The RISKS Digest
Volume 30 Issue 70

Saturday, 26th May 2018

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

Boy, 9, dies in accident involving motorized room partition at his Fairfax school
WashPo
Don't Put That in My Heart Until You're Sure It Really Works
NYT
"Ex-Intel security expert: This new Spectre attack can even reveal firmware secrets"
Liam Tung
"This malware is harvesting saved credentials in Chrome, Firefox browsers"
ZDNet
Student awarded $36,000 for remote execution flaw in Google App Engine
Charlie Osborne
"This cryptocurrency phishing attack uses new trick to drain wallets"
Danny Palmer
Ex-JPMorgan Chase Blockchain Duo Unveil New Startup Clovyr
Fortune
ICE abandons its dream of ‘extreme vetting’ software that could predict whether a foreign visitor would become a terrorist
WashPo
E-Mail Clients are Insecure, PGP and S/MIME 100% secure
Keith Medcalf
E-mail Encryption Tools Are No Longer Safe, Researchers Say
Fortune
Not So Pretty: What You Need to Know About E-Fail and the PGP Flaw
EFF
"T-Mobile bug let anyone see any customer's account details"
Zack Whittaker
"Senator wants to know how police can locate any phone in seconds without a warrant"
Zach Whittaker
US cell carriers are selling access to your real-time phone location data
Zach Whittaker
Hundreds of Apps Can Empower Stalkers to Track Their Victims
NYTimes
"Voice squatting attacks: Hacks turn Amazon Alexa, Google Home into secret eavesdroppers"
CSO Online
So, Umm, Google Duplex's Chatter Is Not Quite Human
Scientific American
Henry Kissinger Is Scared of 'Unstable' Artificial Intelligence
The Wrap
Service Meant to Monitor Inmates' Calls Could Track You, Too
NYT
Gunshot Sensors Pinpoint Destructive Fish Bombs
SciAm
Most GDPR emails unnecessary and some illegal, say experts
The Guardian
The Pentagon Has a Big Plan to Solve Identity Verification in Two Years
Defense One
Unplug Your Echo!
Ars Technica
FBI dramatically overstates how many phones they can't get into
WaPo
"Google to remove "secure" indicator from HTTPS pages on Chrome"
ZDNet
Google's Selfish Ledger is an unsettling vision of Silicon Valley social engineering
The Verge
"A flaw in a connected alarm system exposed vehicles to remote hacking"
ZDNet
Syrian hackers who tricked reporters indicted
WashPo
Cisco critical flaw warning: These 10/10 severity bugs need patching now
ZDNet
Is technology bringing history to life or distorting it?
WashPo
Massachusetts ponders hiring a computer to grade MCAS essays. What could go wrong?
The Boston Globe
Grocery store censors cake with request for 'summa cum laude'
The Boston Globe
The surprising return of the repo man
WashPo
Trump feels presidential smartphone security is too inconvenient
Ars Technica
Trump Jr. and Other Aides Met With Gulf Emissary Offering Help to Win Election
NY Times
Re: Securing Elections
Mark E. Smith
Re: Dark code
Kelly Bert Manning Richard O'Keefe
Fitness App Leads To Arrest For Attack On McLean Cyclist
McLean VA Patch
Man Is Charged With Hacking West Point and Government Websites
NYT
Fake Facebook accounts and online lies multiply in hours after Santa Fe school shooting
WashPo
Re: "Warning: Dangerous Fake Emails About Google Privacy Changes"
Wol
Re: Not So Pretty: What You Need to Know About E-Fail and the PGP Flaw
Yooly
Re: Deadly Convenience: Keyless Cars and Their Carbon Monoxide Toll
NYT
Re: Chinese GPS
Dimitri Maziuk
Re: The risk from robot weapons
Amos Shapir
Will You Be My Emergency Contact Takes On a Whole New Meaning
NYT
This fertility doctor is pushing the boundaries of human reproduction —with little regulation
WashPo
As DIY Gene Editing Gains Popularity, `Someone Is Going to Get Hurt'
Monty Solomon
Info on RISKS (comp.risks)

Boy, 9, dies in accident involving motorized room partition at his Fairfax school (WashPo)

Monty Solomon <monty@roscom.com>
Tue, 22 May 2018 09:31:51 -0400
http://www.washingtonpost.com/local/public-safety/boy-9-dies-in-accident-involving-motorized-room-partition-at-his-fairfax-school/2018/05/19/8d1d0418-5b9e-11e8-b656-a5f8c2a9295d_story.html


Don't Put That in My Heart Until You're Sure It Really Works (NYTimes)

Richard M Stein <rmstein@ieee.org>
Mon, 21 May 2018 19:30:25 -0700
http://www.nytimes.com/2018/05/20/opinion/medical-device-approval.html

'The bar for approval of medical devices is too low. There is no reason we
shouldn’t require, as we almost always do for drugs, a randomized
placebo-controlled trial showing improvements in “hard” outcomes like
mortality before approving them.

