Wednesday, October 30, 2019


A milestone, but probably not the end of this story.
Facebook agrees to pay Cambridge Analytica fine to UK
Facebook has agreed to pay a £500,000 fine imposed by the UK's data protection watchdog for its role in the Cambridge Analytica scandal.
It had originally appealed the penalty, causing the Information Commissioner's Office to pursue its own counter-appeal.
As part of the agreement, Facebook has made no admission of liability.




Perhaps North Korea will cross the line in another country before they push us too far. How would a country line India make war on North Korea?
Nuclear Power Plant in India Hit by North Korean Malware: Report
Reports of a breach at the Kudankulam Nuclear Power Plant located in the Indian state of Tamil Nadu emerged on Monday after a Twitter user posted a VirusTotal link pointing to what appeared to be a sample of a recently discovered piece of malware named Dtrack.
The malware was configured to use a hardcoded username and password combination that referenced KKNPP, the acronym for the Kudankulam Nuclear Power Plant.
India-based cybersecurity expert Pukhraj Singh reposted the tweet, revealing that attackers had gained domain controller-level access to the Kudankulam nuke plant and that other “extremely mission-critical targets” had also been hit.
Singh pointed to a tweet that he posted in early September, in which he said he had witnessed a “casus belli,” a Latin expression used to describe an event that is used to justify war. He later clarified that the other targets he had become aware of were even “scarier than KKNPP,” which is why he “went all hyperbolic about casus belli.”
However, some Indian officials have categorically denied that any kind of breach took place at the nuclear power plant. On the other hand, a statement from the Nuclear Power Corporation of India confirms that the plant was targeted by a cyberattack, but highlighted that control systems are not connected to the local network or the internet and claimed that an attack on the facility’s control systems “is not possible.” Singh also confirmed that there was no evidence of control systems being impacted.




A warning and a sales pitch?
Cyber attack on Asia ports could cost $110 billion: Lloyd's
A cyber attack on Asian ports could cost as much as $110 billion, or half the total global loss from natural catastrophes in 2018, a Lloyd’s of London-backed report said on Wednesday.
Cyber insurance is seen as a growth market by insurance providers such as Lloyd’s, which specializes in covering commercial risks, although take-up in Europe and Asia remains far behind levels in the United States.




It’s 3AM in Australia, do you know where your data is?
C.L.O.U.D.’s On the Horizon: How Law Enforcement Electronic Data Requests Are Going Global
Cybercrime often involves a crime in one country—a hack of a school teacher’s email account in the United Kingdom, for example—but the evidence of the crime often physically resides on servers in another country, such as malware and login records maintained by a social media or online company in California. However, law enforcement agencies investigating multi-country crimes are often bound by the geographic limits of their jurisdictions or must rely on slow diplomatic channels, such as mutual legal assistance treaties (MLATs), to request and obtain the evidence that they need. This slow process necessarily restricted the number of international requests received by U.S. companies.
The 2018 Clarifying Lawful Overseas Use of Data Act (CLOUD Act) authorizes the U.S. to enter into executive agreements with foreign governments to facilitate law enforcement access to cross-border data. The U.S. and the U.K. signed the first CLOUD Act Executive Agreement on October 3, 2019. Now, law enforcement agencies in either country can, according to the U.S. Department of Justice, “demand electronic evidence directly from tech companies based in the other country, without legal barriers.




The alternative would be to stop politicians from lying. And we all know that’s impossible.
This man is running for governor of California so he can run false Facebook ads
Facebook allows politicians, including candidates for public office, to run ads on its platform that are not fact-checked. That policy has drawn criticism from Democrats who say it will help President Trump's re-election campaign. Former Vice President Joe Biden's campaign wrote to Facebook asking the company to remove a false ad the Trump campaign ran about Biden and Ukraine earlier this month. Facebook denied Biden's request.




I would have thought this would be a condition for a license. Would it not also show demand?
Uber sues Los Angeles to keep scooter location data private
The ride-hailing company doesn't want to share everything with the city's government.
Los Angeles wants a peek at the location data collected by the Uber scooters in its city. The company, better known for its ride-hailing service, doesn't want to give up the information, and is taking legal action to keep the data private.
On Monday, Uber filed a lawsuit against Los Angeles after months of refusing to give the Department of Transportation access to its scooter location data. In September 2018, LADOT instituted a requirement for all scooter companies to provide location data on the vehicles. The city said it was for city planning purposes.




What architecture best supports AI?
Five Traits Of Artificial Intelligence Trailblazers
Artificial intelligence is a must-have in today’s economy. However, for the most part, it’s still not delivering business value in a profound way. Yet, everyone has high hopes.
That’s the word from a survey of 2,555 executives published by MIT Sloan Management Review and Boston Consulting Group, which finds those companies achieving success with AI are those that pay close attention – extremely close attention – to organizational factors.
A growing number of leaders view AI as not just an opportunity but also a strategic risk,” the study’s co-authors, led by Sam Ransbotham of Boston College, report. “’What if competitors, particularly unencumbered new entrants, figure out AI before we do?’”
Ransbotham and his co-authors identified five common traits that the AI winners exhibit:
  1. AI trailblazers “integrate their AI strategies with their overall business strategy.
  2. They “take on large, often risky, AI efforts that prioritize revenue growth over cost reduction.
  3. They “align the production of AI with the consumption of AI, through thoughtful alignment of business owners, process owners, and AI expertise to ensure that they adopt AI solutions effectively and pervasively.
  4. They “unify their AI initiatives with their larger business transformation efforts.
  5. They “invest in AI talent, data, and process change in addition to – and often more so than – AI technology. They recognize AI is not all about technology.”




Some interesting points. Very interesting graphics.
Gartner: The Present and Future of Artificial Intelligence
Artificial intelligence uses vast amounts of data and sophisticated probabilistic algorithms to offer "the intimacy of a small town in a big city scale," Gartner VP Svetlana Sicular said at the company's annual IT Symposium last week.
She said, "something is stalling AI adoption." (In another conversation with her, she said the biggest issue in AI is the lack of ideas.)
She shared a framework of how Gartner thinks organizations should consider AI projects in the short-, medium, and long-term. She said companies should plan on scaling volume, quality, and innovation in that order.
… in the short term, Sicular said people should implement what is easy to adopt and easy to measure.




I’ll ask my students if they have ever seen a floppy disk.
US nuclear forces have quietly kissed their floppy disks goodbye
For more than 50 years, the Defense Department has used 8-inch floppy disks to control the operational functions of the United States' nuclear arsenal — until now.



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