The Bank of Bangladesh hack showed how this could
be done. I wonder if this is the same team of hackers or have they
inspired copycats? Did these bank fail to make the security changes
SWIFT recommended?
Malicious
hackers attempted to steal millions of dollars from banks in Russia
and India by abusing the SWIFT global banking network.
A
report published last week by Russia’s central bank on the types of
attacks that hit financial institutions in 2017 revealed that an
unnamed bank was the victim of a successful SWIFT-based attack.
A
copy of the report
currently posted on the central bank’s website does not specify how
much the hackers stole, but Reuters
said they had managed to obtain 339.5 million rubles (roughly $6
million).
… The
news comes after Russia’s Globex bank admitted in December that
hackers had attempted to steal roughly $940,000 through the SWIFT
system. The attackers reportedly only managed to steal a fraction of
the amount they targeted.
In
India, City Union Bank issued a statement
on Sunday saying that it had identified three fraudulent transfers
abusing the SWIFT payments messaging system. One transfer of
$500,000 through a Standard Chartered Bank account in New York to a
bank in Dubai was blocked and the money was recovered.
The
second transfer of €300,000 ($372,000) was made to an account at a
bank based in Turkey via a Standard Chartered Bank account in
Germany. The funds were blocked at the Turkish bank and City Union
hopes to recover the money.
The
third transfer was for $1 million and it went to a Chinese bank
through a Bank of America account. City Union Bank said the funds
were claimed by someone using forged documents.
How close are we to the straw that breaks the
camel’s back?
North Korea
poised to launch large-scale cyberattacks, says new report
North Korea is quietly expanding both the scope
and sophistication of its cyberweaponry, laying the groundwork for
more devastating attacks, according to a new report published
Tuesday.
… Now it appears that North Korea has also
been using previously-unknown holes in the Internet to carry out
cyberespionage — the kinds of activities that could easily
metamorphose into full-scale attacks,
according
to a report from FireEye, the California-based cybersecurity
company.
… The
Worldwide
Threat Assessment published by the U.S. intelligence community
last week forecast the potential for surprise attacks in the cyber
realm would increase over the next year.
Surprise! Someone used your identity to launder
money. Have fun explaining that to the Feds.
Money
Laundering Via Author Impersonation on Amazon?
Patrick
Reames had no idea why
Amazon.com
sent him a
1099
form saying he’d made almost $24,000 selling books via
Createspace,
the company’s on-demand publishing arm. That is, until he searched
the site for his name and discovered someone has been using it to
peddle a $555 book that’s full of nothing but gibberish.
Biometrics Can do more than identify you by
scanning your face. Should we allow it to? This is similar to those
driver analyzing dongles insurance companies put in cars. A look
into your eyes could increase your health insurance rates?
Google’s
new AI algorithm predicts heart disease by looking at your eyes
Scientists from Google and
its health-tech subsidiary Verily have discovered a new way to assess
a person’s risk of heart disease using machine learning. By
analyzing scans of the back of a patient’s eye, the company’s
software is able to accurately deduce data, including an individual’s
age, blood pressure, and whether or not they smoke. This can then be
used to predict their risk of suffering a major cardiac event —
such as a heart attack — with roughly the same accuracy as current
leading methods.
The algorithm potentially
makes it quicker and easier for doctors to analyze a patient’s
cardiovascular risk, as it doesn’t require a blood test. But, the
method will need to be tested more thoroughly before it can be used
in a clinical setting. A paper describing the work was
published
today in the
Nature journal
Biomedical Engineering,
although the research was also shared before peer review last
September.
A question: Is this bad or merely an evolution
similar to the introduction of radio and then TV? Perhaps older
forms of journalism need to evolve?
CJS – The
Facebook Armageddon
Columbia Journalism Review:
The
social network’s increasing threat to journalism – “At some
point over the past decade, Facebook stopped being a mostly harmless
social network filled with baby photos and became one of the most
powerful forces in media—with more than 2 billion users every month
and a growing lock on the ad revenue that used to underpin most of
the media industry. When it comes to threats to journalism, in other
words, Facebook qualifies as one, whether it wants to admit it or
not… The fact that even Facebook’s closest media partners like
BuzzFeed are struggling financially highlights the most obvious
threat: Since many media companies still rely on advertising revenue
to support their journalism, Facebook’s increasing dominance of
that industry poses an existential threat to their business models…”
An interesting question: Can you duplicate an
algorithm? Since these algorithms are Trade Secrets (not patented or
copyrighted) there is no problem disclosing how they work?