'Unfortunately, the United States may soon make it even easier for medical
devices to reach the patient’s bedside. The Food and Drug Administration is
considering requiring less upfront research and instead adding increased
oversight after a device has been introduced into the market. The argument
is that this will spur technological innovation and perhaps help terminally
ill patients. However, loosening regulations could extract a steep cost from
patients and the health system.'

Greater release frequency with less rigorous pre-production qualification
criteria and test coverage is NOT a recipe for safe and viable embedded
software stacks that drive these gizmos. Suppressing production defect
escape potential is challenging. Proactive techniques that facilitate early
and rapid software defect discovery capability—such as continuous
integration and high-speed regression—are effective when capable test
authors challenge software stack authors.  Alas, industry (not just embedded
medical implants, cars, cellphones, etc.) often economize on qualification
product life cycle stages. There are "too many bits" to test quickly and
thoroughly. Governance decisions and gut judgment is sometimes applied with
impunity.

It appears that the FDA has gone rogue, and off-the-rails via regulatory
capture.  A business-friendly administration promoting "caveat emptor" as
standard operating procedure also intensifies medical device implantation
risks. Refer to "The Danger Within Us: America's Untested, Unregulated
Medical Device Industry and One Man's Battle to Survive It" by Jeanne Lenzer
for an expose' of the implantable medical device industry. 

If you are confronted with a "hard sell" to "go" for implantation, ask
a few questions of your physician and the device salesperson:

Are there any randomized control trials and non-industry funded studies that
evaluate the candidate device's effectiveness in humans? Were the studies
performed by a non-profit? Or a university? Does the entity reporting the
study's results receive funding from the device manufacturer? Do any of the
study's authors disclose industry ties? If so, a report that is published
might possess skewed findings.  Is the raw data from these studies available
for inspection? If so, try to find a consultant to review it for you and
render an opinion.  Will the device manufacturer share their software and
system test plans for inspection? If so, try to locate a person "skilled in
the art of embedded software test" to evaluate the test plan, and the
firmware test results released with the implanted device. Try to gain access
to the manufacturer's defect tracking system to explore defect density and
discovery rates and repair history.

Does the device have a special mechanism to disable it, should it misbehave?
If so, try to learn about how this is accomplished and ensure there are
backup sources—other physicians or facilities that possess this
mechanism.

How many implants have been performed in the past year? How many
patient deaths occurred post-implantation? Never mind if the deaths
were attributed to the device or not, find the raw count of deaths.

For each post-implant death, was an FDA MAUDE report filed? How many of
these reports where filed by medical practitioners? How many by the device
manufacturer? Confront the salesperson to learn why, or if, there's a huge
discrepancy between the number of deaths and the number of FDA MAUDE reports
they or practitioners reported. That discrepancy is apparently a clue that
the manufacturer is or has concealed important evidence about device
capability or side-effects that can injure or kill you.

Has the device been the subject of prior recalls? If so, why? Has the
manufacturer been sued for product liability previously? Are they currently
under litigation for liability? These questions can provide insight into
their organization's maturity and ability to pro-actively act on
lessons-learned.

Is the device implantation under consideration being applied for "an
off-label" application in your case? If so, why?


"Ex-Intel security expert: This new Spectre attack can even reveal firmware secrets" (Liam Tung)

Gene Wirchenko <genew@telus.net>
Fri, 18 May 2018 09:24:59 -0700
Liam Tung | 18 May 2018
http://www.zdnet.com/article/ex-intel-security-expert-this-new-spectre-attack-can-even-reveal-firmware-secrets/

Ex-Intel security expert: This new Spectre attack can even reveal firmware
secrets; A new variant of Spectre can expose the contents of memory that
normally can't be accessed by the OS kernel.

opening text:

Yuriy Bulygin, the former head of Intel's advanced threat team, has
published research showing that the Spectre CPU flaws can be used to break
into the highly privileged CPU mode on Intel x86 systems known as System
Management Mode (SMM).


