A gentle reminder that even life’s stormiest spells eventually come to pass, and although we can’t will them away, we can surrender to the credence that the unclouded blue skies will return.
Kay Bell, Milwaukee Bucks’ tax data stolen in phishing scam. “The National Basketball Association team is the latest victim of an email phishing scam in which crooks pose as corporate executives and ask payroll offices for employees’ financial and tax information.”
Hacker Site Removes 117 Million LinkedIn Passwords After Legal Threat
Kay Bell, House passes tougher tax identity theft bill. “Rep. Jim Renacci (R-Ohio) introduced the Stolen Identity Refund Fraud Prevention Act of 2016 last year after he became a tax identity theft victim.”
TaxGrrrl, House Passes Bill Aimed At Assisting Victims of Identity Theft Tax Fraud.
"What Does the Supreme Court Think About Celebrities Being Photoshopped Naked? Yes, that question could come up if the high court agrees to the NCAA's petition to review its dispute with athletes over compensation. " Eriq Gardner has this post today at the "THR, Esq." blog of The Hollywood Reporter.
The Energy and
Commerce Committee next week will be briefed by U.S. wireless operators on a
security vulnerability in the global cellphone network that experts say may
have allowed other countries to eavesdrop on officials’ private conversations.
Management Report: Improvements Are Needed to Enhance the Internal Revenue Service’s Internal Control over Financial Reporting, GAO-16-457R: Published: May 18, 2016
Needed: More Snowdens – Ex-intel analyst USA TodayManagement Report: Improvements Are Needed to Enhance the Internal Revenue Service’s Internal Control over Financial Reporting, GAO-16-457R: Published: May 18, 2016
Lack of Trust in Internet Privacy and Security May Deter Economic and Other Online Activities: These concerns are prompting some Americans to limit their online activity, according to data collected for NTIA in July 2015 by the U.S. Census Bureau. This survey included several privacy and security questions, which were asked of more than 41,000 households that reported having at least one Internet user.
“…Social media”: Websites, applications, and web-based tools that allow the creation and exchange of user generated content. Through social media, people or groups can engage in dialogue, interact, and create, organize, edit, comment on, combine, and share content
National Australia Bank, Westpac Banking Corp and Qantas have taken stakes in Data Republic, a Sydney-based start-up that has designed a platform which allows companies and government to exchange data in a secure environment Data Republic
MANAGEMENT ALERT REPORT: GSA Data Breach JE16-004 May 12, 2016
“During the course of an ongoing evaluation, the OIG Office of Inspections and Forensic Auditing identified an issue that warrants immediate attention. Due to authorizations enabled by GSA 18F staff, over 100 GSA Google Drives were reportedly accessible by users both inside and outside of GSA during a five month period, potentially exposing sensitive content such as personally identifiable information and contractor proprietary information. The purpose of this alert is to bring this matter to management’s attention to ensure further vulnerabilities are appropriately mitigated and secured…”
A cargo plane crashed into an apartment building near Amsterdam, 193 people were asked whether they had seen television footage of the plane striking the building. In fact, the crash had not been captured on film. Nevertheless, 55% claimed to have seen it on television. Two thirds of a group of law students claimed to have seen this crash footage and some of them provided details about what they had seen. Evidence
CIA ‘Accidentally’ Deletes Senate Torture Report Charles Pierce, Esquire
The ANAO has made three recommendations aimed at achieving compliance with mandated strategies in the Australian Government Information Security Manual Cyber Resilience
Congressional gridlock can usually be blamed on stubborn representatives and senators. But a new string of ransomware attacks on the House of Representatives could stall legislation more effectively than party infighting or a filibuster. In an email provided to TechCrunch, the House technology service desk warned representatives of increased ransomware attacks on the House network. The email warns that attackers are focusing their efforts on third-party email apps, like YahooMail and Gmail, and tells representatives that access to YahooMail will be blocked on House networks. “When a user clicks on the link in the attack e-mail, the malware encrypts all files on that computer, including shared files, making them unusable until a ‘ransom’ is paid. The recent attacks have focused on using .js files attached as zip files to e-mail that appear to come from known senders,” the email notes
Terrorist or pedophile? This start-up says it can out secrets by analyzing faces Washington Post
Readers trust fact-checkers more than traditional media but not blindly, new study finds
The
Homeland Security Department is warning that an error in widely used office
software is yielding hackers free rein access to networks. The product maker,
SAP, notified customers of a fix years ago, but organizations that have been
hacked as recently as this year, did not update their software, according to
the alert from the U.S. Computer Emergency Readiness Team. The software
"contains a vulnerability that was patched by SAP in 2010. However, the
vulnerability continues to affect outdated and misconfigured SAP systems,"
states the May 11 U.S.-CERT alert. Homeland Security cites research by Onapsis,
a security provider for SAP, which detected in early 2016
"indicators" of attacks on the SAP business applications of 36
organizations worldwide. The victims, who are not named, include multinational
enterprises and government agencies operated in the United States, U.K.,
Germany, China, India, Japan and South Korea.
TalkTalk profits more than halved following a cyber-attack in which the personal details of thousands of customers were hacked. The telecoms company was hit with £42m in costs when almost 157,000 customers were affected by the attack in October last year. Almost one in 10 of those customers had their bank account numbers and sort codes accessed. Pre-tax profit fell to £14m in the year to 31 March, from £32m a year earlier.
