Group items matching

in title, tags, annotations or url

"The new documents reveal that a GCHQ unit dubbed the Joint Threat Research Intelligence Group, or JTRIG, launched an operation called Rolling Thunder against the hacker collective in 2011. That operation included using DDoS attacks as well as malware to slow down the hackers and later identify them, as first reported by as reported by NBC News on Wednesday."

"While Google has played down the notion of rolling out anything soon (it will take years until Glass builds up enough users to make it worthwhile), marketers can't stop buzzing about the possibility of paying for ads in the physical world based on user engagement and reactions. The patent even details how a device like Google Glass could infer a user's emotional response to an ad - whether they were happy, sad or indifferent - and adjust pricing accordingly."

"There it is. If you run a business, and the FBI or NSA want to turn it into a mass surveillance tool, they believe they can do so, solely on their own initiative. They can force you to modify your system. They can do it all in secret and then force your business to keep that secret. Once they do that, you no longer control that part of your business. You can't shut it down. You can't terminate part of your service. In a very real sense, it is not your business anymore. It is an arm of the vast U.S. surveillance apparatus, and if your interest conflicts with theirs then they win. Your business has been commandeered."

"…in about ten years or so, we will see the collapse of Moore's Law. In fact, already, we see a slowing down of Moore's Law. Computer power simply cannot maintain its rapid exponential rise using standard silicon technology. - Dr. Michio Kaku - 2012"

"The National Small Business Administration found in 2013 that roughly 20 percent of small businesses are lacking a mobile-friendly website, and 18 percent have no web presence at all. Falling further down the search result hierarchy affects both the business itself and the costumers looking for the business."

"The volunteer workforce that built the project's flagship, the English-language Wikipedia-and must defend it against vandalism, hoaxes, and manipulation-has shrunk by more than a third since 2007 and is still shrinking. ..."

The access point itself will allow multiple devices to hook up to it so they can all share files with each other on a private little network. Then, for fun, the whole thing is shrunk down and stuffed inside a small notebook so you can stealthily share files anywhere. It's a little over the top, but fun nonetheless. Head over to Node for the full guide.

"If you're doing nothing wrong, and have nothing to hide from your government, then mass surveillance holds no fears for you. This argument might be the oldest straw man in the privacy debate, but it's also a decent reflection of the state of the argument. In the UK's first major election since the Snowden revelations, privacy is a nonissue. This is a shame, because when it comes down to it, many of us who are doing nothing wrong have plenty we would prefer to hide."

Antivirus vendor McAfee Inc confirmed that a software update had caused its antivirus program to target the harmless file, leading PCs to repeadedly reboot.

"Google has launched a webpage where European citizens can request that links to information about them be taken off search results, the first step to comply with a court ruling affirming the "right to be forgotten". The company, which processes more than 90% of all web searches in Europe, has made available a webform through which people can submit their requests but has stopped short of specifying when it will remove links that meet the criteria for being taken down."

"Just a few days after Turkey's scandal-rocked government banned Twitter by tweaking national DNS settings, the state has doubled down by ordering ISPs to block Twitter's IP addresses, in response to the widespread dissemination of alternative DNS servers, especially Google's 8.8.8.8 and 8.8.4.4 (these numbers were even graffitied on walls). "

"Pearson is apparently monitoring social media, to detect signs of cheating during exams. That's insanely creepy, and a horrible violation. "And for those who think "Well, its Twitter, its public", remember this: So is walking down the street. But is it OK for the government to monitor us with street surveillance cameras and send us fines for not crossing with the crosswalk?" via Pearson Caught Spying On Students. Big Brother Is Here. "

"China's internet censors have cracked down on searches about the Panama Papers, a massive leak of documents that reportedly tie the relatives of current and retired Chinese politicians, including President Xi Jinping, to offshore companies used for tax evasion. The reports by an international coalition of media outlets working with the Washington-based International Consortium of Investigative Journalists, or ICIJ, are based on documents from the Panama-based law firm Mossack Fonseca, one of the world's biggest creators of shell companies."

"Tufekci describes how insurgent, democratic movements were early arrivals to the internet, and how clumsy authoritarians' attempts to fight them by shutting the net down only energized their movements. But canny authoritarians mastered the platforms, figuring out how to game their automated algorithms to upvote their messages, and how to game their moderation policies to banish their adversaries."

"Victims of a major ransomware cyberattack that has spread through the US and Europe can no longer unlock their computers even if they pay the ransom. The "Petya" ransomware has caused serious disruption at large firms including the advertising giant WPP, French construction materials company Saint-Gobain and Russian steel and oil firms Evraz and Rosneft. Infected computers display a message demanding a Bitcoin ransom worth $300. Those who pay are asked to send confirmation of payment to an email address. However, that email address has been shut down by the email provider. "

"His program became the first of a particular type of cyber attack called "distributed denial of service," in which large numbers of internet-connected devices, including computers, webcams and other smart gadgets, are told to send lots of traffic to one particular address, overloading it with so much activity that either the system shuts down or its network connections are completely blocked."

"In October 2016, algorithms reacted to negative news headlines about Brexit negotiations by sending the pound down 6% against the dollar in under two minutes, before recovering almost immediately. Knowing which particular headline, or which particular algorithm, caused the crash is next to impossible. When one haywire algorithm started placing and cancelling orders that ate up 4% of all traffic in US stocks in October 2012, one commentator was moved to comment wryly that "the motive of the algorithm is still unclear"."

"For example, I've been repeatedly emailed by company spokespeople to tell me that cops only get access to Ring customers' videos if the customers offer to share it; but what they never said is that if a customer turns down a police request, Amazon instructs the cops to make an "official request" to the company and then they grant warrantless access to the footage. "