The RISKS Digest
Volume 31 Issue 06

Wednesday, 13th February 2019

Forum on Risks to the Public in Computers and Related Systems

ACM Committee on Computers and Public Policy, Peter G. Neumann, moderator

Please try the URL privacy information feature enabled by clicking the flashlight icon above. This will reveal two icons after each link the body of the digest. The shield takes you to a breakdown of Terms of Service for the site - however only a small number of sites are covered at the moment. The flashlight take you to an analysis of the various trackers etc. that the linked site delivers. Please let the website maintainer know if you find this useful or not. As a RISKS reader, you will probably not be surprised by what is revealed…

Contents

'A Trail of Decisions Kept Lion Air Pilots in the Dark'
NYT
The infrastructural humiliation of America
TechCrunch
Investigation finds Navy leaders ignored warnings for years before one of the deadliest crashes in decades
ProPublica
Spectre: Do Loose Lips Sink Chips?
Henry Baker
Mayhem, the Machine That Finds Software Vulnerabilities, Then Patches Them
IEEE Spectrum
Beware of Cars With Minds of Their Own
Bloomberg
Goodbye trolley problem: This is Silicon Valley's new ethics test
WashPost
A Machine Gets High Marks for Diagnosing Sick Children
SciAm
Where's my paycheck? Wells Fargo customers say direct deposits not showing up after outage
USA Today
Network outage prevents bike rentals
Jeremy Epstein
USB sticks can take it …
Rob Slade
Some AT&T iPhones Displaying Misleading ‘5G E’ Icon in iOS 12.2 Beta 2
MacRumors
Japan gears up for mega hack of its own citizens
Straits Times
Indecent disclosure
Ars Technica
LibreOffice and Apache OpenOffice vulnerable to same bug; only one is fixed.
Ars Technica
There's No Good Reason To Trust Blockchain Technology
Bruce Schneier/WiReD
Fire—and lots of it: Berkeley researcher on the only way to fix cryptocurrency
Ars Technica
Navigating Bitcoin, Ethereum, XRP: How Google Is Quietly Making Blockchains Searchable
Forbes
Crypto CEO dies holding only passwords that can unlock millions in customer coins
geoff goodfellow
‘Zero Trust' AI: Too Much of a Good Thing is Wonderful
Henry Baker
FDA proposes a supply chain tracking overhaul
Fortune
Why CAPTCHAs have gotten so difficult
The Verge
Situation Normal, All Zucked Up
Japan News
Google Began Censoring Search Results in Russia, Reports Say
Moscow Times
Security Researcher Assaulted Following Vulnerability Disclosure
SecJuice
NSO Group attacking investigators
Rob Slade
How does NYPD surveil thee? Let me count the Waze
Henry Baker
How Hackers and Scammers Break into iCloud-Locked iPhones
Motherboard
Airline Passengers Potentially at Risk From Check-In Flaws
EWeek
Privacy, transparency, and increasing digital trust
David Strom
Many popular iPhone apps secretly record your screen without asking
TechCrunch
Apple allows screen captures of evertyhing that you do …
Rob Slade
HP's ink DRM instructs your printer to ignore the ink in your cartridge when you cancel your subscription
BoingBoing
The perils of using Internet Explorer as your default browser
TechCommunity
Judge orders $150,000 in damages in GTA Online cheating case
Ars Technica
Maybe he'll die of the plague and we can all breathe easier …
Rob Slade
Re: Deep Fakes
PGN
Re: Google, you sent this to too many people, so it must be spam
Dan Jacobson
Re: Passwords, escrow, and fallback positions
Rob Slade
Re: Is it time for Linux?
Aaron M. Ucko
Re: Minor Crimes and Misdemeanors in the Age of Automation
Mark Brader
An Enthralling and Terrifying History of the Nuclear Meltdown at Chernobyl
NYTimes
Revised UK Code of Practice for testing Automated Vehicles
Martyn Thomas
Info on RISKS (comp.risks)

'A Trail of Decisions Kept Lion Air Pilots in the Dark' (NYT)

Prashanth Mundkur <prashanth.mundkur@gmail.com>
Tue, 5 Feb 2019 08:33:27 -0800

Behind the Lion Air Crash, a Trail of Decisions Kept Pilots in the Dark By James Glanz, Julie Creswell, Thomas Kaplan and Zach Wichter Feb. 3, 2019 https://www.nytimes.com/2019/02/03/world/asia/lion-air-plane-crash-pilots.html

In designing the 737 Max, Boeing decided to feed MCAS with data from only one of the two angle of attack sensors at a time, depending on which of two, redundant flight control computers—one on the captain's side, one on the first officer's side—happened to be active on that flight.

That decision kept the system simpler, but also left it vulnerable to a single malfunctioning sensor, or data improperly transferred from it—as appeared to occur on the day of the crash.

There is no evidence that Boeing did flight-testing of MCAS with erroneous sensor data, and it is not clear whether the F.A.A. did so. European regulators flight-tested the new version of the plane with normal sensor data feeding into MCAS but not with bad data, the pilot familiar with the European certification process said. […]

Older 737s had another way of addressing certain problems with the stabilizers: Pulling back on the yoke, or control column, one of which sits immediately in front of both the captain and the first officer, would cut off electronic control of the stabilizers, allowing the pilots to control them manually.

That feature was disabled on the Max when MCAS was activated—another change that pilots were unlikely to have been aware of. After the crash, Boeing told airlines that when MCAS is activated, as it appeared to have been on the Lion Air flight, pulling back on the control column will not stop so-called stabilizer runaway.

There's a lot more context in the full article.


The infrastructural humiliation of America (TechCrunch)

Dewayne Hendricks <dewayne@warpspeed.com>
February 5, 2019 at 4:00:40 PM GMT+9
[Note: This item comes from friend Robert Berger. DLH]

The infrastructural humiliation of America Jon Evans, TechCrunch, 3 Feb 2019 https://techcrunch.com/2019/02/03/the-infrastructural-humiliation-of-america/

I'm flying back to the USA today, and as an infrastructure aficionado, it's nice to be going home, but I'm dreading the disappointment. I just spent two weeks in Singapore and Thailand; last year I spent time in Hong Kong and Shenzhen; and compared to modern Asia, so much American infrastructure is now so contemptible that it's hard not to wince when I see it.

The USA is nine times wealthier than Thailand, per capita, but I'd far rather ride Bangkok's SkyTrain than deal with NYC's subway nowadays. I'd much prefer to fly into Don Muang, Bangkok's ancient second-tier airport — which was actually closed for years, before being reopened to handle domestic flights and low-cost airlines—than the hostile nightmare that is LAX. And those are America's two primary gateway cities!

So imagine what it's like coming to America from wealthy Asian nations, and their gleaming, polished, metronomically reliable subways, trains, and airports. I don't think Americans understand just how that comparison has become a quiet ongoing national humiliation. If they did, sheer national (and civic) pride would make them want to do something about it. Instead there's a learned helplessness about most American infrastructure nowadays, a wrong but certain belief that it's unrealistic to dream of anything better.

