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Noreen C

More Than Half of Mobile Apps Not Secure, Report Says - 5 views

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    An article about the unsafe nature of many mobile phone applications including commerce and finance related apps. This article allows the reader to see the increasing problem of security holes of these apps and sites like Twitter who were hit with the same problems, such as "cross site scripting."
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    Security in this day an age has become a major problem. The protection of hardware, software, machines, and networks from unauthorized access is becoming increasingly harder because hackers have gotten smarter in identifying the security holes of these programs. Mobile phone applications are just one of their latest hits. More than half of the applications on mobile phones are considered unsafe and therefore vulnerable to security attacks. Third party codes were even more devastating with a "81 percent failure rate." Commerce and finance related apps did just as poorly, both exceeding just about the half way mark. The process of fixing these security holes has become quicker over, however, not quick enough. It takes sixteen days on average to fix the problems and this is rather long time in a society that can get and bit of information in the palms of their hands in nano seconds. Hackers are also going into other user's profiles, or creating fake profiles in order to spread "cross site scripting." This was recently seen as a problem for Twitter and it's users. Tweets were changed into different colors, and there were unwelcomed pop-ups that would appear to users when they clicked on a Tweet. This would then publish the original script on that user's page without their knowledge, or consent. This is a problem that has taken over mobile apps, resulting in "51 percent of all vulnerabilities." The stakeholders of this issue are mainly the users. However, it is also a problem for the companies who created the application and those who are fixing it when it goes down, if not the creator. In the world of applications on mobile phones, things are expanding quickly and largely. However, with this great expansion, there are downsides when more than half are deemed not secure. Although there are various apps that are safe, our need to have everything in our sight available to us, even the most seemingly useless app, has driven us to put our devices, privacy,security, and
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    Please go back and "cache" this page.
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    It will not let me, it says I need to upgrade my subscription in order to do so. Also, the last part of the comment is cut off. Here is the continuation: "authenticity at risk. The coolest apps that are so desired, many not be the coolest things on the market these days. Let's not let our wants surpass our judgment of these problems."
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    Actually, if you click on the link to the article (the one in blue) and bookmark it again (it won't loose your previous work) you can click the Cache box and it will actually cache it. Try it. Normally, you would cache it the first time you bookmark it, but that technique works after the fact.
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    In a way, downloading an app or downloading anything in fact is like interviewing a book or finding a reliable source. It's always better to pick from an author or publisher you know about. Usually, more well known companies will release an app and if there are a lot of people complaining about it, then they will fix it. It takes patience and control to wait for a better version to come out so that you know its safe. Additionally, people should take more caution into the apps they are using and what kind of information they are registering in it.
Madeline Brownstone

A survey of technology and government: Identity parade | The Economist - 0 views

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    "THE internet, argues Kim Cameron, who works as "Identity Architect" at Microsoft, "was built without a way to know who and what you are connecting to". That is bad enough in the private sector, where the only thing at stake is money. For dealing with government, it is potentially catastrophic. Technology can-just about-tell how an internet user got online. It can check the authenticity of passwords and logins, and validate smart cards or biometric checks. But such data, even if encrypted, can be stolen, borrowed, guessed or intercepted."
Kim T

iTunes warning as thousands of fraudulent accounts are auctioned online - 1/7/2011 - Co... - 0 views

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    Purchasing songs, apps, movies, and etc on ITunes requires each user to have an ITunes account. Upon signing up for the account, a valid credit or paypal account must be entered to pay for any purchased items. These purchases are made using a SSL (secure socket layer) connection so that when the user sends their information to ITunes to set up an account, log in, or purchase an item, the information they are sending is encrypted.The sender is given a public key to show that he or she was the one sending the message and ITunes will get the private key. The data is encrypted using a code that will translate the data into a message incomprehensible to others if not decrypted using a private key. Once it has reached the ITunes database after being sent over the network, the private key will decode the message and proceed with the transaction.  However, the problem lies within the process of setting up an account. Many customers' itunes accounts are being hacked into and sold online to other people in China. Hackers are still able to find and intercept customers' information, such as their passwords or credit card number, and use it to sell to other people. Passwords may be too weak in some cases or authentication by the itunes store may be too weak. The issue of security is therefore involved as sensitive information can be accessed by others. The customers are affected since they are being charged for items that they are not purchasing. The company, Apple, is also affected negatively since their customers may not feel safe buying from them anymore and therefore losing business. Then there are the hackers who are benefiting in such a situation, profiting off of other people illegally.
Madeline Brownstone

