Linking ideas with the world
The well-known and respected data breach notification website “Have I Been Pwned” is up for sale. Troy Hunt, its founder and sole operator, announced the sale on Tuesday in a blog post where he explained why the time has come for Have I Been Pwned to become part of something bigger and more organized. “To Read more about The Biggest Data Breach Archive on the Internet Is for Sale[…]
Spain’s data protection agency has fined La Liga, the nation’s top professional soccer league, 250,000 euros ($283,000 USD) for using the league’s phone app to spy on its fans. With millions of downloads, the app was reportedly being used to surveil bars in an effort to catch establishments playing matches on television without a license. Read more about Popular Soccer App Spied on Fans Through Phone Microphone to Catch Bars Pirating Game Streams[…]
On June 6, more than 70,000 BGP routes were leaked from Swiss colocation company Safe Host to China Telecom in Frankfurt, Germany, which then announced them on the global internet. This resulted in a massive rerouting of internet traffic via China Telecom systems in Europe, disrupting connectivity for netizens: a lot of data that should Read more about You won’t guess where European mobile data was rerouted for two hours. Oh. You can. Yes, it was China Telecom[…]
A team at network security outfit vpnMentor was scanning cyber-space as part of a web-mapping project when they happened upon a Graylog management server belonging to Tech Data that had been left freely accessible to the public. Within that database, we’re told, was a 264GB cache of information including emails, payment and credit card details, Read more about Who left a database of emails, credit cards, plain-text passwords, and more open to the web this week? Tech Data, come on down![…]
How cartography made early modern global trade possible. Source: First You Make the Maps | Lapham’s Quarterly A lovely little history of middle early maps and mapmaking
How Different Generations Approach Work View the full-size version of the infographic by clicking here The first representatives of Generation Z have started to trickle into the workplace – and like generations before them, they are bringing a different perspective to things. Did you know that there are now up to five generations now working Read more about Infographic: How Different Generations Approach Work[…]
The investigation will include a series of hearings held by the Subcommittee on Antitrust, Commercial and Administrative Law on the rise of market power online, as well as requests for information that are relevant to the investigation. A small number of dominant, unregulated platforms have extraordinary power over commerce, communication and information online. Based on Read more about House Judiciary Committee aims guns at Big Tech and antitrust laws[…]
Yale researchers have figured out how to catch and save Schrödinger’s famous cat, the symbol of quantum superposition and unpredictability, by anticipating its jumps and acting in real time to save it from proverbial doom. In the process, they overturn years of cornerstone dogma in quantum physics. The discovery enables researchers to set up an Read more about Physicists can predict the jumps of Schrodinger’s cat (and finally save it)[…]
Tinder users in Russia may now have to decide whether the perks of dating apps outweigh a disconcerting invasion of privacy. Russian authorities are now requiring that the dating app hand over a wealth of intimate user data, including private messages, if and when it asks for them. Tinder is the fourth dating app in Read more about The Russian Government Now Requires Tinder to Hand Over People’s Sexts[…]
Clinical lab testing titan Quest Diagnostics acknowledged in a press release on Monday that an “unauthorized user” had gained access to personal information on around 11.9 million customers, including some financial and medical data. Per NBC News, news of the breach comes via way of a Securities and Exchange Commission filing in which Quest wrote Read more about Lab Testing Giant Quest Diagnostics Says Data Breach May Have Hit Nearly 12 Million Patients[…]
Owners of Supra Smart Cloud TVs are in danger of getting some unwanted programming: it’s possible for miscreants or malware on your Wi-Fi network to switch whatever you’re watching for video of their or its choosing. Bug-hunter Dhiraj Mishra laid claim to CVE-2019-12477, a remote file inclusion zero-day vulnerability that allows anyone with local network Read more about Supra smart TVs allow anyone on wifi network to switch video to whatever they want[…]
The Australian National University (ANU) today copped to a fresh breach in which intruders gained access to “significant amounts” of data stretching back 19 years. The top-ranked Oz uni said it noticed about a fortnight ago that hackers had got their claws on staff, visitor and student data, including names, addresses, dates of birth, phone Read more about Strewth: Hackers slurp 19 years of Oz student data in uni’s second breach within a year[…]
Advanced Driver Assistance Systems (ADAS) in cars such as automatic braking systems, systems that detect the state of the road, if there is anything in your blind spot and navigation systems will be sharing their data with European countries, car manufacturers and presumably insurers under the cloak of making driving safer. I’m sure it will, Read more about EU countries and car manufacturers, navigation systems will share information between everyone[…]