"This malware is harvesting saved credentials in Chrome, Firefox browsers" (ZDNet)

Gene Wirchenko <genew@telus.net>
Wed, 16 May 2018 09:11:51 -0700
http://www.zdnet.com/article/this-malware-is-harvesting-saved-credentials-in-chrome-firefox-browsers/

This malware is harvesting saved credentials in Chrome, Firefox browsers
Researchers say the new Vega Stealer malware is currently being used
in a simple campaign but has the potential to go much further.
By Charlie Osborne for Zero Day | May 14, 2018—07:42 GMT (00:42
PDT) | Topic: Security

selected text:

Vega Stealer is also written in .NET and focuses on the theft of
saved credentials and payment information in Google Chrome. These
credentials include passwords, saved credit cards, profiles, and cookies.

When the Firefox browser is in use, the malware harvests specific
files—"key3.db" "key4.db", "logins.json", and "cookies.sqlite" --
which store various passwords and keys.

However, Vega Stealer does not wrap up there. The malware also takes
a screenshot of the infected machine and scans for any files on the
system ending in .doc, .docx, .txt, .rtf, .xls, .xlsx, or .pdf for
exfiltration.

According to the security researchers, the malware is currently being
utilized to target businesses in marketing, advertising, public
relations, retail, and manufacturing.


Student awarded $36,000 for remote execution flaw in Google App Engine (Charlie Osborne)

Gene Wirchenko <genew@telus.net>
Wed, 23 May 2018 18:07:03 -0700
Charlie Osborne for Zero Day | 22 May 2018
http://www.zdnet.com/article/google-awards-researcher-36000-for-remote-execution-flaw-in-google-app-engine/
The discovery was made by a university student who was not aware of
how dangerous the vulnerability was.

opening text:

Google has awarded a young cybersecurity researcher $36,337 for disclosing a
severe vulnerability in the Google App Engine.

The 18-year-old student from Uruguay's University of the Republic discovered
a critical remote code execution (RCE) bug in the system, which is a
framework and cloud platform used for the hosting and development of web
applications in Google data centers.


"This cryptocurrency phishing attack uses new trick to drain wallets" (Danny Palmer)

Gene Wirchenko <genew@telus.net>
Fri, 18 May 2018 09:05:54 -0700
Danny Palmer | 17 May 2018
http://www.zdnet.com/article/this-cryptocurrency-phishing-attack-uses-new-trick-to-drains-wallets/

This cryptocurrency phishing attack uses new trick to drain wallets
Campaign uses automation to empty cryptocurrency wallets and produce
lucrative returns.

... the phishing campaign mimics the front end of the MyEtherWallet website
for the purpose of stealing credentials, while also deploying what the
authors call an "automated transfer system" to process the details captured
by the fake page and transfer funds.

The attack injects scripts into active web sessions and silently and
invisibly executes bank transfers just seconds after the user logs
into their cryptocurrency account.

Researchers note that MyEtherWallet is an appealing target for attackers
because it is simple to use, but its lack of security compared to other
banks and exchanges make it a prominent target for attack.

After that, the crooks look to drain accounts when the victim decrypts their
wallet. The scam uses scripts which automatically create the fund transfer
by pressing the buttons like a legitimate user would, all while the activity
remains hidden—it's the first time an attack has been seen to use this
automated tactic.


Ex-JPMorgan Chase Blockchain Duo Unveil New Startup Clovyr (Fortune)

Gabe Goldberg <gabe@gabegold.com>
Wed, 16 May 2018 16:47:10 -0400
Baldet, who most recently served as the bank’s blockchain program lead, is
cofounding a new startup, Clovyr, that aims to help consumers, developers,
and businesses explore the nascent, albeit burgeoning, world of
blockchain-based, decentralized technologies, she tells Fortune. She is
joined by Nielsen, former lead developer of Quorum, a JPMorgan Chase-built
blockchain for business, who will serve as the concern’s chief technologist.

Baldet unveiled a Clovyr demo at the Consensus conference in Manhattan on
Monday afternoon. The company is in the process of fundraising.

