THREATS
Dusting for prints. More websites are using a technique called "fingerprinting" to identify visitors, including ones who have taken measures to make themselves unknown, such as opting for "do no track" and using an "incognito" browser. Tech columnist Geoffrey Fowler at the Washington Post investigated the privacy invasive tactic in a recent article. He explains how ad targeting tech providers and others use idiosyncratic information about devices and network connections to distinguish people.
Go see the dean. More than 1,400 schools have signed up for the services of Gaggle, a tech provider that offers to surveil the online accounts of students to ward off mass shootings and other threats. The company's software and human contractors analyze pupils' social media accounts, like Instagram and Twitter, and school accounts linked to Google G Suite and Microsoft 365, in order "to stop tragedies with real-time content analysis." BuzzFeed News asks how much monitoring is too much?
Just doing my job. Two employees of a security consultancy called Coalfire were arrested by law enforcement officers for...doing their jobs. They were hired by the Iowa State Judicial Branch to test the security of its buildings. While performing a break-in—called a physical penetration test, or "pen test," in the business patois—they tripped an alarm, and then they got cuffed. Security researchers and other pen testing companies have been voicing their indignation.
The hero we deserve. Michael Gillespie, a programmer at a repair shop called Nerds on Call, has helped hundreds of thousands of ransomware victims recover their files for free. He helps develop and distribute decryption software to counter the cybercriminal epidemic in his spare time. ProPublica calls him "a real-life version of Clark Kent or Peter Parker." Let's all give him a hand.
Other news... TikTok is under national security review. Rudy Giuliani continues to show off his cyber skills. North Korean malware was found on an Indian nuclear facility's computers. Uber and Lynda.com hackers plead guilty. Australia wants to scan people's faces to clear them before they watch porn. Untitled Goose Game, the viral video game sensation, had a nasty security hole. Imperva CEO Chris Hylen steps down after data breach investigation. The estranged husband of recently resigned congresswoman Katie Hill may have been hacked?
Apple's phones are fine, but the pizza...
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ACCESS GRANTED
We're all familiar with the mega data breach at Equifax that affected nearly 150 million North Americans in 2017. What might be less familiar is the incredibly intense psychological stress the hack caused the credit bureau's security team as it dealt with the aftermath. (Of course, that's to say nothing of the many people who have been forced to deal with the stresses of having their personal information stolen...) The BBC recently interviewed David Rimmer, Equifax's European security chief, about what went on inside the company during that crisis . Of note: He argues that employers ought to do more to address people's mental health during such trying times.
In early September 2017 David Rimmer was on the final day of a corporate get-together in the US, organised by Equifax, the giant financial firm he worked for.... At the conference centre, he and a handful of other staff were called aside by the global chief security officer. "[He] told us 'there's something I need to tell you and you're going to need to be here indefinitely for the next couple of weeks'," Mr Rimmer explains.
"In that meeting, where external counsel [lawyers] were also present, some of us were told 'if you tell anyone else about this, you'll be fired on the spot and walked off-site'."
FORTUNE RECON
Europe's Privacy Laws Are Tough. Meet the Woman Who Could Make Them Costly for Facebook and Google by David Meyer
3 Popular Domain Name Providers Confirm Data Breach by Alyssa Newcomb
With 'No Music for ICE,' 1,000 Artists Boycott Amazon Over Its Ties to Government Surveillance by Dan Reilly
Europe Is Starting to Declare Its Cloud Independence by David Meyer
Facebook Sues Israeli Company Over Alleged WhatsApp Malware Attack by William Turton
New AT&T Features Aim to Do More to Protect You From Robocalls by Chris Morris
ONE MORE THING
Real life UFOs? The Drive, an automotive blog, dug into the strange history of antigravity research by corporations, universities, and the U.S. military. The site trawled only unclassified research, so it's not comprehensive—but what does turn up is bizarre and intriguing. You might be surprised to learn how many people have pursued this "'Holy Grail' of aerospace engineering," as journalist Brett Tingley puts it.
The truth is out there...cue The X Files theme.
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