If you hate hitting a digital dead end, such as by surfing to a 404 or “page not found” error, then Chrome and Firefox users should consider doing away with them altogether…that is, as long as there is an archived copy available.When you surf to a dead link, both browsers have an extension/add-on which will automatically offer to serve up a preserved copy of the page via the Internet Archive’s Wayback Machine. It’s one way to push back against “link rot,” meaning all those URLs that return nothing of value since sites are redesigned and undergo structural changes that result in broken links.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Of course, in the digital world, anyone can claim to be anyone. Yet a person claiming to be the IT director of a medical marijuana dispensary took to Slashdot in hopes of receiving legal advice after the point of sale system the MMJ used was hacked.Denver-based MJ Freeway, a medical marijuana “seed-to-sale” tracking software company experienced a “service interruption” – that turned out to be a hack – a week ago on January 8. The hack of the point-of-sale system left more than 1,000 retail cannabis clients in 23 states unable to track sales and inventories. Without a way to keep records in order to comply with state regulations, some dispensaries shut down, while others reverted to tracking sales via pen and paper.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Of course, in the digital world, anyone can claim to be anyone. Yet a person claiming to be the IT director of a medical marijuana dispensary took to Slashdot in hopes of receiving legal advice after the point of sale system the MMJ used was hacked.Denver-based MJ Freeway, a medical marijuana “seed-to-sale” tracking software company experienced a “service interruption” – that turned out to be a hack – a week ago on January 8. The hack of the point-of-sale system left more than 1,000 retail cannabis clients in 23 states unable to track sales and inventories. Without a way to keep records in order to comply with state regulations, some dispensaries shut down, while others reverted to tracking sales via pen and paper.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Have you ever seen a starling murmuration as the flock twists and turns in fantastic aerial acrobatics as if the mass shares one brain? Next time you think you see one, look again. It might not be a swarm of birds, but a swarm of 3D-printed, autonomous micro-drones.The U.S. Department of Defense announced a successful test of 103 Perdix drones. Granted, the drones are not a beautiful product of nature like starlings, but the swarm does act like a “collective organism” that shares a single brain for decision making.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Have you ever seen a starling murmuration as the flock twists and turns in fantastic aerial acrobatics as if the mass shares one brain? Next time you think you see one, look again. It might not be a swarm of birds, but a swarm of 3D-printed, autonomous micro-drones.The U.S. Department of Defense announced a successful test of 103 Perdix drones. Granted, the drones are not a beautiful product of nature like starlings, but the swarm does act like a “collective organism” that shares a single brain for decision making.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
For the first Patch Tuesday of 2017, Microsoft is easing us into it by releasing only four security bulletins, half are of which are rated as critical for remote code execution flaws. In reality, only three of those are for Windows systems!This is the lightest load I can recall Microsoft handing us. It almost feels like this surely can’t be right, but hey – you didn’t want to work hard today anyhow, did you?CriticalMS17-002 resolves a remote code execution flaw in Microsoft Office. Microsoft Word 2016 32-bit and 64-bit editions and Microsoft SharePoint Enterprise Server 2016 are listed as the only affected software versions. The RCE bug is a result of Office software failing to properly handle objects in memory. If an attacker successfully exploited the flaw, and the user had admin rights, the attacker could take control of the box.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
For the first Patch Tuesday of 2017, Microsoft is easing us into it by releasing only four security bulletins, half are of which are rated as critical for remote code execution flaws. In reality, only three of those are for Windows systems!This is the lightest load I can recall Microsoft handing us. It almost feels like this surely can’t be right, but hey – you didn’t want to work hard today anyhow, did you?CriticalMS17-002 resolves a remote code execution flaw in Microsoft Office. Microsoft Word 2016 32-bit and 64-bit editions and Microsoft SharePoint Enterprise Server 2016 are listed as the only affected software versions. The RCE bug is a result of Office software failing to properly handle objects in memory. If an attacker successfully exploited the flaw, and the user had admin rights, the attacker could take control of the box.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
In the span of a day, the number of MongoDB installations that were erased and replaced with ransom notes has more than doubled, spiking to 27,000 as more cyber thugs jump on the ransom bandwagon. Niall Merrigan
It started last week when security researcher Victor Gevers discovered that about 200 MongoDB databases had been erased and held for ransom. By Tuesday, 2,000 databases were effected; the number climbed to 10,500 by Friday and kept climbing. Then the ransomed databases jumped from 12,000 to 27,000, according to security researcher Niall Merrigan.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
In the span of a day, the number of MongoDB installations that were erased and replaced with ransom notes has more than doubled, spiking to 27,000 as more cyber thugs jump on the ransom bandwagon. Niall Merrigan
It started last week when security researcher Victor Gevers discovered that about 200 MongoDB databases had been erased and held for ransom. By Tuesday, 2,000 databases were effected; the number climbed to 10,500 by Friday and kept climbing. Then the ransomed databases jumped from 12,000 to 27,000, according to security researcher Niall Merrigan.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Last year, I was gifted an Amazon Echo; stunned, I stared at the gifter and thought to myself, have you ever met me…do you know me at all? The side of the Echo box listed features, starting with “fair-field voice control, with 7-microphone array and beam-forming technology to hear you from across the room.” Echo didn’t leave the box for six months.When I finally did open Echo, I was interested in comparing functions of Echo against those of ZOE; the latter smart home assistant was developed by Protonet with privacy in mind – nothing goes to the cloud so it couldn’t be turned into a surveillance device.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Last year, I was gifted an Amazon Echo; stunned, I stared at the gifter and thought to myself, have you ever met me…do you know me at all? The side of the Echo box listed features, starting with “fair-field voice control, with 7-microphone array and beam-forming technology to hear you from across the room.” Echo didn’t leave the box for six months.When I finally did open Echo, I was interested in comparing functions of Echo against those of ZOE; the latter smart home assistant was developed by Protonet with privacy in mind – nothing goes to the cloud so it couldn’t be turned into a surveillance device.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
