Saturday, November 09, 2019


Overreaction?
Ransomware forces New Mexico school district to scrub 30,000 devices
A New Mexico school district that had its systems infected by ransomware last month is now having to scrub the hard drives of about 30,000 devices, district officials announced Thursday.
At a news conference held by the Las Cruces Public School District on Thursday, Interim Superintendent Karen Trujillo said the cyberattack has kept the district’s 39 schools offline since the malware was detected on Oct. 29.
School officials said they did not engage with their attacker, Las Cruces Sun News reported, and so recovery will consist of reformatting the hard drives of thousands of desktop computers, laptops and other devices and then reinstalling operating systems.
The attack against Las Cruces is just one of 23 ransomware attacks school districts in the U.S. since August.




Good luck, students.
State Privacy Laws Have the Potential to Haunt Industry
With less than two months until it goes into effect, many practitioners are focused on bringing their programs into compliance with the California Consumer Protection Act (“CCPA”) by January 1, 2020. But the rapid pace of privacy legal developments could continue next year. This past year, five states established studies or task forces to study privacy laws and report back to the legislature before their next session begins. Bills in Washington and Illinois passed one legislative chamber before failing, and their proponents have promised a renewed effort in 2020.
This is the first of a series of blog posts on what states other than California were considering to help you anticipate and prepare for 2020. In total, at least eighteen states considered comprehensive privacy bills this year. This initial blog post — on the heels of Halloween last week — focuses on some of those that are the scariest: bills in New York, Massachusetts, and Maryland.
The bill would create a “data fiduciary” concept that requires data controllers to exercise duties of care, loyalty and confidentiality. This would require controllers to “act in the best interests of the consumer, without regard to the interests of the entity, controller or data broker, in a manner expected by a reasonable consumer under the circumstances.”
Massachusetts SD 341 and Maryland’s Online Consumer Protection Act depart from the CCPA by allowing consumers to opt out of any disclosures to third parties – not just sales, but all disclosures, subject to limited exceptions




It’s the nagging that we’ll hate most. “Bob, You really shouldn’t eat all that chocolate covered bacon.”
Amazon’s roadmap for Alexa is scarier than anything Facebook or Twitter is doing
Rohit Prasad, the scientist in charge of Alexa‘s development, recently gave MIT Technology Review’s Karen Hao one of the most terrifying interviews in modern journalism. We know how dangerous it is to let bad actors run amok with AI and our data – if you need a refresher, recall the Cambridge Analytica scandal.
… Hao writes:
Speaking with MIT Technology Review, Rohit Prasad, Alexa’s head scientist, has now revealed further details about where Alexa is headed next. The crux of the plan is for the voice assistant to move from passive to proactive interactions. Rather than wait for and respond to requests, Alexa will anticipate what the user might want. The idea is to turn Alexa into an omnipresent companion that actively shapes and orchestrates your life. This will require Alexa to get to know you better than ever before.




You can’t always read everything atone sitting.



No comments: