Friday, February 16, 2018

Note that there is no mention of cyber retaliation. Russia, North Korea and other actors are showing us some of what they can do. I’m hoping we keep our cyber weapons hidden, for the time being.
US will impose costs on Russia for cyber ‘acts of aggression,’ White House cybersecurity czar says
Russia will be made to pay for its acts of cyber aggression on the international stage, Rob Joyce, special assistant to the president and White House cybersecurity coordinator, told CNBC on Friday.
The act in question was the malware attack known as NotPetya that wiped out billions of dollars as it spread across 64 countries in July 2017. The White House, for the first time Thursday, directly blamed Russia's military for the attack.




I have a hard time remembering names. Perhaps this technology would help?
EFF Report on Law Enforcement Use of Face Recognition Technology
“Face recognition—fast becoming law enforcement’s surveillance tool of choice—is being implemented with little oversight or privacy protections, leading to faulty systems that will disproportionately impact people of color and may implicate innocent people for crimes they didn’t commit, says an Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) report released today. Face recognition is rapidly creeping into modern life, and face recognition systems will one day be capable of capturing the faces of people, often without their knowledge, walking down the street, entering stores, standing in line at the airport, attending sporting events, driving their cars, and utilizing public spaces. Researchers at the Georgetown Law School estimated that one in every two American adults—117 million people—are already in law enforcement face recognition systems. This kind of surveillance will have a chilling effect on Americans’ willingness to exercise their rights to speak out and be politically engaged, the report says. Law enforcement has already used face recognition at political protests, and may soon use face recognition with body-worn cameras, to identify people in the dark, and to project what someone might look like from a police sketch or even a small sample of DNA…


(Related)
Chris Burt reports:
Many vendors of biometrics-based solutions have not anticipated legal and compliance challenges posed by their products, or expressly deny responsibility for those challenges, leading to increased legal action, according to the National Law Review. The article “Buyer Beware: Facial Recognition and the Current Legal Landscape” urges U.S. retailers to be prepared for consumer privacy laws to evolve as they consider implementing such technologies.
The article was authored by partners of law firm Morgan, Lewis & Bockius LLP, and compares the current context for biometrics with that of the earliest text messaging marketing programs.
Read more on Biometric Update.




Hack ahead, wait for the best time to strike.
Chris Bing reports:
Hackers armed with destructive malware appear to have compromised the main IT service provider for the Winter Olympic Games months before last week’s highly publicized cyberattack.
Publicly available evidence analyzed by experts and reviewed by CyberScoop suggests that whoever deployed the Olympic Destroyer malware on Feb. 9 likely previously penetrated a series of computer systems around December belonging to Atos, a multinational information technology service provider that is hosting the cloud infrastructure for the Pyeongchang games.
Read more on CyberScoop.




Tools for Ethical (and other) Hacking.
Joseph Cox reports:
Contractors, governments, and telecom giants have all previously left data on exposed Amazon Web Services (AWS) servers, meaning anyone can access them without a username or password. Now, a search engine makes combing through leaky AWS datasets that much easier. Think of it as a barebones Google, but for info that the owners may have mistakenly published to the world.
Read more on Motherboard.




I’ll follow this to see how it works. Could be useful for my Ethical Hackers.
Google Tests System to Help Locate 911 Callers
Google quietly ran a test of new technology to make it easier for 911 operators to locate cellphone callers, and 911 centers that participated said the results were promising.
The nation’s existing 911 system, which turns 50 this month, has struggled with the explosion of cellphones. The vast majority of 911 calls these days are made using a cellphone, but the location of the caller is hard to pinpoint. Federal regulators estimate shaving a minute off response times could save as many 10,000 lives each year.




Perspective. This makes our “Top 10 targets we’d love to hack (or hack again)”
Apple, Inc. Just Hit a Ridiculously Impressive Milestone
… Market researcher Strategy Analytics has just released its estimates for the smartphone market in the fourth quarter, and the numbers show that Apple has just hit a ridiculously impressive milestone: The iPhone maker just took over half of all global smartphone revenue. Specifically, Apple grabbed 51% revenue share, with Samsung coming in at a distant No. 2.




The other day, my students were wondering how anyone could compete with Amazon or Walmart…
How This Entrepreneur Helps Passionate People Stand up for Their Beliefs With Socks




A timely addition to the toolkit?


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