FireEye, a Top Cybersecurity Firm, Says It Was Hacked By a Nation-State

An anonymous reader quotes a report from The New York Times : For years, the cybersecurity firm FireEye has been the first call for government agencies and companies around the world who have been hacked by the most sophisticated attackers, or fear they might be. Now it looks like the hackers — in this case, evidence points to Russia’s intelligence agencies…

Facebook To Pay $550 Million To Settle Facial Recognition Suit

Facebook has agreed to pay $550 million to settle a class-action lawsuit (Warning: source may be paywalled; alternative source) over its use of facial recognition technology in Illinois, “giving privacy groups a major victory that again raised questions about the social network’s data-mining practices,” reports The New York Times. From the report: The case stemmed from Facebook’s photo-labeling service, Tag Suggestions,…

Equifax’s Stock Rose More Than 50% In 2019

“There’s still time to file a claim for a share of the $425 million that Equifax agreed to cough up after hosing almost half of the country in its massive data breach a few years ago,” writes a Pennyslvania newspaper columnist, pointing victims to equifaxbreachsettlement.com. “But unless you can prove you were an identity theft victim who lost money, or had…

Equifax Used ‘admin’ as Username and Password for Sensitive Data: Lawsuit

AndrewFlagg writes: When it comes to using strong username and passwords for administrative purposes let alone customer facing portals, Equifax appears to have dropped the ball. Equifax used the word “admin” as both password and username for a portal that contained sensitive information, according to a class action lawsuit filed in federal court in the Northern District of Georgia. The ongoing…

UK Cybersecurity Agency Urges Devs To Drop Python 2

Python’s End-of-Life date is 129 days away, warns the UK National Cyber Security Centre (NCSC). “There will be no more bug fixes, or security updates, from Python’s core developers.” An anonymous reader quotes ZDNet: The UK’s cyber-security agency warned developers Thursday to consider moving Python 2.x codebases to the newer 3.x branch due to the looming end-of-life of Python 2, scheduled…

Facial Recognition Deployed on Children at Hundreds of US Summer Camps

The Washington Post describes a parent whose phone “rings 10 times a day with notifications from the summer camp’s facial-recognition service, which alerts him whenever one of his girls is photographed enjoying their newfound independence.” Cory Doctorow reports:
You can also call your kid if you think they look unhappy or if you are unsatisfied with them in any way and nag…

Capital One’s Breach Was Inevitable, Because We Did Nothing After Equifax

An anonymous reader shares a report: Another day, another massive data breach. This time it’s the financial giant and credit card issuer Capital One, which revealed on Monday a credit file breach affecting 100 million Americans and 6 million Canadians. Sound familiar? It should. Just last week, credit rating giant Equifax settled for more than $575 million over a date breach…

Equifax To Pay At Least $575M as Part of FTC Settlement

Equifax has agreed to pay at least $575 million to the US Federal Trade Commission, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau and all 50 states over its massive 2017 data breach. From a report: If that isn’t enough to compensate people impacted by the breach, the credit reporting company could have to pay up to $700 million — a figure we got…

Former Equifax CIO Sentenced to 4 Months in Prison for Insider Training

An anonymous reader quotes CNET:
A former Equifax executive who sold his stock in the consumer credit reporting firm before it announced a massive data breach has been sentenced to four months in federal prison for insider trading. Jun Ying, former chief information officer for the company’s US Information Solutions, was also ordered to pay about $117,000 in restitution and a $55,000…