It's not just those two cities. Compare Boston's T to, say, Taipei, or San Francisco's mishmash of messed-up systems—Muni, where I have waited 45 minutes for a T-Third; CalTrain, which only runs every 90 minutes on weekends; BART, which squandered millions on its useless white-elephant Milbrae station—to Shenzhen. And it's not just age; Paris's metro was inaugurated in 1900, but its well-maintained system continues to run excellently and expand continuously.

Americans still tend to think of themselves as an example to other nations. Ha. I assure you, over the last few years nobody has flown from Seoul or Taipei or Tokyo or Singapore or Hong Kong or Shenzhen into Newark Airport; taken the AirTrain to the NJ Transit station; waited for the rattling, decrepit train into the city; walked through the repellent ugliness of Penn Station to the subway; waited for its ever-increasing delays; ridden to their destination; and finally emerged into New York City — the nation's alpha city! —still thinking of the USA as anything other than a counterexample, or maybe a cautionary tale.

This goes beyond transport infrastructure. Airport security measures are much more sensible in Asia. Payments are increasingly separately structured, and better, too—in many places, credit cards (which already barely exist as a concept in China) are beginning to slowly wither away, replaced by Alipay and to a lesser extent WeChat Pay. (Not least because an ever-growing proportion of the tourist population is Chinese rather than Western, nowadays.)

That's admittedly an example of leapfrogging, not decay, and American infrastructure does still have some bright spots. American roads are mostly still superb. Lyft and Uber are much better than their Southeast Asian equivalent Grab, which, whenever I checked it during this latest trip, was invariably both slower and more expensive than a taxi (never mind a tuk-tuk) despite the infamous Thai taxi mafias. International mobile connectivity is excellent and user-friendly and reasonably priced, at least if you're on T-Mobile like me, and as an added bonus, due to a technical quirk, mobile data roaming bypasses China's Great Firewall.

But that doesn't change the fact that the state of much of America's infrastructure is appalling on its face, and even moreso when compared to nations which are on paper nowhere near as rich. The money other nations spend on urban infrastructure (don't even get me started on intercity trains) is instead siphoned off to somewhere else. It makes the USA—still by far the wealthiest country in the world! —seem like an dying empire, one beginning to visibly crack and crumble as it is slowly hollowed out from within.


Investigation finds Navy leaders ignored warnings for years before one of the deadliest crashes in decades (ProPublica)

“Dave Farber” <farber@gmail.com>
Sun, 10 Feb 2019 13:04:02 +0900

Investigation finds officials ignored warnings for years before one of the deadliest crashes in decades. Read the full story. Shared from Apple News


Spectre: Do Loose Lips Sink Chips?

Henry Baker <hbaker1@pipeline.com>
Tue, 05 Feb 2019 15:04:11 -0800

I certainly hope so, when the chips are flawed enough not to be fit for purpose—i.e., run secure servers, run secure laptop software, run secure cellphone apps.

But Prof. Gus Uht argues that “no public disclosure should be made at all, until and unless the exploit appears in the wild.” “it can unnecessarily ratchet up the public's anxieties.” “Better yet, don't even tell the world that such a thing as a ‘bomb’ exists. Just knowing that something can be done is enough to drive others to successful re-invention.” [Uh, OK; Truman should have waited for the “quiet” A-bomb, because the most significant piece of information that the USSR needed was that once they spent $XXX billion, the damned thing would actually go off. And we're still

dealing with the blowback from the Stuxnet “victory”.]

https://www.sigarch.org/lets-keep-it-to-ourselves-dont-disclose-vulnerabilities/

Perhaps Prof. Uht has forgotten the issues he ran on in his campaign for the Rhode Island House of Representatives in 2012: “I have worked to keep our local public water system safe and will continue to do so because we can't afford not to.”

If Prof. Uht had extended his “Let's Keep it to Ourselves: Don't Disclose Vulnerabilities” attitude to the Flint water crisis, even more children would have come down with lead poisoning.

https://web.archive.org/web/20131208062116/http://votegusuht.org/issues.html

'As Rhode Islanders, we should never fear the air we breathe or have to worry about exposing our children to toxic chemicals. Development is fine when it is monitored and done seamlessly in our community, but not at the expense of our natural resources. I have worked to keep our local public water system safe and will continue to do so because we can't afford not to.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flint_water_crisis

‘[Dr. Marc] Edwards said, “It was the injustice of it all and that the very agencies that are paid to protect these residents from lead in water, knew or should've known after June at the very very latest of this year, that federal law was not being followed in Flint, and that these children and residents were not being protected. And the extent to which they went to cover this up exposes a new level of arrogance and uncaring that I have never encountered.”’

Gus Uht on Jan 31, 2019 | Tags: Opinion, Security Let's Keep it to Ourselves: Don't Disclose Vulnerabilities https://www.sigarch.org/lets-keep-it-to-ourselves-dont-disclose-vulnerabilities/

There are millions of viruses, etc., in the wild today. Countless new ones are devised by black-hat hackers all the time. In order to proactively defend against new exploits, some white-hatters seek out or create weaknesses or vulnerabilities and then devise fixes for them. However, in some cases, such as Spectre, fixes are not readily apparent, either to the inventor or the vendor of the target software or hardware. Regardless of the existence of a fix or not, the question arises as to what to publicize or disclose about the vulnerability. We argue that no public disclosure should be made at all, until and unless the exploit appears in the wild.

The norm today is to fully disclose vulnerabilities, most often following the tenets of responsible disclosure. It is our view that this is not the best thing to do since it effectively broadcasts weaknesses, and thus aids and abets black hat hackers as to the best ways to compromise systems.

With the complexity of current hardware and software systems arising from billions of transistors and millions of lines of code, it is unlikely that any system will ever be bug-free or vulnerability-free. There are effectively an infinite number of unknown vulnerabilities: “Every day, the AV-TEST Institute registers over 350,000 new malicious programs (malware) and potentially unwanted applications (PUA).” What then is the point of actively ‘discovering’ new vulnerabilities and disclosing them? They are effectively being invented and empower black hats to wreak havoc without making systems safer. It is a race to the bottom. At the same time em>it can unnecessarily ratchet up the public's anxieties.

Pros and Cons: Many arguments for full disclosure have been made over the years, e.g.: Schneier: Full Disclosure of Security Vulnerabilities a ‘Damned Good Idea’, Hardware Security and references therein, and Reflections on trusting SGX. However, they all seem to miss the basic point: if you don't want to be blown up, you don't tell the world how to make and use a bomb. Better yet, don't even tell the world that such a thing as a ‘bomb’ exists. Just knowing that something can be done is enough to drive others to successful re-invention.

One argument for full disclosure is that companies will not fix vulnerabilities unless they are forced to. However, at the risk of excusing less-than-ideal behavior, looking at the situation from a company's point-of-view shows that inattention to a fix may be reasonable. There are a plethora of vulnerabilities and bugs that need to be fixed at any given time, and resources are limited, so where should such resources be allocated? Logically, it would be to address the problems having the highest potential for damage, that is to minimize overall risk. Those vulnerabilities presenting the greatest risk are those that are widely known and have large deleterious effects, that is, just those that have been disclosed and widely publicized. If a vulnerability has little affect, no one will care about it and it will not lead the news.

