Daily Archives: July 5, 2018

‘Plane Hacker’ Roberts: I put a network sniffer on my truck to see what it was sharing. Holy crap!

Posted on by

Cars are turning into computers on wheels and airplanes have become flying data centres, but this increase in power and connectivity has largely happened without designing in adequate security controls.

Improving transportation security was a major strand of the recent Cyber Week security conference in Israel. A one-day event, Speed of Light, focused on transportation cybersecurity, where Roberts served as master of ceremonies.

[…]

“Israel was here, not just a couple of companies. Israel is going, ‘We as a state, we as a country, need to understand [about transportation security]’,” Roberts said. “We need to learn.”

“In other places it’s the companies. GM is great. Ford is good. Some of the Germany companies are good. Fiat-Chrysler Group has got a lot of work to do.”

Some industries are more advanced than others at understanding cybersecurity risks, Roberts claimed. For example, awareness in the automobile industry is ahead of that found in aviation.

“Boeing is in denial. Airbus is kind of on the fence. Some of the other industries are better.”

[…]

”

There’s almost nothing you can do [as a user] to improve car security. The only thing you can do is go back to the garage every month for your Microsoft Patch Tuesday – updates from Ford or GM.

“You better come in once a month for your patches because if you don’t, the damn thing is not going to work.”

What about over-the-air updates? These may not always be reliable, Roberts warned.

“What happens if you’re in the middle of a dead spot? Or you’re in the middle of a developing country that doesn’t have that? What about the Toyotas that get sold to the Middle East or Far East, to countries that don’t have 4G or 5G coverage. And what happens when you move around countries?”

[…]

“I put a network sniffer on the big truck to see what it was sharing. Holy crap! The GPS, the telemetry, the tracking. There’s a lot of data this thing is sharing.

“If you turn it off you might be voiding warranties or [bypassing] security controls,” Roberts said, adding that there was also an issue about who owns the data a car generates. “Is it there to protect me or monitor me?” he mused.

Some insurance firms offer cheaper insurance to careful drivers, based on readings from telemetry devices and sensors. Roberts is dead set against this for privacy reasons. “Insurance can go to hell. For me, getting a 5 per cent discount on my insurance is not worth accepting a tracking device from an insurance company.”

Source: ‘Plane Hacker’ Roberts: I put a network sniffer on my truck to see what it was sharing. Holy crap! • The Register

Is Facebook a publisher? In public it says no, but in court it says yes

Posted on by

Facebook has long had the same public response when questioned about its disruption of the news industry: it is a tech platform, not a publisher or a media company.

But in a small courtroom in California’s Redwood City on Monday, attorneys for the social media company presented a different message from the one executives have made to Congress, in interviews and in speeches: Facebook, they repeatedly argued, is a publisher, and a company that makes editorial decisions, which are protected by the first amendment.

The contradictory claim is Facebook’s latest tactic against a high-profile lawsuit, exposing a growing tension for the Silicon Valley corporation, which has long presented itself as neutral platform that does not have traditional journalistic responsibilities.

The suit, filed by an app startup, alleges that Mark Zuckerberg developed a “malicious and fraudulent scheme” to exploit users’ personal data and force rival companies out of business. Facebook, meanwhile, is arguing that its decisions about “what not to publish” should be protected because it is a “publisher”.

In court, Sonal Mehta, a lawyer for Facebook, even drew comparison with traditional media: “The publisher discretion is a free speech right irrespective of what technological means is used. A newspaper has a publisher function whether they are doing it on their website, in a printed copy or through the news alerts.”

The plaintiff, a former startup called Six4Three, first filed the suit in 2015 after Facebook removed app developers’ access to friends’ data. The company had built a controversial and ultimately failed app called Pikinis, which allowed people to filter photos to find ones with people in bikinis and other swimwear.

Six4Three attorneys have alleged that Facebook enticed developers to create apps for its platform by implying creators would have long-term access to the site’s huge amounts of valuable personal data and then later cut off access, effectively defrauding them. The case delves into some of the privacy concerns sparked by the Cambridge Analytica scandal.

Source: Is Facebook a publisher? In public it says no, but in court it says yes | Technology | The Guardian

More on how social media hacks brains to addict users

Posted on by

In a followup to How programmers addict you to social media, games and your mobile phone

Ex-Facebook president Sean Parker: site made to exploit human ‘vulnerability’

He explained that when Facebook was being developed the objective was: “How do we consume as much of your time and conscious attention as possible?” It was this mindset that led to the creation of features such as the “like” button that would give users “a little dopamine hit” to encourage them to upload more content.

“It’s a social-validation feedback loop … exactly the kind of thing that a hacker like myself would come up with, because you’re exploiting a vulnerability in human psychology.”

[…]

Parker is not the only Silicon Valley entrepreneur to express regret over the technologies he helped to develop. The former Googler Tristan Harris is one of several techies interviewed by the Guardian in October to criticize the industry.

“All of us are jacked into this system,” he said. “All of our minds can be hijacked. Our choices are not as free as we think they are.”

Aza Raskin on Google Search Results and How He Invented the Infinite Scroll

Social media apps are ‘deliberately’ addictive to users

Social media companies are deliberately addicting users to their products for financial gain, Silicon Valley insiders have told the BBC’s Panorama programme.

“It’s as if they’re taking behavioural cocaine and just sprinkling it all over your interface and that’s the thing that keeps you like coming back and back and back”, said former Mozilla and Jawbone employee Aza Raskin.

“Behind every screen on your phone, there are generally like literally a thousand engineers that have worked on this thing to try to make it maximally addicting” he added.

In 2006 Mr Raskin, a leading technology engineer himself, designed infinite scroll, one of the features of many apps that is now seen as highly habit forming. At the time, he was working for Humanized – a computer user-interface consultancy.

Image caption Aza Raskin says he did not recognise how addictive infinite scroll could be

Infinite scroll allows users to endlessly swipe down through content without clicking.

“If you don’t give your brain time to catch up with your impulses,” Mr Raskin said, “you just keep scrolling.”

He said the innovation kept users looking at their phones far longer than necessary.

Mr Raskin said he had not set out to addict people and now felt guilty about it.

But, he said, many designers were driven to create addictive app features by the business models of the big companies that employed them.

“In order to get the next round of funding, in order to get your stock price up, the amount of time that people spend on your app has to go up,” he said.

“So, when you put that much pressure on that one number, you’re going to start trying to invent new ways of getting people to stay hooked.”