Clovyr's product, now under development, is slated to take the form of
something akin to an app store, where people and businesses can experiment
with a multitude of decentralized apps and services, developer toolsets, and
underlying distributed ledgers. The cofounders envision the platform serving
as a neutral ground, offering a browser-like dashboard for the
blockchain-curious, through which Clovyr can provide support and other
services to customers according to their needs.

http://fortune.com/2018/05/14/blockchain-jpmorgan-chase-amber-baldet-clovyr/

Just what consumers need. What could go wrong? Also, what's with "Clovyr"
name?


ICE abandons its dream of ‘extreme vetting’ software that could predict whether a foreign visitor would become a terrorist (WashPo)

Monty Solomon <monty@roscom.com>
Thu, 17 May 2018 16:48:50 -0400
Immigration officials originally wanted artificial intelligence that could
continuously track foreign visitors' social media. They're giving the job to
humans instead.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-switch/wp/2018/05/17/ice-just-abandoned-its-dream-of-extreme-vetting-software-that-could-predict-whether-a-foreign-visitor-would-become-a-terrorist/


E-Mail Clients are Insecure, PGP and S/MIME 100% secure

"Keith Medcalf" <kmedcalf@dessus.com>
Thu, 17 May 2018 15:10:11 -0600
There is no "security" problem with either PGP or S/MIME encrypted and
signed messages.  The problem is, as it has been since the introduction of
the ability to embed executable code into e-mail messages (aka, Web Pages
and Rich Text via SMTP), the shoddy and useless security state of almost all
e-mail clients.

If you turn off the [expletive deleted] (HTML code execution, etc) then
there is no problem.  In other words, the only problem that exists is that
which you created yourself.  So if you do something utterly stupid, you
deserve whatever you get in return.


E-mail Encryption Tools Are No Longer Safe, Researchers Say (Fortune)

Gabe Goldberg <gabe@gabegold.com>
Mon, 14 May 2018 15:06:45 -0400
Throughout the many arguments over encrypted communications, there has been
at least one constant: the venerable tools for strong email encryption are
trustworthy. That may no longer be true.

On Tuesday, well-credentialed cybersecurity researchers will detail what
they call critical vulnerabilities in widely-used tools for applying PGP/GPG
and S/MIME encryption. According to Sebastian Schinzel, a professor at the
Münster University of Applied Sciences in Germany, the flaws could reveal
the plaintext that email encryption is supposed to cover up—in both
current and old emails.

The researchers are advising everyone to temporarily stop using plugins for
mail clients like Microsoft Outlook and Apple Mail that automatically
encrypt and decrypt emails—at least until someone figures out how to
remedy the situation. Instead, experts say, people should switch to tools
like Signal, the encrypted messaging app that's bankrolled by WhatsApp
co-founder Brian Acton.

http://fortune.com/2018/05/14/email-encryption-tool-vulnerability-cybersecurity-warning/


Not So Pretty: What You Need to Know About E-Fail and the PGP Flaw (EFF)

Dewayne Hendricks <dewayne@warpspeed.com>
Tue, May 15, 2018 at 12:38 AM
Erica Portnoy, Danny O'Brien, and Nate Cardozo, EFF, 14 May 2018
http://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2018/05/not-so-pretty-what-you-need-know-about-e-fail-and-pgp-flaw-0

Don't panic! But you should stop using PGP for encrypted email and switch
to a different secure communications method for now.

A group of researchers released a paper today that describes a new class of
serious vulnerabilities in PGP (including GPG), the most popular email
encryption standard. The new paper includes a proof-of-concept exploit that
can allow an attacker to use the victim's own email client to decrypt
previously acquired messages and return the decrypted content to the
attacker without alerting the victim. The proof of concept is only one
implementation of this new type of attack, and variants may follow in the
coming days.

Because of the straightforward nature of the proof of concept, the severity
of these security vulnerabilities, the range of email clients and plugins
affected, and the high level of protection that PGP users need and expect,
EFF is advising PGP users to pause in their use of the tool and seek other
modes of secure end-to-end communication for now.

Because we are awaiting the response from the security community of the
flaws highlighted in the paper, we recommend that for now you uninstall or
disable your PGP email plug-in. These steps are intended as a temporary,
conservative stopgap until the immediate risk of the exploit has passed and
been mitigated against by the wider community. There may be simpler
mitigations available soon, as vendors and commentators develop narrower
solutions, but this is the safest stance to take for now. Because sending
PGP-encrypted emails to an unpatched client will create adverse ecosystem
incentives to open incoming emails, any of which could be maliciously
crafted to expose ciphertext to attackers.

