Sometimes data has an immediate value.

Hackers Steal Thousands Of Files From M&A Giant Evercore

Tyler Durden reports:

We break from tonight’s episode of “Powell in turmoil” to let you know that an “unknown” hacker appears to have inside info on a substantial portion of the global pipeline of upcoming M&A deals. According to The Times, thousands of “sensitive documents” have been stolen by hackers in a cyber-attack on M&A and restructuring giant Evercore.

According to the report, one of the boutique bank’s junior administrators in London was the victim of a “phishing” attack – similar to the way in which John Podesta allegedly handed over control of his inbox to an unknown hacker – in which a recipient is lured into clicking on a corrupt link in an email. The hackers gained access to her inbox, leading to the theft of 160,000 “data objects” such as diary invitations, documents and emails. It is likely that among the tens of thousands of stolen objects was confidential data on the countless merger deals the company is currently working on.

Read more on ZeroHedge.

What my Computer Security students need to watch for.

https://hotforsecurity.bitdefender.com/blog/researcher-identifies-the-personalities-most-susceptible-to-fall-victim-to-cybercrime-20681.html

Impulsive personalities most likely to fall victim to cybercrime, research shows

New research from Michigan State University examining the behavior that leads someone to fall victim to cybercrime reveals that impulse online shopping, downloading music and compulsive email use are all signs of a certain personality trait that make you a target for malware attacks.

“People who show signs of low self-control are the ones we found more susceptible to malware attacks,” said Tomas Holt, professor of criminal justice and lead author of the research. “An individual’s characteristics are critical in studying how cybercrime perseveres, particularly the person’s impulsiveness and the activities that they engage in while online that have the greatest impact on their risk.”

Evidence based. Next we should demand facts!

https://e-pluribusunum.org/2018/12/21/congress-made-open-government-data-the-default-in-the-united-states/

Congress votes to make open government data the default in the United States

On December 21, 2018, the United States House of Representatives voted to enact H.R. 4174, the Foundations for Evidence-Based Policymaking Act of 2017, in a historic win for open government in the United States of America.

The Open, Public, Electronic, and Necessary Government Data Act (AKA the OPEN Government Data Act) is about to become law as a result. This codifies two canonical principles for democracy in the 21st century:

1. public information should be open by default to the public in a machine-readable format, where such publication doesn’t harm privacy or security
2. federal agencies should use evidence when they make public policy