A relatively small breach, but another “data
held ransom” incident.
For those like me who don’t automatically
remember different systems: 26 lakh = 2.6 million, and 1 crore = USD
$10 million.
Statesman News Service reports:
The billing data of over 26-lakh consumers with the Uttar Haryana Bijli Vitran Nigam (UHBVN), one of the two power discoms in the state, has been stolen and the hackers are demanding Rs. 1 crore in cryptocurrency, Bitcoins.
[…]
Sources said the cyber attack took place after midnight on March 21 with the hackers targeting the billing data of UHBVN consumers. With all billing information hacked, hackers used the UHBVN computer screens to flash the message demanding Rs 1 crore in Bitcoins from the Haryana government to retrieve the data.
Read more on The
Statesman.
(Related)
Statistics
Say Don't Pay the Ransom; but Cleanup and Recovery Remains Costly
… SentinelOne's
Global Ransomware Report 2018 (PDF)
questioned 500 security and risk professionals (200 in the U.S., and
100 in each of France, Germany and the UK) employed in a range of
verticals and different company sizes.
The
result provides evidence that paying a ransom is not necessarily a
solution to ransomware. Forty-five percent of U.S. companies
infected with ransomware paid at least one ransom, but only 26% had
their files unlocked. Furthermore, 73% of those firms that paid the
ransom were targeted at least once again. Noticeably, while
defending against ransomware is a security function, responding to it
is a business function: 44%
of companies that paid up did so without the involvement or sanction
of the IT/security teams.
Something
to stir up debate in my Computer Security class.
Tyler Durden writes:
The Cambridge Analytica scandal was never really about Cambridge Analytica.
As we’ve pointed out, neither Facebook nor Cambridge Analytica have been accused of doing anything explicitly illegal (though one could be forgiven for believing they had, based on the number of lawsuits and official investigations that have been announced).
Instead, the backlash to these revelations – which has been justifiably focused on Facebook – is so severe because the public has been forced to confront for the first time something that many had previously written off as an immutable certainty: That Facebook, Google and the rest of the tech behemoths store reams of personal data, essentially logging everything we do.
Read more on ZeroHedge.
Another
“thing” on the “Internet of Things” that wants to spy on you.
Joe Cadillic writes:
Cities across America are installing FREE smart parking meters equipped with license plate license plate readers (LPR).
A company called Municipal Parking Service (MPS) has been installing free camera equipped parking meters in Massachusetts, Connecticut, New Jersey, Florida and Canada.
Are MPS’s parking meters really free?
The answer is yes, sort of.
Read more on MassPrivateI.
Suspicions
confirmed!
FBI sought
iPhone order before exhausting options: U.S. inspector general
The Federal Bureau of Investigation did not
exhaust possible solutions to unlock an iPhone connected to a gunman
involved in a late-2015 shooting spree before seeking a court order
to compel Apple Inc to help access the device, a U.S. Justice
Department internal watchdog said on Tuesday.
The conclusion may pose challenges for the Trump
administration in possible future litigation to force companies to
help crack into encrypted devices.
… The FBI unit chief knew that one of the
vendors contacted had almost 90 percent completed a technical
solution that would unlock the iPhone, the report said. The Justice
Department said at the time it required Apple’s assistance because
it lacked other means to access the device.
… Communication failures at the FBI caused
some officials to misunderstand the status of its own efforts to open
the device, and contributed to delays in seeking help from the FBI
unit and the vendor that was ultimately successful, the report said.
“The lack of coordination resulted in a
“belatedly-obtained technical solution” that forced the
government to withdraw its court filing stating it could not access
the iPhone, it added.
The FBI told the inspector general there was no
delay in developing the technique that opened the iPhone and that the
vendor had proactively notified officials of the cracking method.
Some pros and cons.
Social Media strikes again? I take it ROTC is out
of the question. You can’t take a gun safety course or go hunting?
Seems really excessive to me.
Two NJ high
school students suspended for going to gun range after school
Lacey Township School District in central New
Jersey suspended two high school students after Snapchat
pictures showed them at a gun range outside of school
hours.
Attorney
Daniel Schmutter with the Association of New Jersey Rifle and
Pistol Clubs said a lawsuit might be pending since the pictures were
non-threatening and not alarming in any way. The two students were
simply at a gun range after school hours.
Schmutter indicated in a letter to Lacey Township
School District that suspending the two students for posting photos
off school grounds and unrelated to school activities was a “very
serious violation” of the their rights, according to Patch.com.
… Lacey Township School District follows the
Safe Schools Initiative and the Zero Tolerance for Guns Act. Their
own policy enforces zero-tolerance policy for any students who have
weapons in their possession, on or off school grounds, according to
Patch.com.
… The students could face a possible one-year
suspension, according to Schmutter.
Perspective. It’s clear which side he’s on!
(But some ‘worth reading’ analysis.)
Insanity
Wins As Appeals Court Overturns Google's Fair Use Victory For Java
APIs
Oh, CAFC. The Court of Appeals for the Federal
Circuit has spent decades fucking up patent law, and now they're
doing their damndest to fuck up copyright law as well. In case you'd
forgotten, the big case between Oracle and Google over whether or not
Google infringed on Oracle's copyrights is still going on – and it
appears it will still be going on for quite a while longer, as CAFC
this morning came down with a laughably
stupid opinion, overturning the district court's jury verdict,
which had said that Google's use of a few parts of Java's API was
protected by fair use. That jury verdict was kind of silly in
the first place, because the whole trial (the second one in the case)
made little sense, as basically everyone outside of Oracle and the
CAFC had previously understood (correctly) that APIs are simply not
covered by copyright.
Perspective. “Damn the facts, full speed
ahead?”
Trump hates
Amazon, not Facebook
-
Trump tells people Amazon has gotten a free ride from taxpayers and cushy treatment from the U.S. Postal Service.
-
“The whole post office thing, that's very much a perception he has,” another source said. “It's been explained to him in multiple meetings that his perception is inaccurate and that the post office actually makes a ton of money from Amazon."
Not sure if we have an Apple ID. Should we get
one?
Apple has shared during its education event in
Chicago today that student accounts through schools will now get
200GB of iCloud storage for free.
A considerable bump from the current 5GB of free
iCloud storage, Apple will be giving the 200GB allotment to every
student with a managed Apple ID.
Keep in mind this won’t work like the Apple
Music student discount, where any student with a .edu is eligible.
The updated 200GB plans are
only for students with school provided Apple IDs.
Now that’s big!
This Giant
Infographic Has 140+ Facts On The Scale Of Amazon
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