While you may not be directly affected, the other participants in your
encrypted conversations are likely to be. For this attack, it isn't
important whether the sender or the receiver of the original secret message
is targeted. This is because a PGP message is encrypted to both of their
keys.

At EFF, we have relied on PGP extensively both internally and to secure
much of our external-facing email communications. Because of the severity
of the vulnerabilities disclosed today, we are temporarily dialing down our
use of PGP for both internal and external email.

Our recommendations may change as new information becomes available, and we
will update this post when that happens.

How The Vulnerabilities Work

PGP, which stands for Pretty Good Privacy, was first released nearly 27
years ago by Phil Zimmermann. Extraordinarily innovative for the time, PGP
transformed the level of privacy protection available for digital
communications, and has provided tech-savvy users with the ability to
encrypt files and send secure email to people they've never met. Its strong
security has protected the messages of journalists, whistleblowers,
dissidents, and human rights defenders for decades. While PGP is now a
privately-owned tool, an open source implementation called GNU Privacy
Guard (GPG) has been widely adopted by the security community in a number
of contexts, and is described in the OpenPGP Internet standards document.

The paper describes a series of vulnerabilities that all have in common
their ability to expose email contents to an attacker when the target opens
a maliciously crafted email sent to them by the attacker. In these attacks,
the attacker has obtained a copy of an encrypted message, but was unable to
decrypt it.

The first attack is a direct exfiltration attack that is caused by the
details of how mail clients choose to display HTML to the user. The
attacker crafts a message that includes the old encrypted message. The
new message is constructed in such a way that the mail software
displays the entire decrypted message—including the captured
ciphertext—as unencrypted text. Then the email client's HTML parser
immediately sends or exfiltrates the decrypted message to a server
that the attacker controls.

The second attack abuses the underspecification of certain details in the
OpenPGP standard to exfiltrate email contents to the attacker by modifying
a previously captured ciphertext. Here are some technical details of the
vulnerability, in plain-as-possible language:

When you encrypt a message to someone else, it scrambles the information
into ciphertext such that only the recipient can transform it back into
readable plaintext.  But with some encryption algorithms, an attacker can
modify the ciphertext, and the rest of the message will still decrypt back
into the correct plaintext. This property is called malleability. This
means that they can change the message that you read, even if they can't
read it themselves.

To address the problem of malleability, modern encryption algorithms add
mechanisms to ensure integrity, or the property that assures the recipient
that the message hasn't been tampered with. But the OpenPGP standard says
that it's ok to send a message that doesn't come with an integrity check.
And worse, even if the message does come with an integrity check, there are
known ways to strip off that check. Plus, the standard doesn't say what to
do when the check fails, so some email clients just tell you that the check
failed, but show you the message anyway. ...

http://dewaynenet.wordpress.com/feed/


"T-Mobile bug let anyone see any customer's account details" (Zack Whittaker)

Gene Wirchenko <genew@telus.net>
Thu, 24 May 2018 18:24:24 -0700
Zack Whittaker for Zero Day | 24 May 2018

http://www.zdnet.com/article/tmobile-bug-let-anyone-see-any-customers-account-details/

T-Mobile bug let anyone see any customer's account details Exclusive: The
exposed lookup tool let anyone run a customer's phone number—and obtain
their home address and account PIN, used to contact phone support.

selected text:

A bug in T-Mobile's website let anyone access the personal account details
of any customer with just their cell phone number.

The flaw, since fixed, could have been exploited by anyone who knew where to
look—a little-known T-Mobile subdomain that staff use as a customer care
portal to access the company's internal tools.

Although the API is understood to be used by T-Mobile staff to look up
account details, it wasn't protected with a password and could be easily
used by anyone.

The returned data included a customer's full name, postal address, billing
account number, and in some cases information about tax identification
numbers.  The data also included customers' account information, such as if
a bill is past-due or if the customer had their service suspended.

The data also included references to account PINs used by customers as a
security question when contacting phone support. Anyone could use that
information to hijack accounts.