Even with responsible disclosure it may be the case that a fix cannot be made quickly, but the vulnerability inventor decides to fully disclose it anyway, as in the case of Spectre. In this case users will be exposed for possibly a long time, if not permanently. Without an available fix it seems irresponsible to disclose such a vulnerability in any way, even 'responsibly.' Such an apparently indefinite delay occurred with Spectre. It was fully disclosed in January, 2018, and it was not until mid-Summer that any kind of effective mitigation that did not severely impact performance was devised, and then not for all processors. A counter-argument can be made that mitigations would not have been devised if there had not been a full disclosure, since potential mitigation-creators would not have known about it; however, such mitigations might still have been too late.

Post Mortem: Was/is there a benefit to the Spectre disclosure? The implementation of actual exploits is sufficiently complex and system-dependent that Spectre has not been widely used (yet); see: There is no evidence in-the-wild malware is using Meltdown or Spectre, Does malware based on Spectre exist?, oo7: Low-overhead Defense against Spectre Attacks via Binary Analysis. We may not be so lucky the next time. Although hardware micro-architects are now aware that security needs to be a first-class design parameter, now black hatters have another vulnerability dimension to pursue; who knows what they will come up with? The world has been shaken up by the disclosure; was that necessary and helpful?

We can't always tell what's going to happen upon a disclosure; doesn't that mean we should be cautious, play it safe, and thus not disclose? Isn't that the engineering way of doing things? But it could be said that disclosure IS the safest approach, long term, since microarchitectures will be hardened. But isn't the short-term risk too great? We want to be able to live to see the long-term. Besides, with possibly billions of affected and unfixable processors in the world, there would continue to be risks in the long-term.

The Bottom Line: It seems like any attribute, hardware or software, can be used to detect and affect information or control-processes, it's just a matter of detailed ‘discovery’ or invention to figure out how. So let's not help black hatters speed things up, get there first and really cause trouble. Let's just keep it to ourselves.

Acknowledgements: Many thanks to Laurette Bradley for comments and edits, Axelle Apvrille for Spectre-related malware information, and Resit Sendag for comments on an earlier draft of the post.

About the Author: Augustus (Gus) K. Uht is a Professor-in-Residence in the College of Engineering at the University of Rhode Island. He received his PhD from Carnegie-Mellon University, and MEE and BS degrees from Cornell University. His areas of research include adaptive systems and instruction level parallelism. He is a licensed Professional Engineer.


Mayhem, the Machine That Finds Software Vulnerabilities, Then Patches Them (IEEE Spectrum)

Richard Stein <rmstein@ieee.org>
Tue, 5 Feb 2019 13:20:41 +0800

https://spectrum.ieee.org/computing/software/mayhem-the-machine-that-finds-software-vulnerabilities-then-patches-them

High-speed “find and fix” capability for unpatched, exploitable vulnerabilities—artificial White-Hats in a box.

I wonder how well this capability performs against a Stuxnet or the TAO toolkit?

Risk: Automated software security vulnerabilities detection and patch reduces vigilance, builds complacency, and compromises organizational resilience.

Note: “Mayhem” was a malware strain that exploited bash(1) vulnerabilities (RISKS-28.31).


Beware of Cars With Minds of Their Own (Bloomberg)

Richard Stein <rmstein@ieee.org>
Fri, 8 Feb 2019 16:46:11 +0800

https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2019-02-06/self-driving-vehicles-could-develop-minds-of-their-own

“Self-driving vehicles powered by artificial intelligence might not have the same priorities as their human owners.”

“When imagining the effects of vehicle autonomy on our lives, we need to try thinking like artificial intelligence, not like humans. Then, potential will emerge for all kinds of strange, counterintuitive behaviors.”

Will there be a pill for that? Nevermind “The Trolley Problem.” The “where will it park problem” appears to be a showstopper.


Goodbye trolley problem: This is Silicon Valley's new ethics test (WashPost)

Richard Stein <rmstein@ieee.org>
Wed, 6 Feb 2019 10:44:00 +0800

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/welcome-to-your-new-ethics-test-silicon-valley/2019/02/05/eb9f6e10-2969-11e9-b2fc-721718903bfc_story.html

“Addiction has become another ethical landmine where dopamine hits—and how one administers them—are the key to a company's growth. E-cigarette maker Juul Labs, founded in 2017 and now the fastest growing start-up in history, with a valuation of $38 billion, is largely responsible for a grave new statistic: about 20 percent of teens have admitted to vaping in school. In many ways, that shouldn't surprise us. Juul is the logical extension of the Silicon Valley growth-hacking playbook: Design a flawless product, add a dopamine response, stir in some influencers and watch your product, game or app go viral.”

Technologically-fueled addictions embody covert institutionalized violence (https://www.radford.edu/~gmartin/IPPNO%20Doc.html)

Regulators and legislators accept them as a relatively harmless means to satisfy dopamine delivery desire.

Addictive products generate sales taxes, income taxes, and the business lobby contributes campaign funds to sustain “wrist-slap regulatory oversight” in exchange for a franchise to exploit human frailty. Standard operating procedure for capitalism.

From the “Blues Brothers” (https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0080455/?ref_=nv_sr_1

“Maury Sline: Hold it, hold it. Tomorrow night? What are you talking about? A gig like that, you gotta prepare the proper exploitation.”

“Elwood: I know all about that stuff. I have been exploited all my life.”


A Machine Gets High Marks for Diagnosing Sick Children (SciAm)

Richard Stein <rmstein@ieee.org>
Mon, 11 Feb 2019 21:38:56 -0800

https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/a-machine-gets-high-marks-for-diagnosing-sick-children/

“The machine received good grades, agreeing with the humans about 90 percent of the time. It was especially effective at identifying neuropsychiatric conditions and upper respiratory diseases. For acute upper-respiratory infection, the most common diagnosis in the huge patient group, the AI system got it right 95 percent of the time. Would 95 percent be good enough? One of the next questions that needs to be researched, Zhang says, is whether the system will miss something dire. The benchmark, he says, should be how senior physicians perform, which also is not 100 percent.”

“Study Suggests Medical Errors Now Third Leading Cause of Death in the U.S.” https://www.hopkinsmedicine.org/news/media/releases/study_suggests_medical_errors_now_third_leading_cause_of_death_in_the_us says, “using hospital admission rates from 2013, they extrapolated that based on a total of 35,416,020 hospitalizations, 251,454 deaths stemmed from a medical error, which the researchers say now translates to 9.5 percent of all deaths each year in the U.S.”

“Medical errors” are categorized by a spectrum. http://www.covermd.com/Resources/Medical-Errors-List.aspx identifies “The Ten Most Common Medical Errors in the US.”

When a “difference of diagnostic opinion” arises between the silicon-based physician-assistant (SiMD) and the carbon-based attending physician (CMD), how are these conflicts resolved? Will a hospital require a “vote” by multiple CMDs to overrule the SiMD's? What is the protocol?

What happens when both SiMD and CMD diagnostic opinions align, but they are both wrong, and the patient is given inappropriate treatment? In an emergency situation where CMD resource is stretched, what priority will be given to the SiMD's diagnostic findings?

