Thursday, March 15, 2018

Cyber: Seven Types of Toxic Agencies



Much ado about Stephen Hawking dying on “Pi Day,” which is also Albert Einstein’s birthday.

↩︎ TIMe



Russia now has more intelligence agents in London than during the Cold War.

↩︎ The New York Times
Kottke Is Twenty 20 XX ...

To Be Successful Stay Far Away From These 7 Types of Toxic People

10 Signs You've Got a Toxic Workplace Culture, Bro

13 Signs of a Toxic Team Culture

Bitcoin Is Ridiculous. Blockchain Is Dangerous Bloomberg

The Intercept: “When Mark Zuckerber  was asked if Facebook had influenced the outcome of the 2016 presidential election, the founder and CEO dismissed the notion that the site even had such power as “crazy.” It was a disingenuous remark. Facebook’s website had an entire section devoted to touting the “success stories” of political campaigns that used the social network to influence electoral outcomes. That page, however, is now gone, even as the 2018 congressional primaries get underway…The case studies that Facebook used to list from political campaigns, however, included more interesting claims. Facebook’s work with Florida’s Republican Gov. Rick Scott “used link ads and video ads to boost Hispanic voter turnout in their candidate’s successful bid for a second term, resulting in a 22% increase in Hispanic support and the majority of the Cuban vote.” Facebook’s work with the Scottish National Party, a political party in the U.K., was described as “triggering a landslide.” The “success stories” drop-down menu that once included an entire section for “Government and Politics” is now gone. Pages for the individual case studies, like the Scott campaign and SNP, are still accessible through their URLs, but otherwise seem to have been delisted…”



Seven thousand pairs of shoes in front of the Capitol building—the number of kids killed by guns since Sandy Hook.

↩︎ Vox
ABC: Turnbull condemns Skripal attack supports UK response to Russia


Don Trump's bull run ends democratic Pennsylvania midterm win

Ambrogi – In New Ethics


Robert Ambrogi – Above the Law – Having now decided to weigh in on this untimely topic, what does the ABA tell us? [This is a must read] “In the classic short stoury “Rip Van Winkle,” a man fell asleep in 1769 and awoke 20 years later, having slept through the Revolution.
 Slow growth, high debt
Inside Story
Australia has become an economy burdened down with debt. The burden may feel light now, with interest rates so low, but as they rise it

Swearing in the workplace: the legal position - Employment and HR ...

 

Why would someone like Malcolm Gladwell or Stephen Curry teach a master on-line class?

Speech: Shadow minister for digital transformation: the future of blockchain for government.
"For a beast that is inherently risk averse, you would imagine government would race towards the benefits of applying Blockchain to its processes." (Ed Husic)
Student Sneezes in Sacramento State College library; fight breaks out

How Sergei Skripal Salisbury case went from local drama to international incident

A thousand pages of heavily redacted text, years of legal appeals, a censorious scolding of the FBI. James Baldwin’s FBI file has had a life of its own FBI  

Toxic Cyber Love by xTLxKEx


The rate of wrongful convictions in the United States is estimated to be somewhere between 2% to 10%. That may sound low, but when applied to a prison population of 2.3 million, the numbers become staggering. Can there really be 46,000 to 230,000 innocent people locked away? Those of us who are involved in exoneration work firmly believe so.
Millions of defendants are processed through our courts each year. It’s nearly impossible to determine how many of them are actually innocent once they’ve been convicted. There are few resources for examining the cases and backgrounds of those claiming to be wrongfully convicted.
Once an innocent person is convicted, it is next to impossible to get them out of prison. Over the past 25 years, the Innocence Project, where I serve on the board of directors, has secured through DNA testing the release of 349 innocent men and women, 20 of whom had been sent to death row. All told, there have been more than 2,000 exonerations, including 200 from death row, in the U.S. during that same period. But we’ve only scratched the surface.
An elite Russian hacking team, a historic ransomware attack, an espionage group in the Middle East, and countless small time cryptojackers all have one thing in common. Though their methods and objectives vary, they all lean on leaked NSA hacking tool EternalBlue to infiltrate target computers and spread malware across networks. Leaked to the public not quite a year ago, EternalBlue has joined a long line of reliable hacker favorites. The Conficker Windows worm infected millions of computers in 2008, and the Welchia remote code execution worm wreaked havoc 2003.


