Thursday, May 25, 2017

Fitting in is Cyber Death: Apartment 180

And we lived by her fierce folklorik dictum:  “Fitting in is death. Remember that. You want to stand apart from your peers. Always."


It Pays to Write Well The MO'N Harvard Law School Forum on Corporate Governance and Financial Regulation


Internet of Things  Status and implications of an increasingly connected world GAO Lists Pros and Cons of Internet of Things for Congress


Revealed: Facebook’s internal rulebook on sex, terrorism and violence Guardian






Solar panel scam: Hunt for the identity thief who cost scores of Australians their dream


To his staff he was Tony Smith. To banks and financial authorities he was Tony Agius. To investigators he appears to be little more than a puff of smoke left behind by someone who could be living in Asia ...




The shadow arms bazaar that fuels global cyber crime FT

Chelsea Manning Is a Free Woman: Her Heroism Has Expanded Beyond Her Initial Whistleblowing Intercept 

Government Efficiency and Effectiveness: Opportunities to Address Pervasive Management Risks and Challenges while Reducing Federal Costs, GAO-17-631T: Published: May 17, 2017. Publicly Released: May 17, 2017: “The federal government is on a long-term, unsustainable fiscal path—it is spending more money than it is collecting. We’ve made hundreds of recommendations through our High Risk list and our work on duplicative, overlapping, and fragmented federal programs that could help the government save tens of billions of dollars. In this testimony, we discuss some of these recommendations, including reducing improper payments (particularly in the areas of Medicare, Medicaid, and the Earned Income Tax Credit), improving IT management and cybersecurity of federal IT systems, and better managing federal real property.” 

CRS – Cybersecurity: Legislation, Hearings, and Executive Branch Documents, Rita Tehan, Information Research Specialist. May 12, 2017. [FAS]
“Cybersecurity vulnerabilities challenge governments, businesses, and individuals worldwide. Attacks have been initiated against individuals, corporations, and countries. Targets have included government networks, companies, and political organizations, depending upon whether the attacker was seeking military intelligence, conducting diplomatic or industrial espionage, engaging in cybercrime, or intimidating political activists. In addition, national borders mean little or nothing to cyberattackers, and attributing an attack to a specific location can be difficult, which may make responding problematic…”

NORTH KOREA’S UNIT 180: It’s Pyongyang’s key cyber warfare unit.

North Korea’s main spy agency has a special cell called Unit 180 that is likely to have launched some of its most daring and successful cyber attacks, according to defectors, officials and internet security experts…
…Cyber security researchers have also said they have found technical evidence that could link North Korea with the global WannaCry “ransomware” cyber attack that infected more than 300,000 computers in 150 countries this month. Pyongyang has called the allegation “ridiculous”.
The crux of the allegations against North Korea is its connection to a hacking group called Lazarus that is linked to last year’s $81 million cyber heist at the Bangladesh central bank and the 2014 attack on Sony’s Hollywood studio. The U.S. government has blamed North Korea for the Sony hack and some U.S. officials have said prosecutors are building a case against Pyongyang in the Bangladesh Bank theft.

The Pentagon makes a point:

The U.S. Department of Defense said in a report submitted to Congress last year that North Korea likely “views cyber as a cost-effective, asymmetric, deniable tool that it can employ with little risk from reprisal attacks, in part because its networks are largely separated from the Internet”.

The Tories promise to be tough on tax evasion. Where's the evidence? by her fierce folkloric