If SiMD's can be shown to reduce medical error rates, then their role as an adjunct to a physician's judgment may be appropriate.


Where's my paycheck? Wells Fargo customers say direct deposits not showing up after outage

Monty Solomon <monty@roscom.com>
Fri, 8 Feb 2019 10:32:34 -0500

Social media users said Friday they were having trouble seeing paychecks and direct deposits in their Wells Fargo online and mobile banking accounts.

https://www.usatoday.com/story/money/2019/02/08/wells-fargo-outage-customers-report-issues-paychecks-deposits/2810562002/

Earlier: Wells Fargo says working to fully restore system as outage spills into day 2 https://www.cnbc.com/2019/02/08/wells-fargo-says-working-to-fully-restore-system-as-outage-spills-into-day-2.html


Network outage prevents bike rentals

Jeremy Epstein <jeremy.j.epstein@gmail.com>
Thu, 7 Feb 2019 16:39:56 -0500

Ah, for the simpler days before bike rentals.

Capital BikeShare (which is the largest bike rental in the Washington DC area) reports that “an issue that has left about 10% of stations temporarily out of service. These stations became disconnected from the network yesterday, meaning users could not use the Capital Bikeshare app or kiosk to unlock a bike when visiting one of these stations.”

Ironically, the link at the top of the page titled “System Alert” about the problem leads to https://www.capitalbikeshare.com/blog/technical-issues-at-stations gives a 404. Seems appropriate.


USB sticks can take it …

Rob Slade <rmslade@shaw.ca>
Tue, 5 Feb 2019 12:24:44 -0800

Wanna know what to store your data on if you want to keep it available?

A USB stick.

There are impressive tales of them surviving, well, pretty much anything.

So here's one more. https://www.niwa.co.nz/news/they-were-defrosting-leopard-seal-pooyou-wont-believe-what-happened-next or https://is.gd/FgDUCV

A leopard seal ate one. And pooped it out. The poop (you can call it scat if you don't like poop) was collected and then frozen for more than a year. It was then defrosted and rinsed under a tap to get the big bits out. One of the big bits was the USB stick. It was dried out for a couple of weeks, and they still accessed a bunch of photos.

(If you've been hanging out around New Zealand beaches with a blue kayak, you might want to look at the photos …)


Some AT&T iPhones Displaying Misleading ‘5G E’ Icon in iOS 12.2 Beta 2 (MacRumors)

Gabe Goldberg <gabe@gabegold.com>
Wed, 6 Feb 2019 15:08:34 -0500

Some AT&T users who have installed the new iOS 12.2 beta are noticing their iPhones displaying a ‘5G E’ connection to AT&T's network, which is AT&T's misleading name for an “upgraded” version of 4G LTE.

AT&T began rolling out its fake 5G icon to Android smartphones in early January, and it now appears the change is extending to the iPhone. …

Update: AT&T has provided the following statement to MacRumors on the new icon in iOS 12.2 beta 2: “Today, some iPhone and iPad users could start seeing our 5G Evolution indicator on their devices. The indicator simply helps customers know when they are in an area where the 5G Evolution experience may be available.”

https://www.macrumors.com/2019/02/04/att-iphones-5ge-icon-beta-2/

The risks? AT&T, 5G, marketing…


Japan gears up for mega hack of its own citizens (Straits Times)

Richard Stein <rmstein@ieee.org>
Thu, 7 Feb 2019 13:51:18 +0800

https://www.straitstimes.com/opinion/japan-targets-complacency-with-cyber-attack-on-citizens (behind straitstimes.com and ft.com paywall under Leo Lewis byline)

Japan's minister of cyber-security, Yoshitaka Sakurada, is poised to initiate a homeland ‘readiness’ cyberattack against ~200M Internet-connected devices. The “attack” is part of a 5-year experiment, per Shinzo Abe's “Society 5.0” plan, to energize Japan's industrial and IoT competitiveness. https://techcrunch.com/2019/02/02/japans-society-5-0-initiative-is-a-roadmap-for-todays-entrepreneurs/

“At best, say cyber-security experts at FireEye, the experiment could rip through corporate Japan's complacency and elevate security planning from the IT department to the C-Suite.”

“There remain deep, unresolved questions of whether manufacturers of IoT devices or their users should have responsibility for ensuring security and a nagging concern that the government's mega-hack will not conjure up an answer.”


Indecent disclosure (Ars Technica)

Monty Solomon <monty@roscom.com>
Thu, 7 Feb 2019 10:01:07 -0500

https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2019/02/indecent-disclosure-gay-dating-app-left-private-exposed-to-web/


LibreOffice and Apache OpenOffice vulnerable to same bug; only one is fixed.

Monty Solomon <monty@roscom.com>
Thu, 7 Feb 2019 10:01:31 -0500

https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2019/02/path-traversal-bug-is-fixed-in-libreoffice-but-not-in-apache-openoffice/


There's No Good Reason To Trust Blockchain Technology (Bruce Schneier in WiReD)

geoff goodfellow <geoff@iconia.com>
Thu, 7 Feb 2019 07:54:32 -0700

EXCERPT:

In his 2008 white paper <https://bitcoin.org/bitcoin.pdf> that first proposed bitcoin, the anonymous Satoshi Nakamoto concluded with: “We have proposed a system for electronic transactions without relying on trust.” He was referring to blockchain, the system behind bitcoin cryptocurrency. The circumvention of trust is a great promise, but it's just not true. Yes, bitcoin eliminates certain trusted intermediaries that are inherent in other payment systems like credit cards. But you still have to trust bitcoin — and everything about it.

Much has been written about blockchains and how they displace, reshape, or eliminate trust. But when you analyze both blockchain and trust, you quickly realize that there is much more hype than value. Blockchain solutions are often much worse than what they replace… […]

https://www.wired.com/story/theres-no-good-reason-to-trust-blockchain-technology/


Fire—and lots of it: Berkeley researcher on the only way to fix cryptocurrency (Ars Technica)

Gabe Goldberg <gabe@gabegold.com>
Thu, 7 Feb 2019 14:28:09 -0500

Nicholas Weaver says bitcoin and other digital coins recapitulate 500 years of failure.

https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2019/02/researcher-counts-the-reasons-he-wants-cryptocurrency-burned-with-fire/


Navigating Bitcoin, Ethereum, XRP: How Google Is Quietly Making Blockchains Searchable (Forbes)

ACM TechNews <technews-editor@acm.org>
Mon, 11 Feb 2019 11:41:19 -0500

Michael del Castillo. Forbes, 4 Feb 2019, via ACM TechNews, 11 Feb 2019

Last year, a team of open source developers quietly began loading data for the entire Bitcoin and Ethereum blockchains into Google's big data analytics platform, BigQuery. With assistance from lead developer Evgeny Medvedev, Google's senior developer advocate for Google Cloud Allen Day created a suite of sophisticated software to search the data. In the past year, more than 500 projects were created using these tools, collectively known as Blockchain ETL (extract, transform, load), designed to do everything from predicting the price of bitcoin to analyzing wealth disparity among ether holders. Day demonstrated Blockchain ETL by examining the so-called hard fork, or an irrevocable split in a blockchain database, which created a new cryptocurrency—bitcoin cash—from bitcoin in the summer of 2017. Using Google's BigQuery, Day discovered bitcoin cash, rather than increasing microtransactions, was actually being hoarded among big holders of bitcoin cash.

https://orange.hosting.lsoft.com/trk/click?ref=znwrbbrs9_6-1e58cx21a206x069484&


Crypto CEO dies holding only passwords that can unlock millions in customer coins

geoff goodfellow <geoff@iconia.com>
Tue, 5 Feb 2019 15:41:29 -0700

EXCERPT:

Digital-asset exchange Quadriga CX has a $200 million problem with no obvious solution—just the latest cautionary tale in the unregulated world of cryptocurrencies.