WASHINGTON — The strange objects, one of them like a spinning top moving against the wind, appeared almost daily from the summer of 2014 to March 2015, high in the skies over the East Coast. Navy pilots reported to their superiors that the objects had no visible engine or infrared exhaust plumes, but that they Read more about ‘Wow, What Is That?’ Navy Pilots Report Unexplained Flying Objects – probably not little green men though[…]
Google suffered major outages with its Cloud Platform on Sunday, causing widespread access issues with both its own services and third party apps ranging from Snapchat to Discord. As of early Sunday evening, issues had persisted for hours; according to the Google Cloud Status Dashboard, the outages began at roughly 3:25 p.m. ET and were Read more about Major Google Outage Hits YouTube, G Suite, and Third Party Apps Including Discord and Snapchat[…]
If you want to stay in the US, you’ll likely have to share your internet presence. As proposed in March 2018 (and to some extent in 2015), the country now requires virtually all visa applicants to provide their social media account names for the past five years. The mandate only covers a list of selected Read more about US now requires social media info for visa applications[…]
The company sought to completely change how we interact with computers, but now Leap Motion is selling itself off. Apple reportedly tried to get their hands on the hand-tracking tech, which Leap Motion rebuffed, but now the hyped nine-year-old consumer startup is being absorbed into the younger, enterprise-focused UltraHaptics. The Wall Street Journal first reported Read more about Leap Motion sold to UltraHaptics[…]
All of the current versions of Docker have a vulnerability that can allow an attacker to get read-write access to any path on the host server. The weakness is the result of a race condition in the Docker software and while there’s a fix in the works, it has not yet been integrated. The bug Read more about Docker Bug Allows Root Access to Host File System[…]
In a series of emails seen by ZDNet that the company sent out to impacted users, Flipboard said hackers gained access to databases the company was using to store customer information. Most passwords are secure Flipboard said these databases stored information such as Flipboard usernames, hashed and uniquely salted passwords, and in some cases, emails Read more about Flipboard hacked and open for 9 months – fortunately passwords properly salted and encrypted so not much damage[…]
Physicists have confirmed predictions of Stephen Hawking’s namesake theory of black holes using a black hole they constructed in their lab, according to a new paper. This black hole isn’t like the black holes out in space, where gravity creates a region of spacetime so warped that light can’t escape. Instead, the researchers built a Read more about Laboratory Black Hole Shows Stephen Hawking Was Right, – wait they make black holes in labs now?![…]
Apple has been hit with a class-action complaint in the US accusing the iGiant of playing fast and loose with the privacy of its customers. The lawsuit [PDF], filed this month in a northern California federal district court, claims the Cupertino music giant gathers data from iTunes – including people’s music purchase history and personal Read more about Apple’s privacy schtick is just an act, say folks suing the iGiant: iTunes ‘purchase histories sold’ to highest bidders[…]
On May 25th I discovered a non password protected Elastic database that was clearly associated with dating apps based on the names of the folders. The IP address is located on a US server and a majority of the users appear to be Americans based on their user IP and geolocations. I also noticed Chinese Read more about Mysterious Chinese Dating Apps Targeting US Customers Expose 42.5 Million Records Online[…]
A newly revealed patent application filed by Amazon is raising privacy concerns over an envisaged upgrade to the company’s smart speaker systems. This change would mean that, by default, the devices end up listening to and recording everything you say in their presence. Alexa, Amazon’s virtual assistant system that runs on the company’s Echo series Read more about Newly Released Amazon Patent Shows Just How Much Creepier Alexa Can Get[…]
Government officials in Germany are reportedly mulling a law to force chat app providers to hand over end-to-end encrypted conversations in plain text on demand. According to Der Spiegel this month, the Euro nation’s Ministry of the Interior wants a new set of rules that would require operators of services like WhatsApp, Signal, Apple iMessage, Read more about Germany thinks about resurrecting the Stasi, getting rid of end-to-end chat app encryption and requiring decrypted plain-text.[…]
Microsoft started testing a new Microsoft Edge browser based on Chromium a little while ago. The company has been releasing new canary and dev builds for the browser over the last few weeks, and the preview is actually really great. In fact, I have been using the new Microsoft Edge Canary on my main Windows Read more about Google Now Forces Microsoft Edge Preview Users to Use Chrome for the Modern YouTube Experience – a bit like they fuck around with Firefox[…]