Ransomware
is expensive.
Baltimore
Approves $10M in Funding for Cyber Attack Relief
Baltimore
City officials approved using $10 million in excess revenue to cover
the ongoing cost of the cyber attacks that immobilized
some
of the city’s systems almost two months ago.
WBAL
reports
the city’s estimates board approved the emergency funds Wednesday
to help the hack recovery process, which is moving into its eighth
week.
… Systems
such as water billing remain offline.
The
city’s budget office has estimated
the total cost of responding to the hack at $18 million.
Hackers demanded$ 80,000 in ransom, but city officials said they
have been advised by law enforcement authorities not
to pay it.
Show
them an oldie, use it to insert a better tool or two.
Russian
internet giant Yandex reportedly hacked by Western intelligence
agency
Hackers
working for the US or one of its closest allies broke
into Russian search giant Yandex to
plant malware
to
spy on user accounts, Reuters reported Thursday. Called Regin, the
malware is known to be used by the Five Eyes intelligence-sharing
alliance of the US, Britain, Australia, Canada and New Zealand,
sources told the news outlet.
It
couldn't be determined which country was responsible for the Yandex
cyberattack. Reuters said it occurred between October and November
of 2018 and that the hackers
had
access to Yandex's research and development unit for several weeks.
… Regin,
which antivirus software maker Symantec labeled a "top-tier
espionage tool,"
had been in use since as early as 2008 to spy on governments,
companies and individuals, Symantec reported in 2014.
Not
on the official “best practices” breach checklist.
Former
Equifax Executive Gets 4 Months for Insider Trading
A
former Equifax executive who sold
stock a
week and a half before the company announced a massive data breach
was sentenced Thursday to serve four months in federal prison for
insider trading.
Jun
Ying,
former chief information officer of Equifax’s U.S. Information
Solutions, pleaded guilty in March. His prison time is to be
followed by a year of supervised release, and he was also ordered to
pay about $117,000 in restitution and a $55,000 fine, the U.S.
attorney’s office in Atlanta said in a news release.
Computer
Security backgrounder.
CIS
Controls Internet of Things Companion Guide
… To
help secure this new frontier, CIS® (Center for Internet Security,
Inc.) is releasing the free CIS Controls® Internet of Things
Companion Guide to help organizations apply the CIS Controls to the
IoT. The CIS Controls are internationally-recognized cybersecurity
best practices for defense against common cybersecurity threats.
Download the guide:
https://www.cisecurity.org/white-papers/cis-controls-internet-of-things-companion-guide/
Download CIS Controls V7.1:
https://learn.cisecurity.org/20-controls-download
The FBI no longer has a reason to try forcing Apple to give them a backdoor. I’m guessing they will keep trying anyway.
https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2019/06/cellebrite_clai.html
Cellebrite Claims It Can Unlock Any iPhone
I
dithered before blogging this, not wanting to give the company more
publicity. But I decided that everyone who wants to know already
knows, and that Apple already knows. It's all of us that need to
know.
I’m starting a tinfoil hat business…
https://www.bespacific.com/soon-satellites-will-be-able-to-watch-you-everywhere-all-the-time/
Soon, satellites will be able to watch you everywhere all the time
MIT
Technology Review – Can privacy survive?
“Every
year, commercially available satellite images are becoming sharper
and taken more frequently. In 2008, there were 150
Earth observation satellites in orbit;
by now there are 768. Satellite companies don’t offer 24-hour
real-time surveillance, but if the hype is to be believed, they’re
getting close. Privacy advocates warn that innovation in satellite
imagery is outpacing the US government’s (to say nothing of the
rest of the world’s) ability to regulate the technology. Unless we
impose stricter limits now, they say, one day everyone from ad
companies to suspicious spouses to terrorist organizations will have
access to tools previously reserved for government spy agencies.
Which
would mean that at any given moment, anyone could be watching anyone
else..”
Only
three? But they are big hurdles.
Three
Hurdles Companies Face in Implementing AI Initiatives
… The
hurdles are in three broad categories. The
first is operational hurdles.
Where do you start? With people? With data? With technology? And
how does that work? The
second hurdle is around compliance and security.
Data has always been a sensitive issue, but it is getting
increasingly more so because we now have a better understanding of
how big an impact AI can have. There is more public opinion around
this, and the regulators have an opinion. You need to navigate
around these new complexities in order to make it work. Finally,
there is the ethical/societal question.
Decision-makers, team members, other business peers are questioning
whether we really want to do this. How do we solve the trolley
problem, for example?
Summarizing
32 sets of guidelines.
Introducing
the Principled Artificial Intelligence Project
“Berkman
Klein’s Cyberlaw Clinic launched the “Principles
Artificial Intelligence Project”
to
map AI principles and guidelines. The team created a data
visualization to
summarize their findings, and will later publish the final data
visualization, along with the dataset itself and a white paper
detailing their assumptions, methodology and key findings…”
[For
some reason, I can’t load the PNG, so here’s the PDF version:
The
porn industry has always been an early adopter of new technologies.
Perhaps they could package this as an App for people who get nervous
giving speeches?
Creator
of DeepNude, App That Undresses Photos of Women, Takes It Offline
Perspective.
(Podcast)
Will
Facebook’s Libra Bring Cryptocurrency into the Mainstream?
Facebook,
the world’s largest social network with 2.4 billion users, is
developing a cryptocurrency that has
the potential to reshape the global financial system.
Called Libra,
the cryptocurrency and blockchain system is backed by major companies
and groups and scheduled to hit the market in 2020. Facebook wants
Libra to become a global currency that could help the 1.7 billion
‘unbanked’ people get access to financial systems.
Unsurprisingly,
the announcement was met with calls for tough scrutiny from
regulators and skepticism from technologists and the cryptocurrency
community. Congressional committee hearings already are planned. In
an op-ed
for
The
Financial Times,
Facebook
co-founder Chris Hughes called the prospect of Libra’s success
“frightening.”
Facebook’s practice of moving fast and breaking things works for a
college social network, he said, but “it’s not appropriate for
the global monetary system.”
Wall
Street, however, gave a thumbs
up to
this endeavor because it adds a potentially big source of revenue for
Facebook beyond advertising. The stock was up as much as 8.5% in the
days after The
Wall Street Journal reported
that big backers have lined up behind Libra.
Perspective.
Programming
languages: JavaScript most used, Python most studied, Go most
promising
According
to a survey
of developers by software company JetBrains,
JavaScript was used by 69% in the past 12 months, with another 5%
intending to adopt it.
HTML/CSS
came a close second with 61% saying they had used it in the past 12
months, followed by SQL at 56% and Java at 50%. Although Python was
only fifth on the list, used by just under half of developers (49%),
it shows significant potential growth: 9% of respondents said they
intended to adopt it or migrate to it.
If
you use eBooks, you need Calibre and probably some of these plugins.
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