Facebook fraud a 'major issue' | Technology | guardian.co.uk - 6 views

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    People's face book accounts are being hacked by others alarming all the users about their security.
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    This article meets the requirements for ITGS. This article talked about how face book accounts were being hacked by others and not just for the fun of it but fraud has arisen from this. One hacker signed onto a students account telling her friends that "she was "stranded" in another country"(Halliday), and needed large amounts of money. The stakeholders in this case are all 500 million users of face book, because they may be at risk of getting hacked. Social and ethical issues that have come up due to the hackings are Surveillance, Security, and people and machines. I think surveillance is definitely one because now that the owners or the ones in charge of facebook are aware of the issue, they will set up programs that will detect any unusual activity from the users. People will be informed where their account is being accessed from and if there is any suspicious activity. Security was definitely an issue because now hackers are using the identities of others to obtain what they want. People and machines is another social ethical issue. While the owner of an account might not be at risk physically, or at risk at all, the person friends may be. They would be attacked by asking them to give money, obtain secret information about the user, or simply cyber bullied. If anything this probably ties into business, although its not legal business, but there is one person making money.
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    Please go back and "cache" this page.
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    I agree with you on the issue of security and problems with hackers in this day and age. However, there is something that you may not have thought about. What happens when people create fake Facebook accounts in the name of other people? They have the power to not only use someone else's identity, and enter their friends group, but also create much damage for the person. It is harder to hack a person's account than to just create an account with anyone's desired name. It's a scary thing to know that there many be another Carmen in the world, that looks exactly like you, even taking up your likes/dislikes, and doing everything as if they were you, when it is clearly not. That is an entirely new issue of privacy, and authenticity. An email, user ID, and picture of you is all they need. Anything is possible, whether it's hacking, people not hiring or accepting you into their college because of your Facebook, or having someone take your identity. The internet isn't so safe anymore now is it?
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    This is really Carmen's bookmark. I inadvertently took control of it. Sorry, but I was trying to see if I could cache. It worked, but I ended up owning it. Ooops!
Olivia M

Iran's Protests: Why Twitter Is the Medium of the Movement - TIME - 4 views

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    In the most recent Iranian elections, the government censored many websites on the Internet in order to prevent news and other information from leaking the country/"classified governmental issues within the election". The Iranian people started using social networks (mainly Twitter) to spread the information of governmental oppression around both nationally and through out the world. After Twitter started blocking such sites, Iranians started using their cellphones as the method of sending out information on the injustices occurring during the election.
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    This is a very interesting article. I find it interesting that Iran is afraid of the word of their government is getting out, so they block one of the most used wrbsites on the internet, I feel as though you could have argued the point that the tweets were not neccesarily the most reliable. As said in the article, "The vast body of information about current events in Iran that circulates on Twitter is chaotic, subjective and totally unverifiable. It's impossible to authenticate sources. It's also not clear who exactly is using Twitter within Iran, especially in English. Anecdotal evidence suggests that the bulk of tweets are coming from "hyphenated" Iranians not actually in the country who are getting the word out to Western observers, rather than from the protesters themselves, who favor other, less public media."
Madeline Brownstone

Simple Passwords Remain Popular, Despite Risk of Hacking - NYTimes.com - 1 views

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    "According to a new analysis, one out of five Web users still decides to leave the digital equivalent of a key under the doormat: they choose a simple, easily guessed password like "abc123," "iloveyou" or even "password" to protect their data."
nicholas n

U.S. Tries Open-Source Model for Health Data Systems - NYTimes.com - 1 views

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    This article is about the idea of putting all existing medical records into electronic form. This would cut the costs needed for storage of such information, this would also increase how fast a medical official can access the records of a sick patient. However, as listed in Strand 1, there are many positive and negative social/ethical issues. One such issue is security. By making the records digitized and put into the hospital database, people without the proper authorization would not be able to gain access to the data. This can also coincide with authenticity. The information that relates to the patient should be accessible by the patient. The patient would need to be able to get through the encryption of the data. Another social/ethical issue would be the equality of access, this would allow only certain people the ability to look at the data. Even with these positive social/ethical issues there are some negative issue. One negative issue would be integrity. There are people who can hack the encryption of this data and tamper with it. This would cause the data to be different in other places and a breach in security. This would be a great help to organizing data. Using a paper file system, the doctor would have to go through a lot of papers and cabinets to find the patient's medical history. By using a paper file cabinet documents are more likely to go missing or get mixed up with another patient's records. However, by using a database this data is much more organized. There is a smaller chance of losing the patient's data, by using back-ups the data could be easily restored. There is also a much smaller change or mixing up multiple patient's data. If the wrong data was use for the wrong person, the person may not have the correct medical treatment they need. With databases the information is much more organized. The patient's data can be found very fast, compared to a paper file system (this could take more than an hour depending on the amount of patients).
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    Continued...The hardware involved with creating databases in the health industry would be a DBMS Engine. This is also known as a Database Managing System. This takes the logical request from DBMS subsystems and converts them to physical equivalents. This also requires interactive processing. This replaces batch processing. This allows users to interact with data through terminals and view values online in real time. By having real time the doctors can give the patients what they need at the moment the patient needs it. The stakeholders in this specific case would be the hospitals adapting the database managing system and the patients whose information is stored in this database. If the database is tampered and there are not back-ups the patient would not have his/her medical history. This could cause the patient to be on a delay for an operation that is extremely important to their life. This could also place a lawsuit on the hospital.
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