I wonder how far behind government patching is?

https://www.zdnet.com/article/us-cyber-command-issues-alert-about-hackers-exploiting-outlook-vulnerability/

US Cyber Command issues alert about hackers exploiting Outlook vulnerability

US Cyber Command has issued an alert via Twitter today about threat actors abusing an Outlook vulnerability to plant malware on government networks.

The vulnerability is CVE-2017-11774, a security bug that Microsoft patched in Outlook in the October 2017 Patch Tuesday.

As one of the very few who do not own a smartphone, I would immediately come under suspicion: What is he trying to hide? Clearly he tossed the phone rather than be caught with subversive material.

https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/7xgame/at-chinese-border-tourists-forced-to-install-a-text-stealing-piece-of-malware

China Is Forcing Tourists to Install Text-Stealing Malware at its Border

Foreigners crossing certain Chinese borders into the Xinjiang region, where authorities are conducting a massive campaign of surveillance and oppression against the local Muslim population, are being forced to install a piece of malware on their phones that gives all of their text messages as well as other pieces of data to the authorities, a collaboration by Motherboard, Süddeutsche Zeitung, the Guardian, the New York Times, and the German public broadcaster NDR has found.

The Android malware, which is installed by a border guard when they physically seize the phone, also scans the tourist or traveller's device for a specific set of files, according to multiple expert analyses of the software. The files authorities are looking for include Islamic extremist content, but also innocuous Islamic material, academic books on Islam by leading researchers, and even music from a Japanese metal band.

Was it really that hard to comply?

https://www.engadget.com/2019/07/02/tiktok-investigated-uk-child-safety/

TikTok now faces a data privacy investigation in the UK, too

TikTok is under investigation in the UK for how it handles the safety and privacy of young users. UK Information Commissioner Elizabeth Denham told a parliamentary committee on Tuesday that the popular short-form video app potentially violated GDPR rules that state that technology companies must have different rules and protections for children, reported The Guardian. The UK began its probe on TikTok back in February, shortly after the FTC fined the app for child privacy violations.

Available in November?

https://www.amazon.com/GDPR-Dummies-Computer-Tech/dp/1119546095/ref=sr_1_2?keywords=gdpr+for+dummies&qid=1562085300&s=books&sr=1-2

GDPR For Dummies

Curses! Foiled again.

https://www.theverge.com/2019/7/2/20680230/facebook-libra-calibra-crypto-maxine-waters-congress-regulation-investigation-halt

House lawmakers officially ask Facebook to put Libra cryptocurrency project on hold

House Democrats are requesting Facebook halt development of its proposed cryptocurrency project Libra, as well as its digital wallet Calibra, until Congress and regulators have time to investigate the possible risks it poses to the global financial system.

… “If products and services like these are left improperly regulated and without sufficient oversight, they could pose systemic risks that endanger U.S. and global financial stability,” Water writes. “These vulnerabilities could be exploited and obscured by bad actors, as other cryptocurrencies, exchanges, and wallets have been in the past.”

For my geeks.

https://venturebeat.com/2019/07/02/facebook-open-sources-dlrm-a-deep-learning-recommendation-model/

Facebook open-sources DLRM, a deep learning recommendation model

Facebook today announced the open source release of Deep Learning Recommendation Model (DLRM), a state-of-the-art AI model for serving up personalized results in production environments. DLRM can be found on GitHub, and implementations of the model are available for Facebook’s PyTorch, Facebook’s distributed learning framework Caffe2, and Glow C++.