Imagine it being nearly midnight and the emergency warning sirens start wailing and continue to scream for about an hour and a half. That’s what happened in Dallas on Friday; at 11:42 p.m., the city’s 156 emergency sirens blasted out warnings and continued to wail until 1:17 a.m. on Saturday. Dallas officials claim the siren warning system was hacked and it was one of the largest breaches of an emergency siren system.At first, a city spokesperson blamed the blaring sirens on a “system malfunction.” The 1.6 million people in the city were asked to stop calling 911 because there was no emergency. The normal wait time for a 911 call in Dallas is reportedly 10 seconds, but at one point the 911 system was so clogged with calls that the wait time stretched to six minutes.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
When you take a chance and buy internet of insecure things devices, you already have to accept apps that have crazy overreaching permissions if you want your smart devices to work—and hope any vulnerabilities discovered will be patched. But should you have to worry about ticking off the device maker and having your device remotely disabled?There are all kinds of services and products that do not offer customer support on a Saturday night, which is frustrating when something goes wrong over the weekend and you need help. In the case of IoT garage door opener Garadget, unhappy customer Robert Martin wrote on a Garadget support thread:To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Kaspersky Lab found a “direct link” between the Lazarus group banking heist hackers and North Korea.While Lazarus is a notorious cyber-espionage and sabotage group, a subgroup of Lazarus, called Bluenoroff by Kaspersky researchers, focuses only on financial attacks with the goal of “invisible theft without leaving a trace.”The group has four main types of targets: financial institutions, casinos, companies involved in the development of financial trade software and crypto-currency businesses.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Kaspersky Lab found a “direct link” between the Lazarus group banking heist hackers and North Korea.While Lazarus is a notorious cyber-espionage and sabotage group, a subgroup of Lazarus, called Bluenoroff by Kaspersky researchers, focuses only on financial attacks with the goal of “invisible theft without leaving a trace.”The group has four main types of targets: financial institutions, casinos, companies involved in the development of financial trade software and crypto-currency businesses.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Move over, Microsoft Windows. Thanks to mobile, Google’s Android is now king, as it has become the world’s most popular operating system for getting online.Web analytics firm StatCounter reported that, for the first time ever, Android topped the worldwide OS internet usage market share. In March, looking at combined usage across desktop, laptop, tablet and mobile, Android usage hit 37.93 percent. That was enough to narrowly overtake Windows’ 37.91 percent. StatCounter
“This is a milestone in technology history and the end of an era,” said StatCounter CEO Aodhan Cullen. “It marks the end of Microsoft’s leadership worldwide of the OS market, which it has held since the 1980s. It also represents a major breakthrough for Android, which held just 2.4 percent of global internet usage share only five years ago.”To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Move over, Microsoft Windows. Thanks to mobile, Google’s Android is now king, as it has become the world’s most popular operating system for getting online.Web analytics firm StatCounter reported that, for the first time ever, Android topped the worldwide OS internet usage market share. In March, looking at combined usage across desktop, laptop, tablet and mobile, Android usage hit 37.93 percent. That was enough to narrowly overtake Windows’ 37.91 percent. StatCounter
“This is a milestone in technology history and the end of an era,” said StatCounter CEO Aodhan Cullen. “It marks the end of Microsoft’s leadership worldwide of the OS market, which it has held since the 1980s. It also represents a major breakthrough for Android, which held just 2.4 percent of global internet usage share only five years ago.”To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
On Friday March 31 and part of April 1, visitors to kodi.tv saw a US government domain seizure notice as grabbed by the Wayback Machine. It featured logos of the Department of Justice, National Intellectual Property Rights and Homeland Security Investigations above the following message:
This domain name has been seized by ICE - Homeland Security Investigations, pursuant to a seizure warrant issued by a United States District Court under the authority of 18 U.S.C 981 and 2323.Willful copyright infringement is a federal crime that carries penalties for first time offenders of up to five years in federal prison, a $250,000 fine forfeiture and restitution (17 U.S.C 506, 18 U.S.C 2319). Intentionally and knowingly trafficking in counterfeit goods is a federal crime that carries penalties for first time offenders of up to ten years in federal prison, a $2,000,000 fine, forfeiture and restitution (18 U.S.C 2320)To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
