Thursday, January 19, 2023

Government watchdog spent $15,000 to crack a federal agency’s passwords in minutes

“This country has socialism for the rich, rugged individualism for the poor." – Martin Luther King, Jr.


Using a 3-second sample of human speech, it can generate super-high-quality text-to-text speech from the same voice. Even emotional range and acoustic environment of the
sample data can be reproduced. Here are some examples. pic.twitter.com/ExoS2VWO6d

— Tuvok @ NaughtyDog (@TheCartelDel) January 7, 2023


Crypto-Focused Silvergate Bank Got De Facto Backdoor FDIC Bailout via $4.3 Billion Federal Home Loan Bank Advance

More crypto chicanery! How crypto-focused bank Silvergate got a very big ticket rescue from a quasii-government mortgage banker’s bank



Jeremy Hirschhorn - 9 in 10 landlord tax returns are wrong. Does this make landlords champion tax dodgers?


Robodebt, algorithmic accountability and the law of averages


The Ultrarich Are Getting Cozy in America’s Tax Havens Portside


More Than a Dozen Special Operations Soldiers at Center of Drug Trafficking Probe Military.com


Republicans and Democrats, Unite Against Big Tech Abuses Joe Biden, Wall Street Journal. How about we start with not letting the organs of state security manage content moderation on the platforms?


Wall Street’s top cop trains his sights on cryptoFT



Government watchdog spent $15,000 to crack a federal agency’s passwords in minutes TechCrunch: “A government watchdog has published a scathing rebuke of the Department of the Interior’s cybersecurity posture, finding it was able to crack thousands of employee user accounts because the department’s security policies allow easily guessable passwords like 'Password1234'

The report by the Office of the Inspector General for the Department of the Interior, tasked with oversight of the U.S. executive agency that manages the country’s federal land, national parks and a budget of billions of dollars, said that the department’s reliance on passwords as the sole way of protecting some of its most important systems and employees’ user accounts has bucked nearly two decades of the government’s own cybersecurity guidance of mandating stronger two-factor authentication

It concludes that poor password policies puts the department at risk of a breach that could lead to a “high probability” of massive disruption to its operations


A Chicago Attorney Is Getting Justice For Hundreds Of Wrongfully Convicted People All At Once Buzzfeed


Oakland’s “Riders” Scandal and the Fraught Road to Police Reform Bolts


How Police Actually Cracked the Idaho Killings Case Slate. Forensic geneaology. “Forensic genealogy leaders at the FBI and beyond have directed police departments to omit all references to the technique, numerous people involved in these investigations told me.” That’s a confidence builder!