“A secret cyberattack against Iran in June wiped out a critical database used by Iran’s paramilitary arm to plot attacks against oil tankers and degraded Tehran’s ability to covertly target shipping traffic in the Persian Gulf, at least temporarily,” reports The New York Times, citing senior American officials. From the report: Iran is still trying to recover information destroyed in the…
Tag: database
Study Suggests Link Between Air Pollution and Psychiatric Disorders
pgmrdlm shares a report from StudyFinds: Could the very air we breathe have an impact on our mental health? That’s the suggestion coming out of a new international study conducted in the United States and Denmark. After analyzing long-term data sets from both countries, researchers from the University of Chicago say they have identified a possible link between exposure to environmental…
XKCD Contest Winners Force Book Tour Stop In Juneau Alaska
XKCD cartoonist Randall Munroe says he received “a huge number of submissions” in a contest to choose an additional city for his upcoming book tour. The challenge? “Write the best story using nothing but book covers… You’ll get extra credit for including as many books and people as possible.” And the winning entry involved 98 people in an earnest community project…
Musk and Bezos’ Satellite Internet Could Save Consumers Billions of Dollars
“The fight for space internet supremacy is on,” writes the consumer policy expert at BroadbandNow, calculating the benefits of these additional broadband competitors:
Low Earth orbit (LEO) satellites for broadband internet access are beginning to display signs of real potential. Recently, Amazon chief Jeff Bezos’ Blue Origin pulled back the curtain on its space intentions by announcing Project Kuiper, a 3,236-satellite constellation….
Backdoor Code Found In 11 Ruby Libraries
Maintainers of the RubyGems package repository have yanked 18 malicious versions of 11 Ruby libraries that contained a backdoor mechanism and were caught inserting code that launched hidden cryptocurrency mining operations inside other people’s Ruby projects. ZDNet reports: The malicious code was first discovered yesterday inside four versions of rest-client, an extremely popular Ruby library. According to an analysis by Jan…
Wells Fargo’s Computer Kept Charging ‘Overdrawn’ Fees On Supposedly Closed Accounts
The New York Times explains a new issue by describing what happened when Xavier Einaudi tried to close his Wells Fargo checking account. For weeks after the date the bank said the accounts would be closed, it kept some of them active. Payments to his insurer, to Google for online advertising and to a provider of project management software were paid…
YouTube Shuts Down Music Companies’ Use of Manual Copyright Claims To Steal Creator Revenue
YouTube is making a change to its copyright enforcement policies around music used in videos, which may result in an increased number of blocked videos in the shorter term — but overall, a healthier ecosystem in the long-term. From a report: Going forward, copyright owners will no longer be able to monetize creator videos with very short or unintentional uses of…
The Fashion Line Designed To Trick Surveillance Cameras
Freshly Exhumed shares a report from The Guardian: Automatic license plate readers, which use networked surveillance cameras and simple image recognition to track the movements of cars around a city, may have met their match, in the form of a T-shirt. Or a dress. Or a hoodie. The anti-surveillance garments were revealed at the DefCon cybersecurity conference in Las Vegas on…
Researchers Found World-Readable Database Used To Secure Buildings Around the Globe
Researchers said they have found a publicly accessible database containing almost 28 million records — including plain-text passwords, face photos, and personal information — that was used to secure buildings around the world. Ars Technica reports: Researchers from vpnMentor reported on Wednesday that the database was used by the Web-based Biostar 2 security system sold by South Korea-based Suprema. Biostar uses…
Major Breach Found in Biometrics System Used By Banks, UK Police and Defence Firms
The fingerprints of over 1 million people, as well as facial recognition information, unencrypted usernames and passwords, and personal information of employees, was discovered on a publicly accessible database for a company used by the likes of the UK Metropolitan police, defence contractors and banks, The Guardian reported Wednesday. From the report: Suprema is the security company responsible for the web-based…