You need look no further than some of the stupid IoT devices being shown off at CES 2017 to be reminded that practically anything can be connected to the internet.Nokia’s Withings, L’Oreal’s innovation lab and Kerastase believe you would be better off by using Hair Coach, the world’s first smart hairbrush and companion app. It is just one of the many products that leaves me asking WHY? L’Orea
Screenshot from L’Oreal videoTo read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
You need look no further than some of the stupid IoT devices being shown off at CES 2017 to be reminded that practically anything can be connected to the internet.Nokia’s Withings, L’Oreal’s innovation lab and Kerastase believe you would be better off by using Hair Coach, the world’s first smart hairbrush and companion app. It is just one of the many products that leaves me asking WHY? L’Orea
Screenshot from L’Oreal videoTo read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
How many years have we been hearing about the dangers of leaving MongoDB instances unprotected? In December 2015, Shodan creator John Matherly warned that there were 684.8 TB of data exposed due to publicly accessible MongoDB instances. Yet there are still people don’t who bother to learn how to lock it down and so now a hacker is targeting and erasing those MongoDB installations, replacing the data with a ransom demand.Security researcher Victor Gevers, aka @0xDUDE and co-founder of the GDI Foundation, has personally been notifying owners of exposed MongoDB for years. But near the end of 2016, he came across an open MongoDB server that had the database contents replaced with a ransom note.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
How many years have we been hearing about the dangers of leaving MongoDB instances unprotected? In December 2015, Shodan creator John Matherly warned that there were 684.8 TB of data exposed due to publicly accessible MongoDB instances. Yet there are still people don’t who bother to learn how to lock it down and so now a hacker is targeting and erasing those MongoDB installations, replacing the data with a ransom demand.Security researcher Victor Gevers, aka @0xDUDE and co-founder of the GDI Foundation, has personally been notifying owners of exposed MongoDB for years. But near the end of 2016, he came across an open MongoDB server that had the database contents replaced with a ransom note.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Security researcher Claudio Guarnieri has experience working with journalists and human rights organizations which have exercised freedom of speech, reported on some form of corruption and wound up becoming targets because of it; their computers may be compromised with spying malware such as those in the hands of the Hacking Team, FinFisher or NSA to name but a few. Their electronic communications may be intercepted, messaging programs may be blocked. All of that may be because the journalists and human rights organizations in our modern connected society were standing up for what is right, being the voice of dissent, getting out the news about injustice.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Security researcher Claudio Guarnieri has experience working with journalists and human rights organizations which have exercised freedom of speech, reported on some form of corruption and wound up becoming targets because of it; their computers may be compromised with spying malware such as those in the hands of the Hacking Team, FinFisher or NSA to name but a few. Their electronic communications may be intercepted, messaging programs may be blocked. All of that may be because the journalists and human rights organizations in our modern connected society were standing up for what is right, being the voice of dissent, getting out the news about injustice.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
If Mark Stokes, Scotland Yard’s head of digital, cyber and communications forensics unit, is correct, then IoT devices will play an increasingly important role in crime scene investigations. “The crime scene of tomorrow is going to be the internet of things,” Stokes told the Times.The police are being trained to look for “digital footprints” – IoT gadgets that “track or record activities” which might prove or disprove alibis and witness statements as well as record what occurred during a murder victim’s final moments.Cops will be relying on evidence from smart devices which spy on you – such as internet connected refrigerators, light bulbs, washing machines, vacuum cleaners, coffee makers and voice-controlled robotic assistants.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
If Mark Stokes, Scotland Yard’s head of digital, cyber and communications forensics unit, is correct, then IoT devices will play an increasingly important role in crime scene investigations. “The crime scene of tomorrow is going to be the internet of things,” Stokes told the Times.The police are being trained to look for “digital footprints” – IoT gadgets that “track or record activities” which might prove or disprove alibis and witness statements as well as record what occurred during a murder victim’s final moments.Cops will be relying on evidence from smart devices which spy on you – such as internet connected refrigerators, light bulbs, washing machines, vacuum cleaners, coffee makers and voice-controlled robotic assistants.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Have you done something for yourself lately? If you end up with holiday money to spare, then you might consider buying yourself a cool pair of shades that would help protect your privacy while you are out in public.I saw Reflectacles on Kickstarter a few weeks ago, but since this is likely my last article of 2016, then I wanted to make sure you know about these surveillance-defeating glasses as well.The glasses are the brainchild of Scott Urban who claims that wearing Reflectables “ensure you’re noticed and anonymous at the same time.” The anonymous portion is due to light-reflecting frames which can end up looking like a big, shiny blur when captured by CCTV. Since the wearer’s face can’t be seen in any detail behind the bright glare of the glasses, it renders facial recognition tech useless.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Ms. Smith