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Technology Tag

Posted by Mary Chastain on September 08, 2017 31 Comments
On Thursday, major national credit-reporting company Equifax revealed that a cyberattack from July exposed personal information of about 143 million U.S. consumers. The company wrote in a statement:
The information accessed primarily includes names, Social Security numbers, birth dates, addresses and, in some instances, driver's license numbers. In addition, credit card numbers for approximately 209,000 U.S. consumers, and certain dispute documents with personal identifying information for approximately 182,000 U.S. consumers, were accessed. As part of its investigation of this application vulnerability, Equifax also identified unauthorized access to limited personal information for certain UK and Canadian residents. Equifax will work with UK and Canadian regulators to determine appropriate next steps. The company has found no evidence that personal information of consumers in any other country has been impacted.

Posted by Mary Chastain on August 25, 2017 22 Comments
Amazon passed two major hurdles on Wednesday after the U.S. Federal Trade Commission and Whole Foods' shareholders cleared the way for the internet giant to acquire the grocery chain. With that out of the away, Amazon is going all in and has already announced it plans on slashing Whole Foods prices as early as Monday.

Posted by Fuzzy Slippers on August 09, 2017 32 Comments
Back in 2003, Bill Burr wrote the primer on password development.  His definitive work recommended random characters, letters, numbers, caps, casing, etc. in a mishmosh that the user not only had to remember (or remember where they'd recorded it) but had to, per his '03 recommendation, change each month into another nonsensical string of random characters and letters. Burr now regrets these rules and says that he was wrong about them.

Posted by Mary Chastain on August 09, 2017 22 Comments
Netflix took a major blow on Tuesday when Disney announced it will remove all of its content in 2019 to start its own streaming service. ESPN, which Disney owns, will start a streaming service in 2018. From The Hollywood Reporter:
Details of the Disney streaming service were sketchy Tuesday, with CEO Bob Iger saying that if a movie is Pixar- or Disney-branded, it will probably appear exclusively on the new service — including shows and movies made specifically for the service — but the jury is still out on Marvel and Star Wars films.

Posted by Mary Chastain on August 04, 2017 2 Comments
The FBI has arrested Marcus Hutchins, the British security researcher that stopped the WannaCry ransomeware attack, for allegedly being a part of a software attack on banking accounts. The Guardian reported:
According to an indictment released by the US Department of Justice on Thursday, Hutchins is accused of having helped to create, spread and maintain the banking trojan Kronos between 2014 and 2015.

Posted by Mary Chastain on July 21, 2017 1 Comment
The FBI and Dutch authorities have successfully shut down AlphaBay and Hansa, two of the largest marketplaces on the dark web, which sold drugs, firearms, malware, and forged documents. AlphaBay, which the FBI seized, "allegedly serviced some 200,000 users and 40,000 vendors." It disappeared earlier this month with Attorney General Jeff Sessions describing the seizure as "one of the most important criminal investigations of the year."

Posted by Vijeta Uniyal on July 06, 2017 1 Comment
In a stunning display, Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s visit to Israel received favourable coverage from across the Indian media landscape. The Indian Prime Minister was in Israel on a 3-day visit, first ever by an Indian premier. Prime Minister Modi’s visit lays “the foundation of a new chapter in relations with Israel," commented the country's leading business daily Economic Times. Both countries took "historic steps towards a new engagement," wrote newspaper Hindustan Times. Like many Indian newspapers, The Hindu described the visit as "ground-breaking" and noted the "extraordinary welcome" Indian leader received in "the Jewish nation."

Posted by Vijeta Uniyal on June 29, 2017 1 Comment
Just days ahead of Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s historic visit to Israel, an Israeli-Indian partnership has announced the creation of a funding platform to help start-ups find investors in each other’s country. Israel’s equity crowdfunding firm OurCrowd and India's leading start-up platform LetsVenture have joined hands to create an 'India Fund' for Israeli and Indian start-ups, seeking to rope in big investors, family funds and OurCrowd’s own global network of investors. “India is a critical growth market for our business with a huge number of very exciting startup investment opportunities in a range of sectors,” OurCrowd CEO Jon Medved said.