  [Gene also contributed a previous item from Zack Whittaker om 17 May
  on the same subject:
http://www.zdnet.com/article/cell-phone-tracking-firm-exposed-millions-of-americans-real-time-locations/
  I think the more recent one suffices here.  PGN]


"Senator wants to know how police can locate any phone in seconds without a warrant" (Zach Whittaker)

Gene Wirchenko <genew@telus.net>
Fri, 18 May 2018 09:27:33 -0700
Zack Whittaker for Zero Day | May 11, 2018
http://www.zdnet.com/article/securus-police-cell-phones-warrantless-tracking/

Senator wants to know how police can locate any phone in seconds without a
warrant.  Real-time location data was accessible by police under "the legal
equivalent of a pinky promise," said a senator who is demanding that the FCC
investigate why a company, contracted to monitor calls of prison inmates,
also allows police to track phones of anyone in the US without a warrant.

The bombshell story in *The New York Times& revealed Securus, a Texas-based
prison technology company, could track any phone "within seconds" by
obtaining data from cellular giants—including AT&T, Sprint, T-Mobile, and
Verizon—typically reserved for marketers.


"US cell carriers are selling access to your real-time phone location data" (Zach Whittaker)

Gene Wirchenko <genew@telus.net>
Fri, 18 May 2018 09:29:13 -0700
Zack Whittaker, Zero Day, 14 May 2018
http://www.zdnet.com/article/us-cell-carriers-selling-access-to-real-time-location-data/

US cell carriers are selling access to your real-time phone location data
The company embroiled in a privacy row has "direct connections" to all major
US wireless carriers, including AT&T, Verizon, T-Mobile, and Sprint—and
Canadian cell networks, too.

Four of the largest cell giants in the US are selling your real-time
location data to a company that you've probably never heard about before.

In case you missed it, a senator last week sent a letter demanding the
Federal Communications Commission (FCC) investigate why Securus, a prison
technology company, can track any phone "within seconds" by using data
obtained from the country's largest cell giants, including AT&T, Verizon,
T-Mobile, and Sprint, through an intermediary, LocationSmart.


Hundreds of Apps Can Empower Stalkers to Track Their Victims (The New York Times)

Richard M Stein <rmstein@ieee.org>
Sat, 19 May 2018 07:36:23 -0700
http://mobile.nytimes.com/2018/05/19/technology/phone-apps-stalking.html

  'KidGuard is a phone app that markets itself as a tool for keeping tabs on
  children. But it has also promoted its surveillance for other purposes and
  run blog posts with headlines like *How to Read Deleted Texts on Your
  Lover's Phone.*

  'A similar app, mSpy, offered advice to a woman on secretly monitoring her
  husband. Still another, Spyzie, ran ads on Google alongside results for
  search terms like *catch cheating girlfriend iPhone*.

  'As digital tools that gather cellphone data for tracking children,
  friends or lost phones have multiplied in recent years, so have the
  options for people who abuse the technology to track others without
  consent.'

Surveillance capitalism is booming. These apps are e^(to the creepy).


"Voice squatting attacks: Hacks turn Amazon Alexa, Google Home into secret eavesdroppers" (CSO Online)

Gene Wirchenko <genew@telus.net>
Fri, 18 May 2018 15:06:20 -0700
http://www.csoonline.com/article/3273929/security/voice-squatting-attacks-hacks-turn-amazon-alexa-google-home-into-secret-eavesdroppers.html

Voice squatting attacks: Hacks turn Amazon Alexa, Google Home into secret
eavesdroppers.  Researchers devise new two new attacks—voice squatting
and voice masquerading—on Amazon Alexa and Google Home, allowing
adversaries to steal personal information or silently eavesdrop.

Ms. Smith, CSO | 17 May 2018

Ms. Smith (not her real name) is a freelance writer and programmer with a
special and somewhat personal interest in IT privacy and security issues.

opening text:

Oh, goody, Amazon Alexa and/or Google Home could be hit with remote,
large-scale "voice squatting" and "voice masquerading" attacks to steal
sensitive user information or eavesdrop on conversations.


So, Umm, Google Duplex's Chatter Is Not Quite Human (Scientific American)

Richard M Stein <rmstein@ieee.org>
Fri, 18 May 2018 17:56:12 -0700
http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/so-umm-google-duplexs-chatter-is-not-quite-human/

  "Google’s Duplex voice assistant drew applause last week at the company’s
  annual I/O developer conference after CEO Sundar Pichai demonstrated the
  artificially intelligent technology autonomously booking a hair salon
  appointment and a restaurant reservation, apparently fooling the people
  who took the calls. But enthusiasm has since been tempered with unease
  over the ethics of a computer making phone calls under the guise of being
  human. Such a mixed reception has become increasingly common for Google,
  Amazon, Facebook and other tech companies as they push AI's boundaries in
  ways that do not always seem to consider consumer privacy or safety
  concerns."