The online startup can't retrieve about $145 million (C$190 million) in Bitcoin, Litecoin, Ether and other digital tokens held for its customers, according to court documents filed Jan. 31 in Halifax, Nova Scotia. Nor can Vancouver-based Quadriga CX pay the C$70 million in cash they're owed.

Access to Quadriga CX's digital “wallets”—an application that stores the keys to send and receive cryptocurrencies—appears to have been lost with the passing of Quadriga CX Chief Executive Officer Gerald Cotten, who died Dec. 9 in India from complications of Crohn's disease. He was 30.

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Bitcoin industry grapples with age-old problem of inheritance After the bitcoin boom: hard lessons for cryptocurrency investors Bitcoin's ‘first felon' faces more legal trouble Cotten was always conscious about security — the laptop, email addresses and messaging system he used to run the 5-year-old business were encrypted, according to an affidavit from his widow, Jennifer Robertson. He took sole responsibility for the handling of funds and coins and the banking and accounting side of the business and, to avoid being hacked, moved the “majority” of digital coins into cold storage. […]

https://www.sfgate.com/business/article/Crypto-CEO-dies-holding-only-passwords-that-can-13590450.phpv3DYVI5w+RVhwt398MZ3+CLYwL/1Zjo2HyO/KM=


‘Zero Trust' AI: Too Much of a Good Thing is Wonderful

Henry Baker <hbaker1@pipeline.com>
Thu, 07 Feb 2019 07:53:41 -0800

Apparently, China's AI system for catching criminals is catching the “wrong” criminals: high-level corrupt officials

This is one system that the U.S. should import to watch over our own government officials—especially those elected to public office and responsible for all of the government surveillance on ordinary citizens. Notice how quickly Congress responded to the disclosure of Robert Bork's movie rental history with the “Video Privacy Protection Act” of 1988.

https://www.scmp.com/news/china/science/article/2184857/chinas-corruption-busting-ai-system-zero-trust-being-turned-being

SCMP, 04-05 Feb 2019 Is China's corruption-busting AI system ‘Zero Trust’ being turned off for being too efficient?

Despite being restricted to just 30 counties and cities, artificial intelligence system has already helped snare 8,721 officials System cross-references big data to evaluate work and personal lives of millions of government workers.

Stephen Chen https://www.facebook.com/Stephen.Chen.SCMP

What would you do if you had a machine to catch a thief? If you were a corrupt Chinese bureaucrat, you would want to ditch it, of course.

Resistance by government officials to a groundbreaking big data experiment is only one of many challenges as the Chinese government starts using new technology to navigate its giant bureaucracy.

According to state media, there were more than 50 million people on China's government payroll in 2016, though analysts have put the figure at more than 64 million—slightly less than the population of Britain.

To turn this behemoth into a seamless operation befitting the information age, China has started adapting various types of sophisticated technology. The foreign ministry, for instance, is using machine learning to aid in risk assessment and decision making for China's major investment projects overseas.

Beijing has been developing a nationwide facial recognition system using surveillance cameras capable of identifying any person, anywhere, around the clock within seconds. In Guizhou, a cloud system tracks the movements of every policeman with a live status report.

Major Chinese telecommunication companies such as ZTE have won government contracts to develop blockchain technology to prevent the modification of government data by unauthorised people or organisations.

President Xi Jinping has repeatedly stressed the necessity of promoting scientific and technological innovations such as big data and artificial intelligence (AI) in government reform.

The challenge is implementing that vision on the ground. Look no further than an anti-corruption AI system dubbed by the researchers working it as “Zero Trust”.

Jointly developed and deployed by the Chinese Academy of Sciences and the Chinese Communist Party's internal control institutions to monitor, evaluate or intervene in the work and personal life of public servants, the system can access more than 150 protected databases in central and local governments for cross-reference.

According to people involved in the programme, this allows it to draw sophisticated, multiple layers of social relationship maps to derive behaviour analyses of government employees.

This was “particularly useful” in detecting suspicious property transfers, infrastructure construction, land acquisitions and house demolitions, a researcher said.

The system is not without its weaknesses, however.

“AI may quickly point out a corrupt official, but it is not very good at explaining the process it has gone through to reach such a conclusion,“ the researcher said. “Although it gets it right in most cases, you need a human to work closely with it.”

The system can immediately detect unusual increases in bank savings, for instance, or if there has been a new car purchase or bidding for a government contract under the name of an official or one of his family or friends.

Once its suspicions have been raised it will calculate the chances of the action being corrupt. If the result exceeds a set marker, the authorities are alerted.

A computer scientist involved in the programme who asked not to be named said that at that stage a superior could then contact the person under scrutiny and perhaps help him avoid “going down the road of no return with further, bigger mistakes”.

The Zero Trust experiment has been limited to 30 counties and cities, just 1 per cent of the country's total administrative area. The local governments involved, including the Mayang Miao autonomous county in Hunan province, are located in relatively poor and isolated regions far away from China's political power centres.

Another researcher involved in the programme said the idea was to “avoid triggering large-scale resistance among bureaucrats”, especially the most powerful ones, to the use of bots in governance.

Since 2012, Zero Trust has caught 8,721 government employees engaging in misconduct such as embezzlement, abuse of power, misuse of government funds and nepotism.

While some were sentenced to prison terms, most were allowed to keep their jobs after being given a warning or minor punishment.

Still, some governments—including Mayang county, Huaihua city and Li county in Hunan—have decommissioned the machine, according to the researchers, one of whom said they “may not feel quite comfortable with the new technology”.

None of the local authorities responded to requests for comment.

Zhang Yi, an official at the Commission for Discipline Inspection of the Chinese Communist Party in Ningxiang, Hunan province, said his agency was one of the few still using the system.

“It is not easy—we are under enormous pressure,” he said, insisting that the main purpose of the programme was not to punish officials but to “save them” at an “early stage of corruption”.

“We just use the machine's result as reference,” Zhang said. “We need to check and verify its validity. The machine cannot pick up the phone and call the person with a problem. The final decision is always made by humans.”

Since Xi rose to power in 2012, more than 1.4 million party members and government employees are estimated to have been disciplined, including leaders like former security tsar Zhou Yongkang and former Chongqing strongman Bo Xilai.

A party disciplinary official in Xiushui county, Jiangxi, who took part in the Zero Trust project said no government officials were willing to provide the necessary data.