On Friday March 31 and part of April 1, visitors to kodi.tv saw a US government domain seizure notice as grabbed by the Wayback Machine. It featured logos of the Department of Justice, National Intellectual Property Rights and Homeland Security Investigations above the following message:
This domain name has been seized by ICE - Homeland Security Investigations, pursuant to a seizure warrant issued by a United States District Court under the authority of 18 U.S.C 981 and 2323.Willful copyright infringement is a federal crime that carries penalties for first time offenders of up to five years in federal prison, a $250,000 fine forfeiture and restitution (17 U.S.C 506, 18 U.S.C 2319). Intentionally and knowingly trafficking in counterfeit goods is a federal crime that carries penalties for first time offenders of up to ten years in federal prison, a $2,000,000 fine, forfeiture and restitution (18 U.S.C 2320)To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Lookout researchers warned of a campaign involving fake ransomware attacks that attempt to extort money from users of mobile Safari. Victims are accused of accessing illegal pornography and the browser appears to be locked up unless a “ransom” is paid.“Your device has been locked for illegal pornography,” the message stated on a site with security agency icons such as NSA and Interpol at the bottom of the page. An overlay pop-up warned that Safari “cannot open page” with “OK” underneath the message. However, the dialog would not go away no matter how many times the victim tapped “OK.”Lookout said, “Each time he tapped ‘OK’ he would be prompted to tap ‘OK’ again, effectively putting the browser into an infinite loop of dialog prompts that prevented him from using the browser.”To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Lookout researchers warned of a campaign involving fake ransomware attacks that attempt to extort money from users of mobile Safari. Victims are accused of accessing illegal pornography and the browser appears to be locked up unless a “ransom” is paid.“Your device has been locked for illegal pornography,” the message stated on a site with security agency icons such as NSA and Interpol at the bottom of the page. An overlay pop-up warned that Safari “cannot open page” with “OK” underneath the message. However, the dialog would not go away no matter how many times the victim tapped “OK.”Lookout said, “Each time he tapped ‘OK’ he would be prompted to tap ‘OK’ again, effectively putting the browser into an infinite loop of dialog prompts that prevented him from using the browser.”To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
If you were required to wear an ankle bracelet tracking device for electronic monitoring purposes, can you imagine how the conversation with police or probation officers would go down if the device falsely notified them that you had tried to tamper with the strap to remove it, when in fact you had not? It’s doubtful you would be believed if you tried to blame it on glitchy or defective technology. Yet in the UK, some offenders may have been wrongly sent back to prison after defective ankle bracelets alerted the authorities that they had been tampered with.The UK government admitted that ankle bracelets “used to electronically monitor offenders and suspects with a curfew” may have given false tamper reports to authorities and resulted in some people being wrongly imprisoned.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
If you were required to wear an ankle bracelet tracking device for electronic monitoring purposes, can you imagine how the conversation with police or probation officers would go if the device falsely notified them that you had tried to tamper with the strap to remove it?It’s doubtful you would be believed if you tried to blame it on glitchy or defective technology. Yet in the U.K., some offenders may have been wrongly sent back to prison after defective ankle bracelets alerted the authorities that they had been tampered with.The U.K. government admitted that ankle bracelets “used to electronically monitor offenders and suspects with a curfew” may have given false tamper reports to authorities and resulted in some people being wrongly imprisoned.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Hitachi announced it has developed a new image analysis system that uses artificial intelligence (AI) for real-time people tracking and detection. The AI can detect an individual in real time by combining over 100 external characteristics and then track that person using wide-area security and surveillance systems.Systems that capture facial images and color of clothing have previously been deployed in public areas, but according to Hitachi, it is difficult for security staff to find and track a person based on an eyewitness account or poor surveillance camera footage.