Henry Kissinger Is Scared of 'Unstable' Artificial Intelligence (The Wrap)

Lauren Weinstein <lauren@vortex.com>
Fri, 18 May 2018 08:27:18 -0700
via NNSquad
http://www.thewrap.com/henry-kissinger-is-scared-of-unstable-artificial-intelligence/

  The former U.S. secretary of state is warning against the threat of
  "unstable" artificial intelligence in a new essay in The Atlantic --
  fearing the rapid rise of machines could lead to questions humanity is not
  ready to tackle.


Service Meant to Monitor Inmates' Calls Could Track You, Too (NYT)

Monty Solomon <monty@roscom.com>
Sat, 19 May 2018 17:56:25 -0700
http://www.nytimes.com/2018/05/10/technology/cellphone-tracking-law-enforcement.html

A company catering to law enforcement and corrections officers has raised
privacy concerns with a product that can locate almost anyone's cellphone
across the United States.


Gunshot Sensors Pinpoint Destructive Fish Bombs (SciAm)

Richard M Stein <rmstein@ieee.org>
Fri, 18 May 2018 17:53:59 -0700
http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/gunshot-sensors-pinpoint-destructive-fish-bombs/

  "Rogue fishers around the world toss explosives into the sea and scoop up
  bucketloads of stunned or dead fish, an illegal practice in many nations
  that can destroy coral reefs and wreak havoc on marine biodiversity.
  Catching perpetrators amid the vastness of the ocean has long proved
  almost impossible, but researchers working in Malaysia have now adapted
  acoustic sensors”originally used to locate urban gunfire”to pinpoint these
  marine blasts within tens of meters."

Example of dual-use technology for public and environmental safety
maintenance.


Most GDPR emails unnecessary and some illegal, say experts (The Guardian)

Lauren Weinstein <lauren@vortex.com>
Mon, 21 May 2018 12:04:35 -0700
NNSquad
http://www.theguardian.com/technology/2018/may/21/gdpr-emails-mostly-unnecessary-and-in-some-cases-illegal-say-experts

  The vast majority of emails flooding inboxes across Europe from companies
  asking for consent to keep recipients on their mailing list are
  unnecessary and some may be illegal, privacy experts have said, as new
  rules over data privacy come into force at the end of this week.

AND EVEN WORSE: "Warning: New European Privacy Law Has Become a
Jackpot for Internet Crooks" -

http://lauren.vortex.com/2018/05/01/warning-new-european-privacy-law-has-become-a-jackpot-for-internet-crooks


The Pentagon Has a Big Plan to Solve Identity Verification in Two Years (Defense One)

Gabe Goldberg <gabe@gabegold.com>
Wed, 23 May 2018 13:58:50 -0400
The plan grew out of efforts to modernize the Defense Department's ID cards.

The Defense Department is funding a project that officials say could
revolutionize the way companies, federal agencies and the military itself
verify that people are who they say they are and it could be available in
most commercial smartphones within two years.

The technology, which will be embedded in smartphones’ hardware, will
analyze a variety of identifiers that are unique to an individual, such as
the hand pressure and wrist tension when the person holds a smartphone and
the person’s peculiar gait while walking, said Steve Wallace, technical
director at the Defense Information Systems Agency.

Organizations that use the tool can combine those identifiers to give the
phone holder a “risk score,” Wallace said. If the risk score is low enough,
the organization can presume the person is who she says she is and grant her
access to sensitive files on the phone or on a connected computer or grant
her access to a secure facility. If the score’s too high, she’ll be locked
out.

http://www.defenseone.com/technology/2018/05/pentagon-has-big-plan-solve-identity-verification-two-years/148280/


Unplug Your Echo! (Ars Technica)

"Peter G. Neumann" <neumann@csl.sri.com>
Thu, 24 May 2018 17:41:32 PDT
  [Thanks to Phil Porras]
http://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2018/05/amazon-confirms-that-echo-device-secretly-shared-users-private-audio/

Amazon confirmed an Echo owner's privacy-sensitive allegation on Thursday,
after Seattle CBS affiliate KIRO-7 reported that an Echo device in Oregon
sent private audio to someone on a user's contact list without permission.
...."Unplug your Alexa devices right now," the user, Danielle (no last name
given), was told by her husband's colleague in Seattle after he received
full audio recordings between her and her husband, according to the KIRO-7
report. The disturbed owner, who is shown in the report juggling four
unplugged Echo Dot devices, said that the colleague then sent the offending
audio to Danielle and her husband to confirm the paranoid-sounding
allegation.  (Before sending the audio, the colleague confirmed that the
couple had been talking about hardwood floors.)