“But they usually comply with a bit of pressure,” said the official, who asked not to be named because of the sensitivity of the issue.

Disciplinary officials need to help scientists train the machine with their experience and knowledge accumulated from previous cases. For instance, disciplinary officials spent many hours manually tagging unusual phenomena in various types of data sets to teach the machine what to look for.

Some officials might fabricate data, but the machine can compare information from different sources and flag discrepancies. It can even call up satellite images, for instance, to investigate whether the government funding to build a road in a village ended up in the pocket of an official, the researchers said.

The system is still running in Xiushui, but its fate is uncertain. Some officials have questioned the machine's right of access to sensitive databases because there is neither a law nor regulation authorising a computer or robot to do so.

No wonder the system is being decommissioned by counties and cities that had signed up, and those still using it are facing enormous pressure, with the researchers seeing little or no hope of rolling it out nationwide.

The Zero Trust hump notwithstanding, artificial intelligence's foray into other government sectors continues as the government is determined to apply cutting-edge technology to its advantage. AI clerks, for example, have been recruited in some courts to read case files and help judges process lawsuits with higher speed and accuracy.

Last month, a court in Shanghai became the first ever in China to use an AI assistant at a public hearing, Xinhua reported.

The machine, code-named “206”, has the ability to record conversations, show evidence such as surveillance camera footage when mentioned by lawyers, and compare testimonies to help judges spot discrepancies, the report said.

One judge was quoted as saying it would reduce the likelihood of a wrong verdict.


FDA proposes a supply chain tracking overhaul (Fortune)

Gabe Goldberg <gabe@gabegold.com>
Sun, 10 Feb 2019 15:45:03 -0500

The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) wants to transform the way it tracks and traces medicines in an effort to protect supply chain security. The road to achieving that goal runs straight through improved technology, the agency writes in a regulatory notice. Commissioner Scott Gottlieb even busted out the “B” word… “We're invested in exploring new ways to improve traceability, in some cases using the same technologies that can enhance drug supply chain security, like the use of blockchain. To advance these efforts, the FDA recently recruited Frank Yiannas, an expert on the use of traceability technologies in global food supply chains. He'll be working closely with me on ways for the FDA to facilitate the expansion of such methods, such as blockchain technology, to further strengthen the U.S. food supply,” he wrote in a statement. /(FDA <https://click.email.fortune.com/?qs=51a73d1016def0c54ce8c32d0d2ae31fc729c67c51791aaed3df61eb3995b42696af864bd63fdc5f8fb24799ea342d226380f6ed4edcde37

“Using new innovations…”—as opposed to old innovations, I guess.

Blockchain, magic as always:

“For the drug track-and-trace system, our goals are to fully secure electronic product tracing, which provides a step-by-step account of where a drug product has been located and who has handled it; establish a more robust product verification to ensure that a drug product is legitimate and unaltered; and to make sure that any party involved in handling drugs in the supply chain must have the ability to spot and quarantine and investigate any suspect drug. We're committed to staying at the forefront of new and emerging technologies and how they might be used to create safer, smarter and more trusted supply chains to better protect consumer safety and ensure the integrity of the high quality of products they deserve.”


Why CAPTCHAs have gotten so difficult (The Verge)

Gabe Goldberg <gabe@gabegold.com>
Thu, 7 Feb 2019 14:31:58 -0500

Demonstrating you're not a robot is getting harder and harder

https://www.theverge.com/2019/2/1/18205610/google-captcha-ai-robot-human-difficult-artificial-intelligence


Situation Normal, All Zucked Up (Japan News)

Mark Thorson <eee@dialup4less.com>
Tue, 5 Feb 2019 14:30:02 -0800

Facebook censors museum promotion for exhibit that contains a partially nude marble statue from the first century of a woman and a nude bronze statue of a man from the first century B.C. No mention of whether this decision was made by a human or an AIS (artificial idiot savant).

http://the-japan-news.com/news/article/0005525581


Google Began Censoring Search Results in Russia, Reports Say (Moscow Times)

Lauren Weinstein <lauren@vortex.com>
Fri, 8 Feb 2019 09:32:17 -0800

via NNSquad https://themoscowtimes.com/news/google-began-censoring-search-results-russia-reports-say-64423

Google began complying with Russian requirements and has deleted around 70 percent of the websites blacklisted by authorities, an unnamed Google employee told Russia's Vedomosti business daily Wednesday. An unnamed Roskomnadzor source reportedly confirmed the information to the paper. On Thursday, a Roskomnadzor spokesman told the state-run RIA Novosti news agency that the regulator had established a “constructive dialogue“ with Google over filtering content. “We are fully satisfied with the dialogue at this time,“ Vadim Ampelonsky, the spokesman, was cited as saying. Google Russia declined to comment.

Security Researcher Assaulted Following Vulnerability Disclosure (SecJuice)

Gabe Goldberg <gabe@gabegold.com>
Sun, 10 Feb 2019 15:18:23 -0500

Following a serious vulnerability disclosure affecting casinos globally, an executive of casino technology vendor Atrient <http://www.atrient.com/> researcher who disclosed the vulnerability at the ICE conference <https://www.icelondon.uk.com/> vulnerability disclosure gone bad, one involving the FBI, a vendor with a global customer base of casinos and a severe security vulnerability which has gone unresolved for four months without being properly addressed.

https://www.secjuice.com/security-researcher-assaulted-ice-atrient/


NSO Group attacking investigators

Rob Slade <rmslade@shaw.ca>
Mon, 11 Feb 2019 11:30:15 -0800

Well, OK, it makes spyware for government use, so that's OK, right?

Except that they sell their spyware to some governments with questionable records on human rights.

Now NSO Group seems to be spying on, and mounting various types of attacks against, the researchers, journalists, and lawyers who are investigating the case. https://apnews.com/a1d1af4256c04cc5a36347667e966a14


How does NYPD surveill thee? Let me count the Waze

Henry Baker <hbaker1@pipeline.com>
Thu, 07 Feb 2019 07:01:14 -0800

“Google and Waze Must Stop Sharing Drunken-Driving Checkpoints, New York Police Demand”

So what's good for the goose (NYPD) isn't so good for the gander (ordinary citizens) ?

https://www.nydailynews.com/new-york/nyc-crime/ny-metro-license-plate-reader-grab-20190119-story.html

“NYPD's Domain Awareness System, which is linked to area squad cars equipped with license plate readers that digitally capture 1,000 license plates every day.”

https://theintercept.com/2018/09/06/nypd-surveillance-camera-skin-tone-search/

“With access to images of thousands of unknowing New Yorkers offered up by NYPD officials … IBM was creating new search features that allow other police departments to search camera footage for images of people by hair color, facial hair, and skin tone.”

