, spot inconsistencies, and link
it all together to make it more useful.
What clearer indication of a corporate “death spiral” could
there possibly be.
Sears sells Craftsman brand to Stanley Black & Decker for
about $900 million
… The deal will
provide another cash infusion for Sears, but it comes at a cost – broadening
distribution of the well-known brand gives consumers one less reason to choose to shop at the struggling retailer.
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