"The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars,
but in ourselves...”
https://krebsonsecurity.com/2018/07/hackers-breached-virginia-bank-twice-in-eight-months-stole-2-4m/
Hackers
Breached Virginia Bank Twice in Eight Months, Stole $2.4M
Hackers used phishing emails to break into a
Virginia bank in two separate cyber intrusions over an eight-month
period, making off with more than $2.4 million total. Now the
financial institution is suing its cybersecurity insurance provider
for refusing to fully cover the losses.
According to a lawsuit filed last month in the
Western District of Virginia, the first heist took place in late May
2016, after an employee at The National Bank of Blacksburg
fell victim to a targeted phishing email.
… Armed with this access, the bank says,
hackers were able to disable and alter anti-theft and anti-fraud
protections, such as 4-digit personal identification numbers (PINs),
daily withdrawal limits, daily debit card usage limits, and fraud
score protections.
National Bank said the first breach began
Saturday, May 28, 2016 and continued through the following Monday.
Normally, the bank would be open on a Monday, but that particular
Monday was Memorial
Day, a federal holiday in the United States. The hackers used
hundreds of ATMs across North America to dispense funds from customer
accounts. All told, the perpetrators stole more than $569,000 in
that incident.
… In June of 2016, National Bank implemented
additional security protocols, as recommended by FirstData. These
protocols are known as “velocity
rules” and were put in place to help the bank flag specific
types of repeated transaction patterns that happen within a short
period of time
But just eight months later — in January 2017
according to the lawsuit — hackers broke in to the bank’s systems
once more, again gaining access to the financial institution’s
systems via a phishing email.
Perspective. No plans to monetize any time soon.
Google CEO
Sundar Pichai revealed a jaw-dropping fact about its translation app
that shows how much money is still sitting on the table
… During Google's second-quarter
earnings conference call on Monday, CEO Sundar
Pichai revealed an intriguing piece of information that hints at
the translation product's moneymaking potential. The app translates
a staggering 143 billions
words every day, Pichai said. And, he added, it got a big
boost during this summer's World Cup soccer tournament.
For my geeks. Anyone know where I can buy a used
quantum computer?
Microsoft
provides free lessons for quantum computing basics
Want to learn more about quantum
computing and how to program in the Q# language? Microsoft just
launched Quantum
Katas, an open source project that does just that by providing
you with tutorials for learning at your own pace. According to
Microsoft, these exercises are based on three learning principles:
Active learning, incremental complexity growth, and feedback.
This uses a lot of interesting tech.
This Amazon
Echo mod lets Alexa understand sign language
It seems like voice
interfaces are going to be a big part of the future of computing;
popping up in phones, smart speakers, and even household appliances.
But how useful is this technology for people who don’t communicate
using speech? Are we creating a system that locks out certain users?
These were the questions that
inspired software developer Abhishek Singh
to create a mod that lets Amazon’s Alexa assistant understand some
simple sign language commands. In a video, Singh demonstrates how
the system works. An Amazon Echo is connected to a laptop, with a
webcam (and some back-end machine learning software) decoding Singh’s
gestures in text and speech.
… The actual mod itself
was made with the help of Google’s TensorFlow software,
specifically TensorFlow.js,
which allows users to code machine learning applications in
JavaScript (making it easier to run applications in web browsers).
As with any machine vision software, Singh had to teach his program
to understand visual signals by feeding it training data. He
couldn’t find any datasets for sign language online, and instead
created his own set of basic signals.
The software is just a
proof-of-concept at this point, and is unable to read any signs that
aren’t demoed in the video. But adding more vocabulary is
relatively easy, and Singh says he
plans to open-source the code and write an explanatory blog post for
his work. “By releasing the code people will be able to
download it and build on it further or just be inspired to explore
this problem space,” he tells The Verge.
It might be fun to see what my students think.
Forbes
deleted a deeply misinformed op-ed arguing Amazon should replace
libraries
On Saturday morning Forbes published an
opinion piece by LIU Post economist Panos Mourdoukoutas with the
headline “Amazon Should Replace Local Libraries to Save Taxpayers
Money.” It quickly received enthusiastic backlash from actual
American libraries and their communities.
As of around 10am US eastern time this morning,
the story had nearly 200,000 views, according to a counter on the
page. As of 11am, though, the story’s URL has been down.
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