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stop-and-frisk_in_New_York_City

“[NYPD's stop-and-frisk] program became the subject of a racial profiling controversy. The vast majority, 90% in 2017, of those stopped were African-American or Latino … 70% of all those stopped were later found to be innocent… Research suggests that stop-and-frisk had few effects, if any, on violent and property crime rates in New York City. ”

https://www.brennancenter.org/blog/brooklyn-court-nypds-use-cell-phone-trackers-unconstitutional

“a New York State court in Brooklyn ruled that the NYPD's use of Stingrays without a warrant was unconstitutional”

https://www.aclu.org/blog/privacy-technology/surveillance-technologies/new-nypd-drone-policy-represents-serious-threat

“NYPD's drones are outfitted with cameras equipped with sophisticated technology and 4K resolution”

“NYPD's drone policy places no meaningful restrictions on police deployment of drones in New York City and opens the door to the police department building a permanent archive of drone footage of political activity and intimate private behavior visible only from the sky”

https://www.businessinsider.com/nypd-surveillance-archives-2018-2

“In September, the New York City Municipal Archives launched an unprecedented exhibit showcasing NYPD surveillance materials from 1960 to 1975 … The exhibit, ”Unlikely Historians: Materials Collected by NYPD Surveil lance Teams”, gives visitors a small taste of just how far NYPD detectives went to infiltrate political organizations and investigate people they considered a threat.”

Michael Gold, The New York Times, 6 Feb 2019 Google and Waze Must Stop Sharing Drunken-Driving Checkpoints, New York Police Demand https://www.nytimes.com/2019/02/06/nyregion/waze-nypd-location.html

Google's navigation app Waze is known for providing real-time, user-submitted reports that advise drivers about potential thorns in their roadsides.

But one feature has Waze in conflict with law enforcement officials across the country: how the app marks the location of police officers on the roads ahead or stationed at drunken-driving checkpoints.

Over the weekend, the New York Police Department, the largest force in the nation, joined the fray, sending a letter to Google demanding that the tech giant pull that feature from Waze.

In the letter, which was first reported on by Streetsblog, the Police Department said that allowing people to share the locations of sobriety checkpoints impeded its ability to keep streets safe.

“The posting of such information for public consumption is irresponsible since it only serves to aid impaired and intoxicated drivers to evade checkpoints and encourage reckless driving,” the department's acting deputy commissioner for legal matters, Ann P. Prunty, wrote in the letter. “Revealing the location of checkpoints puts those drivers, their passengers, and the general public at risk.”

Ms. Prunty added that people sharing the locations of sobriety checkpoints on Waze might be breaking the law by trying “to prevent and/or impair the administration” of the state's D.W.I. laws and that the department planned to “pursue all legal remedies” to stop people from sharing “this irresponsible and dangerous information.”

It was not immediately clear what legal steps might be taken.

Waze does not allow drivers to specifically identify sobriety checkpoints. But people who use the app's police reporting feature can leave detailed comments on the cartoonish icon of a mustachioed police officer that pops up.

Google said in a statement on Wednesday that safety was a “top priority” and “that informing drivers about upcoming speed traps allows them to be more careful and make safer decisions when they're on the road.” …


How Hackers and Scammers Break into iCloud-Locked iPhones (Motherboard)

Gabe Goldberg <gabe@gabegold.com>
Sun, 10 Feb 2019 15:09:31 -0500

In spring, 2017, a teenager walked up behind a woman leaving the Metro in Northeast Washington DC and put her in a chokehold: “Be quiet,” he said. And “delete your iCloud.” He grabbed her iPhone 6S and ran away. <https://www.justice.gov/usao-dc/pr/district-man-sentenced-four-years-prison-robbery>

Last month, there were a string of similar muggings in Philadelphia In each of these muggings, the perpetrator allegedly held the victim up at gunpoint, demanded that they pull out their iPhone, and gave them instructions: Disable ‘Find My iPhone', and log out of iCloud. <https://web.archive.org/save/https://twitter.com/mattblaze/status/1085607855179382784>

In 2013, Apple introduced a security feature designed to make iPhones less valuable targets to would-be thieves. An iPhone can only be associated to one iCloud account, meaning that, in order to sell it to someone else (or in order for a stolen phone to be used by someone new) that account needs to be removed from the phone altogether. A stolen iPhone which is still attached to the original owner's iCloud account is worthless for personal use or reselling purposes (unless you strip it for parts), because at any point the original owner can remotely lock the phone and find its location with Find My iPhone. Without the owner's password, the original owner's account can't be unlinked from the phone and the device can't be factory reset. This security feature explains why some muggers have been demanding passwords from their victims. https://motherboard.vice.com/en_us/article/8xyq8v/how-to-unlock-icloud-stolen-iphone


Airline Passengers Potentially at Risk From Check-In Flaws (EWeek)

Gabe Goldberg <gabe@gabegold.com>
Fri, 8 Feb 2019 16:00:15 -0500

A relatively simple flaw in how some airlines provide e-ticketing information could be exposing passengers to risk.

https://www.eweek.com/security/major-airlines-at-risk-from-check-in-system-flaw-wandera-reports


Privacy, transparency, and increasing digital trust

David Strom via WebInformant <webinformant@list.webinformant.tv>
Fri, 8 Feb 2019 09:36:27 -0600
[via Dewayne Hendricks via Dave Farber]

There is a crisis of trust in American democracy.

So begins a new report from the Knight Commission on Trust, Media and Democracy organized by the Aspen Institute. It lays blame on our political discourse, racial tensions, and technology that gives us all more access to more commentary and news. “In 2018, unwelcome facts are labeled as fake.” <http://csreports.aspeninstitute.org/Knight-Commission-TMD/2019/report>

Part of the problem with trust has to do with the ease of cyber-criminals to ply their trade. Once relegated to a dark corner of the Internet, now many criminals operate in the public view, selling various pieces of technology such as ready-made phishing kits to seed infections, carders to collect credit card numbers, botnets and web stressors to deliver DDoS attacks, and other malware construction kits that require little to no technical expertise beyond clicking a few buttons on a web form. A new report from CheckPoint shows that anyone who is willing to pay can easily obtain all of these tools. We truly have witnessed the growth of the Malware-as-a-Service industry. <https://www.checkpoint.com/downloads/resources/under-the-hood-of-cyber-crime-security-report-2019.pdf>


Many popular iPhone apps secretly record your screen without asking (TechCrunch)

Gabe Goldberg <gabe@gabegold.com>
Thu, 7 Feb 2019 13:54:09 -0500

Many major companies, like Air Canada, Hollister and Expedia, are recording every tap and swipe you make on their iPhone apps. In most cases you won't even realize it. And they don't need to ask for permission.

You can assume that most apps are collecting data on you. Some even monetize your data without your knowledge. But TechCrunch has found several popular iPhone apps, from hoteliers, travel sites, airlines, cell phone carriers, banks and financiers, that don't ask or make it clear—if at all—that they know exactly how you're using their apps.

Worse, even though these apps are meant to mask certain fields, some inadvertently expose sensitive data.

