Thursday, February 27, 2020


How can you not follow even the simplest Best Practices? Was this more than a random hack?
Ransomware Attack in Florida Forces Prosecutor to Drop Charges in Drug Cases
When a ransomware attack hits an institution or company, expectations are roughly the same. People either pay to restore services, which doesn’t always guarantee a decryption key from the attackers, or they don’t pay and lose the information entirely. If they’re lucky, they have backups. [No luck required! Bob] The entire process is followed by the purchase of new equipment and services. This means the overall cost of a ransomware attack is usually much higher than the ransom itself, and way higher than the cost of avoiding the whole problem in the first place by setting up a security solution.
In the Stuart incident, the ransomware hit police servers and infrastructure, resulting in the loss of data that included evidence against various defendants. After the dust settled, the State Attorney’s Office had to drop 11 narcotic cases for loss of evidence.
Much of the non-physical evidence in a trial is stored on police computers. Things like photos and videos were wiped clean, setting back the prosecutorial process so much that it was impossible to continue with the cases.




The problem with collecting lots of data useful to hackers. (Perhaps they do not store the data on servers they own?)
Clearview AI has billions of our photos. Its entire client list was just stolen
Clearview AI, a startup that compiles billions of photos for facial recognition technology, said it lost its entire client list to hackers.
The company said it has patched the unspecified flaw that allowed the breach to happen.
In a statement, Clearview AI's attorney Tor Ekeland said that while security is the company's top priority, "unfortunately, data breaches are a part of life. Our servers were never accessed." He added that the company continues to strengthen its security procedures and that the flaw has been patched.
In a notification sent to customers obtained by Daily Beast, Clearview AI said that an intruder "gained unauthorized access" to its customer list, which includes police forces, law enforcement agencies and banks. The company said that the person didn't obtain any search histories conducted by customers


(Related) Perhaps we need databases of all parts and pieces?
This AI needs your help to identify child abusers by their hands
Algorithms will match the suspect's hands to those found in images of abuse




Hacking the election with social engineering rather than social media.
Online 'Impersonator' Tried to Contact Campaigns, DNC Says
The Democratic National Committee has warned its presidential candidates to be cautious after Bernie Sanders’ campaign reported that an “impersonator” with a domain registered overseas had posed as one of its staffers and sought conversations with members of at least two other campaigns.
Bob Lord, the DNC’s chief security officer, wrote in an email to his party’s presidential campaigns on Wednesday that “adversaries will often try to impersonate real people on a campaign” to get people to “download suspicious files, or click on a link to a phishing site.” Lord said attackers may also try to set up a call or in-person meeting that they can record and publish.




Follow-up.
Nigerian man arrested 3 years after $850,000 stolen from Boulder Valley School District
Dara Bitler reports:
The Boulder County Sheriff’s Office says a Nigerian man has been arrested more than three years after $850,000 was stolen from the Boulder Valley School District in an email scam.
According to the arrest affidavit, Sherifdeen Mogaji, 39, was arrested on February 21 and booked into the Boulder County Jail on suspicion of theft of $100,000 to $999,000, computer crime and forgery.
Read more on KDVR.




Speeding the maturity of IoT?
Securing the Internet of Things through Class-Action Lawsuits
This law journal article discusses the role of class-action litigation to secure the Internet of Things.
Basically, the article postulates that (1) market realities will produce insecure IoT devices, and (2) political failures will leave that industry unregulated. Result: insecure IoT. It proposes proactive class action litigation against manufacturers of unsafe and unsecured IoT devices before those devices cause unnecessary injury or death. It's a lot to read, but it's an interesting take on how to secure this otherwise disastrously insecure world.
And it was inspired by my book, Click Here to Kill Everybody.




Perhaps Oceania has not always been at war with Eastasia?
Brave Browser Integrates Wayback Machine to View Deleted Web Pages
Bleeping Computer – “Brave Browser has now integrated the Wayback Machine to display web pages that have been removed from a web site or not available due to a web site issue. The Wayback Machine is a digital archive of the web that is operated by the nonprofit organization Archive.org. Using the Wayback Machine you can save snapshots of existing web pages for archival or retrieve archived versions to see changes over time or deleted pages. With today’s release of Brave Browser 1.4, when you visit a web page and it returns a ‘404 Not Found’ HTTP error code indicating that a page is missing, the browser will prompt you to load the page on the Archive.org’s Wayback Machine instead. As an example, Brave’s announcement uses the Whitehouse.gov’s Climate Change page that was deleted soon after Trump became president. When visiting the page in Brave, the web server will respond with a ‘404 Not Found’ error code, which will cause Brave to prompt you to check if a saved version is available on the Wayback Machine…”




For all my students.
How to protect your privacy on Instagram




Perhaps the ‘Next Big Thing’ hides in these?
10 Breakthrough Technologies 2020
  1. Unhackable internet
  2. Hyper-personalized medicine
  3. Digital money
  4. Anti-aging drugs
  5. AI-discovered molecules
  6. Satellite mega-constellations
  7. Quantum supremacy
  8. Tiny AI
  9. Differential privacy
  10. Climate change attribution




I guess not everyone has gone vegan.
Dunkin’s latest release is quite simply a bag of bacon
Starting Wednesday, Snackin' Bacon was available at Dunkin' restaurants nationwide.
What's that, you wonder? It's just like it sounds: Eight half-strips of bacon wrapped up in a sleeve.
"Here at Dunkin', we've been working hard to formulate the perfect afternoon pick-me-up [??? Bob] and really, what's better than a bag full of bacon?" the company said in a blog post.



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