Facebook is a political battleground where Russian
operatives work to influence elections, fake news runs rampant, and
political hopefuls use ad targeting to reach swing voters. We have
no idea what goes on inside Facebook’s insidious black box
algorithm, which controls the all-powerful News Feed. Are
politicians playing by the rules? Can we trust Facebook to police
them? Do we really have any choice?
One emerging way to hold tech companies like
Facebook accountable is to use similar technology to figuratively
poke at that black box, gathering data and testing hypotheses about
what might be going on inside, almost like early astronomers studying
the solar system.
It’s a tactic being pioneered at the nonprofit
news organization
ProPublica by a team of reporters,
programmers, and researchers led by Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter
Julia
Angwin. Angwin’s team specializes in investigating
algorithms
that impact people’s lives, from the Facebook News Feed to
Amazon’s pricing models to the software determining people’s car
insurance payments and even who goes to prison and for how long. To
investigate these algorithms, they’ve had to develop a new approach
to investigative reporting that uses technology like machine learning
and chatbots.
(Related) If Russia was not bringing its “A”
game last time, will we be ready for it this time?
Russia's
Troll Operation Was Not That Sophisticated
It might be nice for Democrats and #NeverTrumpers
to believe that Russia’s troll factory brought Donald Trump the
2016 Presidential Election.
But no.
Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s
indictment
of 13 Russians associated with the Internet Research Agency
definitively shows, given current evidence, that while a small team
in St. Petersburg ran a successful audience-development campaign
mostly on behalf of Trump, that campaign was neither targeted nor
sizable enough to change the election’s result.
Make no mistake: This was self-described and
actual “information warfare.” The point was to sow discord and
distrust in the American electorate. And with a few dozen
people—around 80 at the peak—they managed to reach 150 million
people through Facebook and Instagram. In September 2016, the
indictment states that the monthly budget of the unit that contained
the U.S. election-interference operation was $1.25 million. That’s
pretty good bang for the buck.
(Related) Clearly, Russia is poised to take any
advantage we offer…
After
Florida School Shooting, Russian ‘Bot’ Army Pounced
One hour after news broke about the
school
shooting in Florida last week, Twitter accounts suspected of
having links to Russia released hundreds of posts taking up the gun
control debate.
The accounts addressed the news with the speed of
a cable news network. Some adopted the hashtag #guncontrolnow.
Others used #gunreformnow and #Parklandshooting. Earlier on
Wednesday, before the mass shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High
School in Parkland, Fla., many of those accounts had been focused on
the investigation by the special counsel Robert S. Mueller III into
Russian meddling in the 2016 presidential election.
“This is pretty typical for them, to hop on
breaking news like this,” said Jonathon Morgan, chief executive of
New Knowledge, a company that tracks online disinformation campaigns.
“The bots focus on anything that is divisive for Americans.
Almost systematically.”
Perspective. Rather clunky infographic, but the
voice trend is important.
20% of All
Searches are Made with Voice (INFOGRAPHIC)
A new and very interactive infographic by Adzooma
takes a look at how online advertising will be trending in 2018. And
one of the data points is the growth of voice search, which now makes
up 20 percent of inquiries on Google’s mobile app and Android
devices.
A very interesting tool.
Tetra’s
call recorder and AI-powered transcription app now works for inbound
calls
… what if there was a way for you to record a
call through your mobile phone and have a full transcription of the
discussion delivered to you within minutes? That’s exactly what
San Francisco-based
Tetra is
setting out to enable with its
AI-powered
iPhone app that not only records your calls but converts the
conversations into written form using deep learning and natural
language processing (NLP).
… So far, Tetra has only worked with outbound
calls, but now subscribers will be able to enjoy the full benefits of
Tetra for incoming calls, too.
By way of a quick recap, Tetra is basically a VoIP
app that works similarly to Google Voice, insofar as it allocates you
a dedicated Tetra number that must be used for all outgoing/incoming
calls. Once a call is complete, Tetra will spend a short period of
time generating the notes.
… In terms of pricing, everyone can get 60
free minutes per month as part of a trial. Then you’ll have to
sign up to the Plus, Pro, or Business plans, which offer varying
amounts of call-time per month and range from $9 to $99.
… Then there are the legal and ethical angles
to consider. By default, Tetra automatically tells the people on the
other end of the call that they are being recorded, however it’s
possible for the Tetra subscriber to disable this announcement with
the proviso that you “stay compliant with local law or get
recording consent yourself,” according to Tetra.
