Saturday, September 16, 2017

“Release the scapegoats!”
Top Equifax Executives Announce Immediate Retirement After Massive Data Breach
Equifax says its chief information officer and chief security officer are leaving the company, following the enormous breach of 143 million Americans' personal information.
The credit data company said Friday that Susan Mauldin, who had been the top security officer, and David Webb, the chief technology officer, are retiring from Equifax immediately. Mauldin, a college music major, had come under media scrutiny for her qualifications in security. Equifax did not say in its statement what retirement packages the executives would receive.


(Related). Is it enough?
Two Equifax executives will retire following massive data breach
… At least two congressional hearings on the Equifax breach have been announced. The first scheduled panel will take place on Oct. 3, when Smith is expected to testify. A bipartisan group of 36 senators have asked the Justice Department and the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission to investigate reports Equifax executives sold stock after learning about the breach but before it was made public. The Federal Trade Commission took the unusual step of announcing it is conducting a probe into the Equifax breach.
… Senate Minority Leader Charles E. Schumer (D-N.Y.) said on Thursday the company's chief executive and board of directors should step down unless they take five steps to correct their mishandling:
notify affected consumers;
provide free credit monitoring to them for at least 10 years,
offer to freeze their credit for up to 10 years;
remove forced arbitration clauses from their terms of use;
and comply with fines or new standards that come out of investigations.

“It’s only right that the CEO and board step down if they can’t reach this modicum of corporate decency by next week,” he said.


(Related). Scary, if true. I bet Equifax hopes this is “Fake News.”
Wow. Just wow.
Read this. Those suing Equifax are going to find a lot in that report that will undoubtedly be referenced in any complaint alleging negligence.
Update: I should have added to the above that I have no way of knowing if any of it is true or if it is all fabricated. But I can see where people are going to be citing this – unless it’s disproved.
[From the article:
I asked the hackers one last request before disconnecting. I asked, "How did you manage to get the passwords to some of the databases?" Surely the panels had really bad security but what about the other sections to them? Surely there was encrypted data stored within these large archives no? Yes. There was. But guess where they decided to keep the private keys? Embedded within the panels themselves. The picture above shows exactly that, all the keys stored nicely, alongside any sub companies to Equifax. All pwned.




Like the HBO breach? When you just can’t wait to find out what happens next?
Todd Spangler reports:
A notorious hacker group broke into the servers of music-streaming service Vevo, releasing more than 3 terabytes of internal documents and video content online — before removing them later Friday morning at Vevo’s request.
The purloined cache, posted by hacking and security collective OurMine, included videos, a batch of documents labeled “premieres,” as well as marketing info, international social-media documents, and other internal files, as first reported by tech site Gizmodo.
Read more on Variety.




Apple probably wouldn’t like it if I started calling this a “mugshot feature.”
Apple X’s Face ID Feature Places Spotlight on Facial Recognition Technology, Raising Numerous Mobile Privacy and Data Usage Issues
… One issue that I thought was particularly interesting, however, relates to the ability of apps residing on a phone to interact with facial captures. Unless disabled, Face ID could potentially be “always on,” ready to capture facial images to authenticate the unlocking of the phone, and possibly capturing facial images as the user interacts with the unlocked phone. So, clients have asked: Will the apps on the phone be able to access and use those facial captures?
Fascinating question! Imagine the applications. An app would be able to discern all kinds of new demographic information about users, and possibly gauge information about a person’s mood, location, age, and health. Moreover, could an app evaluate on a real-time basis a user’s emotional response to interactions with a particular app or web page?




Should we know who sells those white hoods to the KKK?
Google Appears to Allow Racist Ad Targeting Like Facebook, Says BuzzFeed
Google's advertising platform can be used to create ads targeting racist or bigoted people, according to a report from BuzzFeed News on Friday.
BuzzFeed put in its own keywords which were supplemented by keywords suggested by the Google platform, to create a targeted ad. The news comes a day after ProPublica reported that Facebook algorithms allowed ads targeting anti-semitic audiences.
Such test cases show that the same technology used to sell legitimate products and services can be turned to more nefarious purposes.


(Related). Gee. Maybe all Social Media does this.
Twitter Says It Fixed ‘Bug’ That Let Marketers Target People Who Use the N-Word
… The Daily Beast reported Friday that Twitter Ads returned 26.3 million users who may respond to the term “wetback,” 18.6 million to “Nazi,” and 14.5 million to “n**ger.”




Perspective. Could you tell from looking at the tweet or reading the story that is was machine generated?
It’s been a year since The Washington Post started using its homegrown artificial intelligence technology, Heliograf, to spit out around 300 short reports and alerts on the Rio Olympics. Since then, it’s used Heliograf to cover congressional and gubernatorial races on Election Day and D.C.-area high school football games, producing stories like this one and tweets like this:

… Media outlets using AI say it’s meant to enable journalists to do more high-value work, not take their jobs. The AP estimated that it’s freed up 20 percent of reporters’ time spent covering corporate earnings and that AI is also moving the needle on accuracy. “In the case of automated financial news coverage by AP, the error rate in the copy decreased even as the volume of the output increased more than tenfold,” said Francesco Marconi, AP’s strategy manager and AI co-lead.
… All this goes back to the ad-supported — and stressed — pageview model of journalism. Publishers need to get readers or other groups to pay to support their business models. “Right now, automated journalism is about producing volume. Ultimately, media companies will have to figure out how to go beyond the pageview,” said Seth Lewis, a journalism professor at the University of Oregon whose focuses include the rise of AI in media.
… Right now, the Post can count the stories and pageviews that Heliograf generated. Quantifying its impact on how much time it gives reporters to do other work and the value of that work is harder. It’s also hard to quantify how much engagement, ad revenue and subscriptions can be attributed to those robo-reported stories.




Backstory? A long tale of the FBI’s interest in messaging Apps. Interesting read…
The Crypto- Keepers




“Rudolph the Red Nosed Drone!”
All of the other aircraft
Used to laugh and call them names
They never let poor Rudolph
Join in any aircraft games
Then one day after Irma,
The FAA, the Air National Guard, Customs and Border Protection, insurance companies, And Florida Power and Light came to say,
Rudolph with your nose so bright,
Won't you guide my relief effort tonight

Drones playing critical role in hurricane relief efforts
Drones have been playing an “invaluable” role in Hurricane Irma relief efforts, the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) said Friday.
After Florida and the Caribbean suffered widespread destruction from Irma’s winds and floodwaters, the FAA issued 132 airspace authorizations for drones to help with recovery and response efforts.
The Air National Guard, for example, is deploying drones that are normally used for combat operations to help perform aerial surveys, assess disaster-stricken areas quickly and decide which need the most assistance.
Customs and Border Protection is using unmanned aircraft systems to help map areas in Key West, Miami and Jacksonville and using radar to survey key geographic points on infrastructure.
In the private sector, commercial drone companies are helping provide clearer images of damaged homes to insurance companies so that they can more quickly act on claims.
And Florida Power and Light is using dozens of drone teams to help restore electricity and air conditioning in the area by sending out drones to survey parts of the state that are still not accessible by vehicles.


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