From leaked passwords to identity theft, cybersecurity issues are constantly in the news. Few issues, though, are as important — or as under-reported by the media — as the security of America’s industrial control infrastructure. Oil rigs, power plants, water treatment facilities and other critical infrastructure are increasingly connecting to the internet, but often without the kinds of foolproof security systems in place to ensure bad actors can’t gain access or disrupt service delivery.
This is a growing area of the economy with a wealth of jobs, but few students even realize that industrial and infrastructure cybersecurity is an interesting career path. So, over the past three years, the Department of Energy has hosted a Cyber Defense Competition to encourage university students to engage in the field. The latest incarnation of the completion was held this past weekend and hosted by Argonne, Pacific Northwest and Oak Ridge national laboratories.
Lewis University won the competition this year in a total field of 25 entrants. That is up from 15 teams last year, and 9 teams in the inaugural competition.
Nate Evans leads the program at Argonne, and explained to me the design of the competition. Teams get a month before the competition to learn how to defend industrial control systems against hackers. Each team is given a small industrial control system that emulates a real-world model.
Then on the day of the competition, those teams compete and run the operations of the model infrastructure as the cyber defense team. A red team cell tries to hack the system, while a green team of regular, nontechnical people do the normal work of using the system, such as answering emails or responding to requests.
Evans explained that they “add in the usability piece as well, so they’re not just trying to defend against the red team but keeping usability.” Six times an hour, a request to the team comes in, such as a new feature desired by the CEO. The idea is to simulate as closely as possible the conditions of a real piece of industrial infrastructure and forcing the team to project manage different priorities.
Teams are allowed to build anything they want to defend their system. “We try to make it as flexible as possible and so they can bring whatever skills they have,” Evans said. We want the teams to “come out and try new things such as a custom operating system that they wrote in the class,” he explained, “or some crazy firewall or setup or design.”
Because each of the three labs hosting the competition is on ES Net, the Energy Sciences Network that connects all labs in the U.S., the competition can be conducted in real-time across all locations, and lasts about eight hours. Lewis University won the national award, while University of Central Florida, Oregon State University and University of Memphis won first place regional awards.
Source: TechCrunch
La ‘app’ de ‘fitness’ MyFitnessPalusa, ha sufrido uno de los mayores ataques de robo de datos de la historia. Pero al menos, una parte de sus contraseñas robadas estaba protegida con la técnica bcrypt, que aunque no es inquebrantable, dificulta mucho las labores de los piratas informáticos
Source: MIT
Los voluntarios que recibieron este parche ‘vivo’, y que padecían la versión seca y avanzada de la enfermedad, han mejorado su visión. Otro equipo ha desarrollado un implante parecido contra la forma húmeda que también ha dado unos primeros resultados muy alentadores en humanos
Source: MIT
Tay, el bot parlante de Microsoft que aprendía de sus conversaciones con la gente, no tardó en convertirse en una pesadilla. Ahora, el jefe de inteligencia de máquinas de Yandex afirma que Tay ofrece unas cuantas grandes lecciones de lo que no hay que hacer con una inteligencia artificial
Source: MIT
Instagram is preparing to launch a feature called Nametags that lets you create a special image that people can scan with the Instagram Stories camera to follow you. TechCrunch broke the news of Nametags code in Instagram’s Android APK last month. But now thanks to reader Genady Okrain we have screenshots and more details of the Instagram Nametags feature.
Nametags could make it easier for people to visually promote their Instagram account. It could make it simple to follow a friend you just met by having them open their Nametag and then you scanning it. Meanwhile, businesses and social media stars could post their Nametag across other social media handles, print it onto posters or handbills or even make merchandise out of it.
An Instagram spokesperson confirmed to TechCrunch that it is testing the Nametags feature. Instagram’s been spotted doing a flurry of feature development lately. TechCrunch has reported that code for an Instagram Video Calling feature was found in its Android APK. Meanwhile, it’s testing a Portrait mode feature called Focus.
