Coming
soon to a law firm near you!
Celebrity
Data Stolen in Ransomware Attack on NYC Law Firm
A
New York City law firm that serves some of the world's biggest stars
of stage and screen appears to have fallen victim to a REvil
ransomware attack.
Perpetrators
of the attack are threatening to expose nearly 1TB of celebrities'
private data unless Grubman
Shire Meiselas & Sacks pays
a ransom in Bitcoin.
With
a client list that reads like a celebrity who's who, the
entertainment and media law firm handles the private legal affairs of
John Mellencamp, Elton John, David Letterman, Robert DeNiro,
Christina Aguilera, Barbra Streisand, and Madonna.
Companies
Facebook, Activision, iHeartMedia, IMAX, Sony, HBO, and Vice Media
and sporting stars LeBron James, Carmelo Anthony, Sloane Stephens,
and Colin Kaepernick are also clients of Grubman Shire Meiselas &
Sacks.
Cyber-thieves
claim to have used REvil ransomware (also known as Sodinokobi) to
steal 756GB of data that includes contracts, telephone numbers, email
addresses, personal correspondence, and non-disclosure agreements.
The
attackers are threatening to publish the data in nine staggered
releases unless they are paid an undisclosed sum. Grubman Shire
Meiselas & Sacks is yet to confirm or comment publicly on the
alleged ransomware attack.
Establishing
a baseline. (I wonder who else is doing this?)
WeChat
is Surveilling International User Files to Strengthen China’s
National Censorship Model
Chinese
social media giant WeChat is screening documents and images shared by
overseas users, according to researchers from the Citizen Lab of the
University of Toronto.
As
of late 2019, the messaging app is said to have had more than 1
billion active users on a monthly basis, sending around 45 billion
messages daily.
According
to the study, the company has been silently surveilling and analyzing
millions of files shared by international WeChat users via a remote
server hosted by Chinese Internet provider Tencent.
“Like
any other Internet platform operating in China, WeChat is expected to
follow rules and regulations from Chinese authorities around
prohibited content,” the researchers said. Later adding that,
“companies are expected to invest in human resources and
technologies to moderate content and comply with government
regulations on content controls. Companies which do not undertake
such moderation and compliance activities can be fined or have their
business licenses revoked”.
In
the most recent report, entitled ‘We
Chat, They Watch,’
Citizen Lab observed that the app’s remote server scans for
“politically sensitive” content, adding a digital signature (MD5
hash) that assures no Chinese users can see the shared files.
Okay,
let’s assume they’re guilty. Now what do we do?
EU
looks for evidence to rein in U.S. tech giants
U.S.
tech giants such as Facebook and Amazon could face tougher rules as
European Union regulators seek evidence to curb their role as
gatekeepers to the internet and access to people, information and
services, according to an EU tender seen by Reuters.
The
outcome could force Facebook, Google, Amazon and Apple to separate
their competing businesses, provide rivals access to their data and
open up their standards to them.
The
European Commission, which in February said it was considering
legislation against large online platforms acting as gatekeepers, has
put out a 600,000-euro ($649,800) tender for a study to gather
evidence of such gatekeeping power.
The
study should look into self-preferencing practices and the
possibility of forcing dominant companies to separate their
businesses, the tender said, citing Amazon which is both a retailer
and a market place operator, and app developer and App Store operator
Apple.
Now
this could be a useful tool.
To
understand Trump, an AI bot had to be de-programmed from using
English grammar. It uses 11 million words from Trump's remarks to
tell when he's angry or lying
Whenever
it seems like it's too hard to keep track of everything President
Donald Trump is saying, now there's a bot for that.
Margaret,
named after the meticulous West Wing character, catalogues all of
Trump's spoken words, tweets and other utterances to compile in its
database — more than 11 million of the president's words dating
back to 1976.
A
new Los
Angeles Times profile of
its creator, Bill Frischling, traces the history of the bot, which is
used by Amazon for help with Trump-related queries on its Alexa
devices.
The
bot can predict whether Trump is lying, if he's mad, and how stressed
he is whenever speaking on camera.
Handy,
as I go through the last few books I bought by the bag full at a
library sale.
5
Fuss-Free Websites to Find What Book to Read Next
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