The Leaked NSA Spy Tool That Hacked the World
 
U.S. Hasn't Shared Enough About Cyber Risks, Official Says



Leaked Files Show How the NSA Tracks Other Countries’ Hackers



Hope Hicks told House Intelligence Committee she was hacked, sources say
NBC
A day before she resigned as White House communications director, Hope Hicks told the House Intelligence Committee last week that one of her email accounts was hacked, according to people who were present for her testimony in the panel's Russia probe. Under relatively routine questioning from Rep. Jim Himes, D-Conn., about her correspondence, Hicks indicated that she could no longer access two accounts: one she used as a member of President Donald Trump's campaign team and the other a personal account, according to four people who spoke on the condition of anonymity because the closed meeting of the Intelligence Committee was supposed to remain private. Hicks, who portrayed herself as not savvy in matters of technology, told lawmakers that one of the accounts was hacked, according to two sources who were in the room. It is unclear if Hicks was referring to the campaign or the personal account.



Senators ask voting machine manufacturers if Russia reviews source code



While U.S. ponders response to Russia, agencies' hands are tied in cyberspace, intelligence chief says CyberScoop
After senators repeatedly criticized him for the weak U.S. response to Russian cyberattacks and propaganda, the head of the intelligence community complained Tuesday that a lack of policy had stifled his agencies from taking action.

Hansa down, this is cool: How Dutch cops snatchedthe wheel of dark web charabanc


Presumably while singing 'takedowns from Amsterdam'

The takedown of the Hansa dark web marketplace, done live on national TV by Dutch police, was possible because officers had been running the site themselves – and on Thursday they detailed how they did it.
In 2016, security shop Bitdefender tipped off the Dutch plod that Hansa, one of the most popular dark web markets, was being hosted in the Netherlands. Hansa’s popularity was largely down to its multi-signature Bitcoin handling, which stopped buyers getting ripped off by not releasing payment until an order arrived.



WHO HAS MORE DIRT ON TRUMP? That’s the question Matthew Iglesias asks in a new Vox piece that implores government officials and the media to take the Stormy Daniels story more seriously. “Is Daniels the only woman Trump has paid off? Have his other secrets been successfully kept from other interested parties? Who has leverage over the president, and what are they using it for?” All good questions. Time to throw some of them at Sarah Huckabee Sanders, he writes.
SPEAKING OF STORMY: What’s going on with that interview she did with Anderson Cooper for “60 Minutes?” There was talking of it airing this Sunday, but now Talking Points Memo posits CBS might be getting squirmish about some of the details that have yet to come out.
STILL MORE STORMY: The porn star let a friend listen in on her conversations with Donald Trump, according to a friend who backed some of the performer’s allegations of a relationship with the future president.
SNEAKY, NOT STORMY: How did special interests get another $16 billion in tax breaks into the budget? Dave Levinthal of the Center for Public Integrity shows how these deals became law “inside the bloat of last month’s 652-page budget bill with little public input. There are break-out articles here for more than 30 of the deals. A House subcommittee is looking into the issue today.
 




GAO: Homeland Security too slow in hiring cyber workers





Gray Hat New York Magazine



Marcus Hutchins was still recovering from the night before as he settled into a lounge at the Las Vegas airport one afternoon this past August. Hutchins, a 23-year-old cybersecurity researcher, had come from his home in rural England in part to attend DefCon, the world’s biggest computer-hacking conference, and in part to take a well-deserved vacation. Three months earlier, a North Korean cyberattack known as WannaCry had crippled the British health-care system and caused a billion dollars in losses across 150 countries. The damage could have been much worse — tens of billions, by one estimate — but a few hours after the attack began, Hutchins figured out how to stop it, almost by accident, while sitting at a computer in his bedroom at his parents’ house.
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