Apps like Abercrombie & Fitch, Hotels.com and Singapore Airlines also use Glassbox, a customer experience analytics firm, one of a handful of companies that allows developers to embed session-replay technology into their apps. These session replays let app developers record the screen and play them back to see how its users interacted with the app to figure out if something didn't work or if there was an error. Every tap, button push and keyboard entry is recorded—effectively screenshotted—and sent back to the app developers.

https://techcrunch.com/2019/02/06/iphone-session-replay-screenshots/


Apple allows screen captures of everything that you do …

Rob Slade <rmslade@shaw.ca>
Fri, 8 Feb 2019 09:37:37 -0800

In the wake of the Facetime bug comes news of even more insidious breaches on your Apple devices. Yes, that Apple, the one that makes so much of having this “safe” and locked down environment, where you can only run applications that they have approved, for your own protection.

iOS apps are able to scrape screenshots of, basically, everything you do, and then send that back to, well, whoever they choose. https://nakedsecurity.sophos.com/2019/02/08/iphone-apps-record-your-screen-sessions-without-asking/ or https://is.gd/kPmeUl

Without asking.

Without letting you know.

This isn't even a bug. It seems to be part of the iOS system, and could have valid uses (although what they are escapes me at the moment).

The fact that Apple, with it's closed and locked down system, allows this sort of thing is rather disturbing …


HP's ink DRM instructs your printer to ignore the ink in your cartridge when you cancel your subscription (BoingBoing)

Lauren Weinstein <lauren@vortex.com>
Fri, 8 Feb 2019 17:18:34 -0800

via NNSquad https://boingboing.net/2019/02/08/inkjet-dystopias.html

Inkjet printer manufacturers continue to pioneer imaginative ways to create real-world, desktop dystopias that make Black Mirror look optimistic by comparison: one such nightmare is HP's “subscription” printers where a small amount of money buys you ink cartridges that continuously communicate with HP's servers to validate that you're still paying for your subscription, and if you cancel, the ink stops working.

The perils of using Internet Explorer as your default browser (TechCommunity)

Monty Solomon <monty@roscom.com>
Fri, 8 Feb 2019 14:23:28 -0500

The perils of using Internet Explorer as your default browser https://techcommunity.microsoft.com/t5/Windows-IT-Pro-Blog/The-perils-of-using-Internet-Explorer-as-your-default-browser/ba-p/331732

Also: Microsoft begs you to stop using Internet Explorer https://www.engadget.com/2019/02/08/microsoft-internet-explorer-technical-debt/


Judge orders $150,000 in damages in GTA Online cheating case (Ars Technica)

Monty Solomon <monty@roscom.com>
Fri, 8 Feb 2019 00:50:58 -0500

Elusive mod menu let online players generate infinite amounts of in-game cash.

https://arstechnica.com/gaming/2019/02/gta-online-cheat-tool-maker-ordered-to-pay-150000/


Maybe he'll die of the plague and we can all breathe easier …

Rob Slade <rmslade@shaw.ca>
Mon, 11 Feb 2019 10:02:42 -0800

Pete Hegseth is a host on the Faux News show “Fox and Friends.” On Sunday he said that “My 2019 resolution is to say things on air that I say off air. I don't think I've washed my hands for 10 years. Really, I don't really wash my hands ever.” https://www.rawstory.com/2019/02/fox-friends-host-says-hasnt-washed-hands-10-years-germs-not-real-thing-cant-see/ or https://is.gd/dGvgCZ

He doesn't wash his hands because germs aren't real.

Of course, he also says that his lack of hygiene inoculates him, but if germ theory isn't real, then that doesn't make any sense.

OK, this could just be yet another stupid celebrity story. Except that it means that there are people in positions of influence who are that stupid. And who contribute to things like anti-vax movements while measles epidemics are raging …


Re: Deep Fakes (RISKS-31.05)

“Peter G. Neumann” <neumann@csl.sri.com>
Tue, 5 Feb 2019 19:24:11 PST

Here's a video on Deep Fakes https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dVa-00GYHas


Re: Google, you sent this to too many people, so it must be spam

Dan Jacobson <jidanni@jidanni.org>
Wed, 06 Feb 2019 07:53:30 +0800

And what if instead of > Subject: Your personal Google+ account is going away on April 2, 2019 > Subject: Your personal Google account is going away on April 2, 2019 is what it said? How many Seniors would have heart attacks? Or I suppose seasoned seniors would have already thrown it in the spam bucket as preposterous. Whilst other seniors might have thought that “+” was like “TM” (trademark). (I had one senior ask me “What is this all about?”. I told them to calm down.)


Re: Passwords, escrow, and fallback positions (CoinDesk, RISKS-31.05)

Rob Slade <rmslade@shaw.ca>
Tue, 5 Feb 2019 08:54:41 -0800
> Date: Sat, 2 Feb 2019 12:23:46 -0800
> From: Rob Slade <rmslade@shaw.ca>

> Crypto exchange QuadrigaCX seems to be filing for bankruptcy. It's got
> lots of money—locked up in cryptocurrency “cold storage.” The password
> was only known to the CEO. The CEO died in December.

Came across a detailed article positing that QuadrigaCX was simply a Ponzi or pyramid scheme, but the link now seems to be dead …

https://medium.com/@zeroresearchproof/quadrigacx-chain-analysis-report-pt-1-


Re: Is it time for Linux? (Coe, RISKS-31.05)

Aaron M. Ucko
Sun, 10 Feb 2019 11:50:39 -0500
> Debian received a total of 938 CVE's in 2018 with windows 10 only
> receiving 254.

I take your overall point, but dispute the validity of this particular numerical comparison, since Debian contains over 51,000 packages, the vast majority of which supply functionality Windows 10 doesn't itself offer (such as two full-fledged office suites—LibreOffice and Calligra Suite—and multiple e-mail clients). Moreover, even when there is overlap, Debian commonly offers far more options, with multiple web browsers, media players, mail servers, etc. This approach makes for a relatively broad overall attack surface, but individual users and hosts will have more limited exposure depending on what they actually run.

Aaron M. Ucko, KB1CJC (amu at alum.mit.edu, ucko at debian.org)


Re: Minor Crimes and Misdemeanors in the Age of Automation (Goldberg, RISKS-31.05)

Mark Brader <msb@vex.net>
Tue, 5 Feb 2019 02:23:42 -0500

For those interested in this subject, I can highly recommend “Computers Don't Argue”, a 1965 science-fiction short story by Gordon R. Dickson. (I'm sure it's been mentioned in RISKS before.)


An Enthralling and Terrifying History of the Nuclear Meltdown at Chernobyl (NYTimes)

Gabe Goldberg <gabe@gabegold.com>
Thu, 7 Feb 2019 12:53:02 -0500

In “Midnight in Chernobyl,” the journalist Adam Higginbotham reconstructs the disaster from the ground up, recounting the prelude to it as well as its aftermath.

https://nyti.ms/2UJKBos


Revised UK Code of Practice for testing Automated Vehicles

Martyn Thomas <martyn@thomas-associates.co.uk>
Wed, 6 Feb 2019 16:48:57 +0000

https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/trialling-automated-vehicle-technologies-in-public

The cybersecurity principles are at https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/principles-of-cyber-security-for-connected-and-automated-vehicles/the-key-principles-of-vehicle-cyber-security-for-connected-and-automated-vehicles

There is so much wrong with these documents that it is hard to know where to start, but the consultation is open for comments:

https://www.gov.uk/government/consultations/automated-vehicle-trialling-code-of-practice-invitation-to-comment

PLEASE respond to the request for comments!

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