A judge has
refused a request by the UK's National Crime Agency (NCA) to require Lauri
Love, a British citizen who is accused of hacking into US computers, to hand
over his encryption keys as part of a civil claim. The Courage Foundation,
which supports whistelblowers around the world, called Tuesday's ruling a
"Victory for all who use encryption in the UK." The case concerns the
computer scientist and activist Lauri Love, whom the US authorities wish to
extradite in connection with alleged hacking of US government computers.
Cisco
Systems Inc., the biggest maker of networking equipment, was ordered by a jury
to pay more than $23.5 million to a nonprofit research center for infringing
network-surveillance patents designed to identify hacking attacks on computer
systems. Jurors in federal court in Wilmington, Delaware, concluded Thursday
that San Jose, California-based Cisco used technology owned by SRI
International, the former research arm of Stanford University, without
permission. The panel rejected Cisco’s arguments that it didn’t infringe or
that the two at-issue patents weren’t valid. Officials of Menlo Park,
California-based SRI sought more than $50 million in damages for Cisco’s
unauthorized use of the patented technology, which allows computers to
automatically detect and record suspicious activity on networks.
Hidden Microphones Exposed As Part of Government Surveillance Program In The Bay Area CBS SFBayArea
The Independent: “The CIA inspector general’s office has said it “mistakenly” destroyed its only copy of a comprehensive Senate torture report, despite lawyers for the Justice Department assuring a federal judge that copies of the documents were being preserved. The erasure of the document by the spy agency’s internal watchdog was deemed an “inadvertent” foul-up by the inspector general, according toYahoo News. One intelligence community source told Yahoo News, which first reported the development, that last summer CIA inspector general officials deleted an uploaded computer file with the report and then accidentally destroyed a disk that also contained the document. The 6,700-page report contains thousands of secret files about the CIA’s use of “enhanced” interrogation methods, including waterboarding, sleep deprivation and other aggressive interrogation techniques at “black site” prisons overseas. The full version of the report remains classified, but a 500-page executive summary was released to the public in 2014…”
Martin Hawes: Financial good behaviour
=The Financial Markets Authority (FMA) has produced a report which should be required reading. Written with some help from the IRD and MBIE, the report is not, as you might expect, on some obscure part of financial regulation, but instead covers behavioural economics.
*White paper - Using behavioural insights to improve financial capability
A website
that openly facilitated the brokering of compromised passwords, stolen
bitcoins, and other sensitive data has been hacked, exposing login data, IP
addresses, e-mail addresses, purchase histories, and private messages for some
500,000 members. Nulled.io, a hacker forum that used the tagline "expect
the unexpected," was compromised earlier this month in a hack that exposed
virtually all of the private data associated with it, security researchers
said. As of publication time, more than a week later, the resulting 1.3
gigabyte compressed archive file remained available on a popular data breach
sharing site on the clear Web. It was easily accessible to anyone, including
hacking victims, fellow hackers, and law enforcement agents. The dump was
discovered by analysis firm Risk Based Security and confirmed by Troy Hunt,
operator of the have i been pwned? breach disclosure service.
Hidden Microphones Exposed As Part of Government Surveillance Program In The Bay Area CBS SFBayArea
The Independent: “The CIA inspector general’s office has said it “mistakenly” destroyed its only copy of a comprehensive Senate torture report, despite lawyers for the Justice Department assuring a federal judge that copies of the documents were being preserved. The erasure of the document by the spy agency’s internal watchdog was deemed an “inadvertent” foul-up by the inspector general, according toYahoo News. One intelligence community source told Yahoo News, which first reported the development, that last summer CIA inspector general officials deleted an uploaded computer file with the report and then accidentally destroyed a disk that also contained the document. The 6,700-page report contains thousands of secret files about the CIA’s use of “enhanced” interrogation methods, including waterboarding, sleep deprivation and other aggressive interrogation techniques at “black site” prisons overseas. The full version of the report remains classified, but a 500-page executive summary was released to the public in 2014…”
Vic integrity strategy using behavioural
insights to help clean up
=Victoria will use behavioural insights and data mining in its fight to clean up the public service, according to the Victorian Public Sector Commission’s new Integrity Strategy 2016-17. Working with the Behavioural Insights Unit within the Department of Premier and Cabinet, the VPSC will incorporate a behavioural insights approach into relevant integrity initiatives.
=Victoria will use behavioural insights and data mining in its fight to clean up the public service, according to the Victorian Public Sector Commission’s new Integrity Strategy 2016-17. Working with the Behavioural Insights Unit within the Department of Premier and Cabinet, the VPSC will incorporate a behavioural insights approach into relevant integrity initiatives.
=The Financial Markets Authority (FMA) has produced a report which should be required reading. Written with some help from the IRD and MBIE, the report is not, as you might expect, on some obscure part of financial regulation, but instead covers behavioural economics.
*White paper - Using behavioural insights to improve financial capability
Ruin Your Google Search History PixelEnvyToday I Went to See Julian Assange Michael Moore
- Evaluating the privacy properties of telephone metadata. Jonathan Mayer, Patrick Mutchler, and John C. Mitchel. Edited by Cynthia Dwork, Microsoft Research Silicon Valley, Mountain View, CA, and approved March 1, 2016 (received for review April 27, 2015. vol. 113 no. 20. doi: 10.1073/pnas.1508081113