Once users have access, they’ll be able to hit a QR scanner button on their profile to bring up the Nametag editor. They can then choose from a purple Instagram color gradient background, a pattern of one emoji they choose or a selfie they can jazz up with augmented reality face filters that then becomes an emoji pattern. The user’s Instagram username appears in the center. For now, users in the test group can’t share or scan Nametags. But the code we discovered explains that users can scan them to follow people.
Snapchat in January 2015 launched its own Snapcodes that work similarly, meaning Instagram took its time copying this feature. But with social media stars and businesses banished to Snapchat’s Discover channel, those accounts might be looking to prioritize promoting their Instagram accounts. If creators find it easier to build an audience on Instagram and get more engagement there, they could give the Facebook-owned app their first-run content. The eventual launch of Nametags could give them one more reason to use Snapchat copycat Instagram Stories instead of the original.
For more on upcoming Instagram features, check out our other stories on Focus and Video Calling
Source: TechCrunch
We’ve reviewed a lot of the biggest laptops in 2018 already, but there are still a bunch more to come. Whether it’s the new MacBook, the Surface Book 3, or one of the Always Connected PCs, vote in our poll and tell us which laptop you’re most excited to try out.
The post What laptop are you looking forward to most in 2018? appeared first on Digital Trends.
Source: Digital trends
Last week, online classified site Backpage.com was suddenly replaced with a warning noting that it had been seized by the FBI. The move was abrupt, but not exactly a surprise for a site that’s been mired in controversy for years.
The Justice Department had previously acknowledged the move, but it’s shedding more light on the 93-count federal indictment. It’s a laundry list of activities for which you definitely don’t want to get busted by the DOJ, including,
Crimes of conspiracy to facilitate prostitution using a facility in interstate or foreign commerce, facilitating prostitution using a facility in interstate or foreign commerce, conspiracy to commit money laundering, concealment money laundering, international promotional money laundering, and transactional money laundering.
Defendants include Michael Lacey, whose home was the subject of the FBI raid, and fellow co-founder James Larkin, both of whom were also the subject of warrants during a 2016 raid on the site’s Dallas headquarters.
Jeff Sessions didn’t mince words on this one.
“For far too long, Backpage.com existed as the dominant marketplace for illicit commercial sex, a place where sex traffickers frequently advertised children and adults alike,” the attorney general said in a statement tied to the news. “But this illegality stops right now. Last Friday, the Department of Justice seized Backpage, and it can no longer be used by criminals to promote and facilitate human trafficking.”
The 61-page indictment spells out the offending ads in black and white, adding that “By 2008, if not earlier, the Backpage defendants were aware that the overwhelming majority of the website’s ‘adult’ ads involved prostitution. Nevertheless, the Backpage defendants made a financial decision to continue displaying those ads.”
The filing goes on to explain that the site’s owners wouldn’t delete the offending ads altogether, for fear of being put in the “uncompetitive” position of a Craigslist.
The raid, incidentally, came roughly a week after Craigslist pulled its own personals, for fear of repercussion as Fight Online Sex Trafficking Act (FOSTA) passed both the House and Senate. That bill has been criticized by sex workers and internet rights activists for the onus it puts on sites hosting third-party content.
Source: TechCrunch
All of us grew up around tech different from what we have today, and many of us look back on those devices with fondness. But can you recall the exact sound your first Casio keyboard made, or the cadence of a rotary phone’s clicks? Conserve the Sound aims to, well, conserve the sound of gadgets like these so that future generations will know what it sounded like to put a cartridge in the NES.
It’s actually quite an old project at this point, having been funded first in 2013, but its collection has grown to a considerable size. The money came from German art institution Film & Medienstiftung NRW; the site was created (and is maintained) by creative house Chunderksen.
The whole thing is suitably minimal, much like an actual museum: You find objects either by browsing randomly or by finding a corresponding tag, and are presented with some straightforward imagery and a player loaded with the carefully captured sound of the device being operated.
Though the items themselves are banal, listening to these sounds of a bygone age is strangely addictive. They trigger memories or curiosity — was my Nintendo that squeaky? Didn’t my rotary phone click more? What kind was it anyway? I wonder if they have my old boombox… oh! A View-Master!
