Wednesday, March 06, 2019

My students can not understand why I don’t own a smartphone. This may be part of the reason: Without one, I don’t exist.
Phone numbers are the new Social Security numbers
Axios: “Cellphone numbers have become a primary way for tech companies like Facebook to uniquely identify users and secure accounts, in some ways becoming a proxy for a national ID.
Why it matters: That over-reliance on cellphone numbers ironically makes them a less effective and secure authentication method. And the more valuable the phone number becomes as an identifier, the less willing people will be to share it for communication.
Driving the news: Facebook faced criticism this week for its handling of phone numbers that users provide for the purpose of two-factor authentication (2FA) — in which a person’s login is protected by both a password and a device like their smartphone.
The big picture: American culture and law are hostile to establishing any sort of national ID, leaving businesses and organizations to find substitute… Many Americans try to avoid broadcasting SSNs online. But now people have to share them with so many institutions and clerks that there’s very little that’s truly secret about them…”




For my Computer Forensics and Ethical Hacking students. Just a couple small tweaks and this becomes quite useful!
NSA Makes Reverse Engineering Tool Freely Available
Initially announced in January, the release was accompanied by a demonstration of the tool at the RSA Conference 2019, which is taking place this week in San Francisco.
Ghidra, the NSA explains, is a software reverse engineering (SRE) suite of tools developed by the agency’s Research Directorate to analyze malicious code and malware, as well as to provide cyber-security researchers with information on potential vulnerabilities in their networks and systems.
The framework packs various software analysis tools compatible with multiple platforms, including Windows, macOS, and Linux, and provides capabilities such as disassembly, assembly, decompilation, graphing and scripting, and more.




Redefining ‘Jurisdiction’ for the Internet Age?
BREAKING: United States Supports Germany’s International Arrest Warrant for Accused Syrian War Criminal
On Tuesday, the United States government issued a statement supporting Germany’s request to Lebanon to extradite a high-ranking Syrian official accused of war crimes and crimes against humanity. Former officials from the Obama and Trump administrations spoke to me about the significance of this development.
By taking this step, the United States placed itself on the record in support of Germany’s exercise of a form of “universal jurisdiction,” a move that marks a significant development in U.S. legal practice. Under section 1 of the 2002 Code of Crimes Against International Law, German courts are allowed to exercise criminal jurisdiction over an accused person who has committed war crimes, crimes against humanity, or genocide—regardless of where the crimes were committed, regardless of whether the accused has any connection to Germany, and regardless of the nationality of the victims at the time the crimes were committed.




I found an amusing new term!
Amy Webb’s ‘The Big Nine’ predicts the impact of AI and tech giants over the next 50 years
… “We stop assuming that the G-MAFIA (Google, Microsoft, Apple, Facebook, IBM, and Amazon) can serve its DC and Wall Street masters equally and that the free markets and our entrepreneurial spirit will produce the best possible outcomes for AI and humanity,” author Amy Webb writes.




Minutes keep getting busier.
2019: This Is What Happens In An Internet Minute




For my Excel toolkit.




I do like lists, but “most widely available” is not the same as “best.”
OCLC publishes list of top 100 novels
OCLC, a leading library technology and research organization, has published The Library 100: Top Novels of All Time, a list of the novels most widely available in libraries today. The list is based on data in WorldCat, the world’s most comprehensive database of information about library collections. Produced and maintained by OCLC and individual member libraries and library organizations, WorldCat reflects the collections of more than 18,000 libraries worldwide. It includes information about more than 2.7 billion copies of more than 447 million titles. This aggregate worldwide library collection is likely the best view of the global scholarly and published record.
  • The full list, and more information about The Library 100 can be found at https://www.oclc.org/en/worldcat/library100.html.
  • …”Of course, the list of top novels emphasizes classics,” Prichard continued, “and so reflects dominant cultural views over the years about the canon and its formation. Librarians are aware of this and are more mindful than ever of the need to think critically about their collections. Librarians are actively seeking out and preserving overlooked, minority and marginalized perspectives.” (Read Prichard’s blog post at https://oc.lc/top-novel-blog.)…


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