Posted by Mary Chastain on June 28, 2017 6 Comments
The Petya ransomeware took off yesterday across the globe, affecting state-owned and private businesses in Russia, Europe, and the U.S. The BBC has now reported that it "may have started via corrupted updates on a piece of accountancy software." The ransomeware hit Ukraine hardest since it attacked the country's "power grid, banks and government offices" and disrupted some flights at Kyiv's Boryspil Airport. Other companies hit included pharmaceutical giant Merck and Russia's state owned energy company Rosneft.

Posted by Mary Chastain on May 17, 2017 5 Comments
The world faced a massive ransomware attack using WannaCry, an NSA hacking tool last week, which affected 150 countries. While investigating the WannaCry attack, experts found another ongoing cyber attack. The cybersecurity firm Proofpoint said the newly discovered attack, using Adylkuzz, is a lot quieter than WannaCry, but "has likely generated millions of dollars in cryptocurrency for the unknown attackers." ABC News continued:
According to Ryan Kalember, the senior vice president for cybersecurity at Proofpoint, the attack employed the same hacking tools developed by the U.S. National Security Agency (NSA) and leaked to the public by the hacker group Shadow Brokers in April to exploit vulnerabilities in the Microsoft Windows operating system.

Posted by Kemberlee Kaye on May 15, 2017 5 Comments
A large-scale ransomware attack, WannaCry, that infected computers all over the world left governments, health care institutions, and companies reeling. Britain's National Health Service was infected, resulting in the temporary closure of some emergency rooms. Ransomware infects a computer, locking users out of certain applications or files until a ransom is paid. PC casualties were expected to rise today as workers return to work to find WannaCry infecting their work PCs.

Posted by Mary Chastain on May 15, 2017 30 Comments
Police across the country have developed different techniques to catch people who text while driving. The Wall Street Journal reported that authorities have a hard time going after people for texting while driving because it is hard to prove "and citations can be contested in court." Some officers have disguised themselves as construction workers while others pose as panhandlers in order to catch those who text and drive.

Posted by Mary Chastain on March 29, 2017 12 Comments
Cybersecurity firm CrowdStrike recently revised a report from December that insisted that the group "Fancy Bear," which has ties to Russian intelligence, used malware to hack into Ukrainian artillery. In the same report, the firm said "Fancy Bear" used the same malware to "hack" into the American election. Well, British think tank International Institute for Strategic Studies (IISS) found that CrowdStrike "erroneously used IISS data as proof of the intrusion." This also calls into question its findings of meddling in our election.

Posted by Mary Chastain on March 25, 2017 12 Comments
If you're an Apple snob like me, I'm pretty sure you became concerned when Wikileaks published documents about the hacking tools the CIA used to sneak into Apple products. A person could not disable the tools even by resetting their phone. But Apple has come out to assure customers that the company has fixed the vulnerabilities in its newer products.

Posted by Mary Chastain on March 15, 2017 4 Comments
Authorities have charged four men, including two Russians, for hacking into the computer systems at Yahoo and stealing personal information. The two Russians, Dmitry Dokuchaev and Igor Sushchin, work for Russia's Federal Security Service (FSB), the successor of the KGB. Latvian Alexsey Belan, who is also on the FBI's most wanted list, also received charges along with Karim Baratov, who was born in Kazakhstan and holds Canadian citizenship. Canadian authorities arrested Baratov on Tuesday.

Posted by Mary Chastain on February 02, 2017 4 Comments
Federal Communications Commission Chairman Ajit Pai has developed a plan top open up the commission and make it more transparent to the public. From The Hill:
“Today, we begin the process of making the FCC more open and transparent,” Pai told reporters. “I’m pleased to announce this morning a pilot project that, if successful, will become a commission practice — one that will give the public much more insight into the commission’s activities.”
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