Kyra Gurney reports:
Two months before the U.S.
presidential election, international hackers slipped into the computer systems
of at least four Florida school district networks in the hopes of stealing the
personal data of hundreds of thousands of students.
They infected the systems with
malware — malicious software — that turned off
the logs recording who accessed the systems, according to United
Data Technologies, the Doral-based cybersecurity company that investigated the
incidents. For three months, the hackers
probed the systems, mapping them out and testing their defenses. At one point, they even posted photos of
someone dressed as an ISIS fighter on two school district websites.
Read more on Sacramento
Bee.
[From the
article:
A large school district like Miami-Dade, which was one of
the districts targeted in the attempted hack last fall, handles the personal
information, including Social Security numbers, of hundreds of thousands of
current and former students, along with data on thousands of employees and
parents.
… “High school
kids, almost all of them have a very clean slate when it comes to credit
scoring. So they’re trying to gain
access to a large volume of teenagers’ [information] that can help them down
the road,” he said. “These guys have
time. They’re willing to wait a year, two years before they can actually
monetize that data.”
Apparently, Russian hackers are redundant. Note that only about 60 million people actually
voted in the last Presidential election.
It’s somewhat unbelievable how this keeps happening and
Congress continues to sit on its hands when it comes to voter registration
data. The Russians don’t need to hack
anything. They just need to look for
leaky servers or buckets.
Joe UChill reports:
A data analytics contractor
employed by the Republican National Committee (RNC) left databases containing
information on nearly 200 million
potential voters exposed to the internet without security, allowing
anyone who knew where to look to download it without a password.
“We take full responsibility for
this situation,” said the contractor, Deep Root Analytics, in
a statement.
The databases were part of 25
terabytes of files contained in an Amazon cloud account that could be browsed
without logging in. The leaky account
was discovered by researcher Chris Vickery of the security firm UpGuard. The files have since been secured.
Read more on The
Hill.
A nice crossover between my Computer Security and
Spreadsheet classes.
Deep Mukherjee reports:
Confidential information of
customers who booked flats in Noida, postpaid mobile customers, credit card
holders and insurance policy subscribers were in possession of the gang that
was running a fake call centre in Uttar Pradesh’s Noida, police said.
Such was the gang’s methodical
approach that it had a detailed list of people who own luxury cars in the
National Capital Region which covers the territorial jurisdictions of National
Capital Territory of Delhi, Haryana, Uttar Pradesh and Rajasthan.
“The gang maintained a precise
database of crores of people across India. We found personal information of 6
lakh people in just one Excel sheet from the laptops that we seized,” Deputy
Commissioner of Police (crime) Vikas Pathak told Hindustan Times.
Read more on Hindustan
Times.
I find it amusing that one vendor (Ross) claims they can
help you, “Do more than humanly possible.” Sounds like real, human lawyers are on the way
out,
Innovations in legal technology leverage search and discovery
by Sabrina
I. Pacifici on Jun 18, 2017
Upsetting The Applecart Of Legal Research – Are we entering a
golden age of legal research innovation?
By Robert Ambrogi
If you had to pick the most staid area of legal
technology, you might choose legal research. After all, Westlaw and LexisNexis pretty much
set the standard for online legal research long ago, and many of the smaller
research services that have come along since are essentially less-comprehensive
variations on the same theme. Yet within
a few days of each other earlier this month, there were three major
developments pertaining to legal research, each of which suggests interesting
new directions for legal research. In
fact, after I wrote about the three developments on my Lawsites blog, it
prompted Ed Walters, the CEO of legal research service Fastcase,
to tweet, “Might we be entering a
golden age of legal research innovation? Sure feels like it.” Of course, innovation in legal research has
been going on for a while now. Middle-tier services such as Fastcase and Casemaker
are frequently refining their platforms and adding new features. Startups such as Casetext
and Ravel
Law have introduced innovations that even the big players have emulated. Startup ROSS is bringing IBM Watson’s artificial
intelligence to legal research. Still, all three of these recent developments
signal possible new directions in legal research. Let me review them briefly…”
Perspective. Rather
than pay for 199 channels when you only watch three or four, pay for the content
(even single events) you want to watch.
Nearly Half of Broadband Consumers Subscribe to a Video OTT
Service: Study
Reflecting the surge in consumer adoption and volume of
subscription VOD services, almost half of U.S. broadband customers pay for at
least one OTT video service, according to a survey from IBB Consulting.
The study, based on a survey of 2,007 U.S. online
consumers, found that about one-third subscribe to two OTT services and 18%
take three or more.
Millennials are the group most likely to take more than
three paid OTT services. Notably, some 63%
of paid OTT subscribers also get a traditional pay TV service.
“Because I don’t understand technology…” More likely, because parents can’t say “no.”
Colorado man seeks smartphone ban for kids
… The proposal
would require retailers to submit reports to the state government verifying
that they had inquired about who each sold smartphone was intended to be used by,
and fine those that repeatedly sell phones to be used by young children and
preteens.
… Farnum said he
was inspired to make the push after watching his own kids struggle with the
psychological effects of always having device in hand.
President Trump likes walls. Suppose we tell him the Mexicans hacked the
election…
Germany Builds an Election Firewall to Fight Russian Hackers
In March and April hackers tried to infiltrate computers
of think tanks associated with Germany’s top two political parties. A year earlier, scammers set up a fake server
in Latvia to flood German lawmakers with phishing emails. And in 2015 criminals breached the network of
the German Parliament, stealing 16 gigabytes of data. Although there’s no definitive proof, the
attacks have been linked to Pawn Storm, a shadowy group with ties to Russian
intelligence agencies—raising the possibility that the Kremlin might disrupt a
September vote in which Chancellor Angela Merkel, Russian President Vladimir
Putin’s strongest critic in Europe, is seeking a fourth term.
… Merkel’s
Christian Democratic Union (CDU) is calling for a law that would allow the
country to “hack back” and wipe out attacking servers.
… Germany’s
education ministry is backing a new cybersecurity school where politicians and
IT officials are taught to spot and react to hacking.
As long as you are in the neighborhood…
Historical Marker Database
by Sabrina
I. Pacifici on Jun 18, 2017
“This website, The Historical Marker Database, is
an illustrated searchable online catalog of historical information viewed
through the filter of roadside and other permanent outdoor markers, monuments,
and plaques. It contains photographs,
inscription transcriptions, marker locations, maps, additional information and
commentary, and links to more information. Anyone can add new markers to the database and
update existing marker pages with new photographs, links, information and
commentary.”
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