The collection has grown over the years and continues to grow; it now includes interviews with experts in various subjects on the importance of saving these sounds. You can even submit your own, if you like. “We welcome suggestions in general, sound suggestions, stories, anecdotes and of course collaborations,” write the creators.
I for one would love to revisit all the different modems and sounds I grew up using: 2400, 9600, 14.4, 28.8, all the way up to 56.6. Not exactly pleasant noises, admittedly, but I anticipate they will bring back a flood of memories, Proust-style, of BBSes, hours-long download times and pirated screen savers.
Source: TechCrunch
There’s a lot of keen analytical hindsight on display in Facebook chief executive Mark Zuckerberg’s written testimony to Congress ahead of his appearance at hearings on Wednesday, but nothing that indicates Facebook is ready to come to terms with the problems rotting the core of the social network.
The bulk of Zuckerberg’s opening statement is an historical analysis of the events of the past two years that have bruised the company’s reputation and share price.
Zuckerberg is defending his company on two fronts as he faces down the members of Congress that could regulate his company out of existence — user privacy and platform integrity.
In the testimony, Zuckerberg highlights the initial steps that Facebook has taken to close down access for third parties and to do more to combat fake accounts and the spread of misinformation.
These steps constitute what are now Zuckerberg’s usual assurances… Facebook is sacrificing its own profits to develop new tools and hire new personnel to combat bad actors that would leverage Facebook’s user information for their own fun and profit. Facebook has taken steps before the U.S. election to root out bad actors and will take even more steps now — since those initial efforts weren’t enough.
Near the close of his written testimony, Zuckerberg writes: “I want to be clear about what our priority is: protecting our community is more important than maximizing our profits.”
What Zuckerberg’s testimony fails to mention, as ever, is whether users themselves will ever be protected from Facebook.
Ultimately Facebook’s scandal is about how much the company knows about its users and how much power those users then have to control how Facebook applies (or shares) its knowledge.
As Wired columnist Zeynep Tufekci pointed out in a column this weekend, that’s been Facebook’s problem since the company’s inception.
By now, it ought to be plain to them, and to everyone, that Facebook’s 2 billion-plus users are surveilled and profiled, that their attention is then sold to advertisers and, it seems, practically anyone else who will pay Facebook—including unsavory dictators like the Philippines’ Rodrigo Duterte. That is Facebook’s business model. That is why the company has an almost half-a-trillion-dollar market capitalization, along with billions in spare cash to buy competitors.
All of the steps that Facebook is taking now to “make sure what happened with Kogan and Cambridge Analytica doesn’t happen again” only achieve one thing — consolidating Facebook’s control over the user data that it can make available to its customers.
The policies just reduce the funnel of information that application developers, advertisers and others can freely access (the emphasis here is on free). For those who want to pay the company for the information — there’s no guarantee that it won’t be used in some way.
As Tufekci writes, Facebook is a surveillance engine — that’s the core of its business and the sale of that surveillance to bidders is the way that it functions to connect its “community.” And protecting that community is a good way to also protect Facebook’s profits.
The problem for Facebook begins with the platform itself — and Zuckerberg’s designs for it. And it won’t be solved with a single congressional hearing.
To pre-empt Congressional questioning and change the conversation, Zuckerberg could have offered solutions for Facebook to proactively address the problems that bedevil it — beyond the adoption of the One scenario that could free Facebook from the advertising chains that ostensibly bind it to being a digital surveillance state is the introduction of a subscription service (as my colleague Josh Constine suggested earlier this year).
For regulators looking at potential legal solutions, the application of GDPR standards across the entire Facebook platform would be a step in the right direction. Zuckerberg has committed to it, but his company has a history of failing to live up to its promises to users. Perhaps Congress will find a way to convince Facebook’s chief to help the company keep its word… and avoid another apology tour.
Source: TechCrunch
The new trailer looks amazing—that doesn’t mean the movie will be.
Source: Wired