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Hitachi announced it has developed a new image analysis system that uses artificial intelligence (AI) for real-time people tracking and detection. The AI can detect an individual in real time by combining over 100 external characteristics and then track that person using wide-area security and surveillance systems.Systems that capture facial images and color of clothing have previously been deployed in public areas, but according to Hitachi, it is difficult for security staff to find and track a person based on an eyewitness account or poor surveillance camera footage.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Docs.com, Microsoft’s site which is described as “showcase and discover Microsoft Word, Excel, PowerPoint, OneNote, Sway and PDF document for free,” came under fire over the weekend as Twitter users started complaining that users of the site had inadvertently shared private and sensitive information with the world.The site had a search functionality which would allow anyone to search through millions of files. When some users had uploaded private information, they had not changed the permissions from the default setting to share content publicly. Yet after people started tweeting screenshots of sensitive information, Microsoft quietly removed the search functionality on Saturday.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Docs.com, Microsoft’s site which is described as “showcase and discover Microsoft Word, Excel, PowerPoint, OneNote, Sway and PDF document for free,” came under fire over the weekend as Twitter users started complaining that users of the site had inadvertently shared private and sensitive information with the world.The site had a search functionality which would allow anyone to search through millions of files. When some users had uploaded private information, they had not changed the permissions from the default setting to share content publicly. Yet after people started tweeting screenshots of sensitive information, Microsoft quietly removed the search functionality on Saturday.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
When you gotta go, you gotta go, but there may be a line in public restrooms. Usually those lines don’t have anything to do with surveillance. Let’s hope a new biometric authentication trial in China doesn’t roll out here, or else you would have to stop in public bathrooms in front of a device that uses facial recognition and wait for your allotted amount of toilet paper to be dispensed.
Too bad, so sad if the 24-inch strip of toilet paper isn’t enough. The dispenser will not spit out more paper to the same person until after nine minutes have passed.
Why would this creepy type of surveillance be deployed in public restrooms? To combat toilet paper theft.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
When you gotta go, you gotta go, but there may be a line in public restrooms. Usually those lines don’t have anything to do with surveillance. Let’s hope a new biometric authentication trial in China doesn’t roll out here, or else you would have to stop in public bathrooms in front of a device that uses facial recognition and wait for your allotted amount of toilet paper to be dispensed.
Too bad, so sad if the 24-inch strip of toilet paper isn’t enough. The dispenser will not spit out more paper to the same person until after nine minutes have passed.
Why would this creepy type of surveillance be deployed in public restrooms? To combat toilet paper theft.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
If you are a fan of virtual assistants and Android phones, then you might regard Samsung’s jump into the race as better late than never. If you are not a fan of virtual assistants, then you might not like the Samsung Galaxy S8 which will have a dedicated button on the side of the phone to summon the assistant. Like it or not, Samsung said its virtual assistant will eventually be part of all its appliances.Yesterday, Samsung announced that its intelligent voice assistant Bixby will run on the Galaxy S8 which will launch next week. But Bixby is coming to all-things-Samsung, as the company said it will gradually be applied to all of its appliances. “In the future, you would be able to control your air conditioner or TV through Bixby. Since Bixby will be implemented in the cloud, as long as a device has an internet connection and simple circuitry to receive voice inputs, it will be able to connect with Bixby. As the Bixby ecosystem grows, we believe Bixby will evolve from a smartphone interface to an interface for your life.”To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
If you are a fan of virtual assistants and Android phones, then you might regard Samsung’s jump into the race as better late than never. If you are not a fan of virtual assistants, then you might not like the Samsung Galaxy S8, which will have a dedicated button on the side of the phone to summon the assistant. Like it or not, Samsung said its virtual assistant will eventually be part of all its appliances.Yesterday, Samsung announced that its intelligent voice assistant Bixby will run on the Galaxy S8, which will launch next week. But Bixby is coming to all-things-Samsung, as the company said it will gradually be applied to all of its appliances.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Ms. Smith