After calling Amazon customer service, Danielle said she received the
following explanation and response: "'Our engineers went through all of your
logs. They saw exactly what you told us, exactly what you said happened, and
we're sorry.' He apologized like 15 times in a matter of 30 minutes.  'This
is something we need to fix.'" ...  Ya think?


FBI dramatically overstates how many phones they can't get into (WaPo)

"Peter G. Neumann" <neumann@csl.sri.com>
Tue, 22 May 2018 18:15:53 PDT
http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/fbi-repeatedly-overstated-encryption-threat-figures-to-congress-public/2018/05/22/5b68ae90-5dce-11e8-a4a4-c070ef53f315_story.html

The FBI has repeatedly provided grossly inflated statistics to Congress and
the public about the extent of problems posed by encrypted cellphones,
claiming investigators were locked out of nearly 7,800 devices connected to
crimes last year when the correct number was much smaller, probably between
1,000 and 2,000, The Washington Post has learned.  [They've actually been
triple-counting!  PGN]

Over a period of seven months, FBI Director Christopher A. Wray cited the
inflated figure as the most compelling evidence for the need to address what
the FBI calls Going Dark—the spread of encrypted software that can block
investigators' access to digital data even with a court order.

The FBI first became aware of the miscount about a month ago and still does
not have an accurate count of how many encrypted phones they received as
part of criminal investigations last year, officials said. Last week, one
internal estimate put the correct number of locked phones at 1,200, though
officials expect that number to change as they launch a new audit, which
could take weeks to complete, according to people familiar with the work. [...]

  [See EFF's take on this:
http://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2018/05/fbi-admits-it-inflated-number-supposedly-unhackable-devices
  PGN]


"Google to remove "secure" indicator from HTTPS pages on Chrome" (ZDNet)

Gene Wirchenko <genew@telus.net>
Fri, 18 May 2018 09:13:42 -0700
  [In other news, your local second-level (province, state, prefecture,
  etc.) government announced plans to remove those curve speed caution signs
  to make the roads safer.  Well, not actually.  They have a bit more sense
  than Google. GW]

http://www.zdnet.com/article/google-to-remove-secure-indicator-from-https-pages-on-chrome/

Stephanie Condon, ZDNet, 17 May 2018
Google to remove "secure" indicator from HTTPS pages on Chrome
Users should expect the web to be safe by default, Google explained.

As part of its push to make the web safer, Google on Thursday said it will
stop marking HTTPS pages as "secure."

The logic behind the move, Google explained, is that "users should expect
that the web is safe by default." It will remove the green padlock and
"secure" wording from the address bar beginning with Chrome 69 in September.


Google's Selfish Ledger is an unsettling vision of Silicon Valley social engineering (The Verge)

Gabe Goldberg <gabe@gabegold.com>
Thu, 17 May 2018 15:55:43 -0400
Google has built a multibillion-dollar business out of knowing everything
about its users. Now, a video produced within Google and obtained by The
Verge offers a stunningly ambitious and unsettling look at how some at the
company envision using that information in the future.

The video was made in late 2016 by Nick Foster, the head of design at X
(formerly Google X), and a co-founder of the Near Future Laboratory. The
video, shared internally within Google, imagines a future of total data
collection, where Google helps nudge users into alignment with their goals,
custom-prints personalized devices to collect more data, and even guides the
behavior of entire populations to solve global problems like poverty and
disease.

When reached for comment on the video, an X spokesperson provided the
following statement to The Verge:

  “We understand if this is disturbing—it is designed to be. This is a
  thought-experiment by the Design team from years ago that uses a technique
  known as ‘speculative design’ to explore uncomfortable ideas and concepts
  in order to provoke discussion and debate. It's not related to any current
  or future products.”

http://www.theverge.com/2018/5/17/17344250/google-x-selfish-ledger-video-data-privacy


"A flaw in a connected alarm system exposed vehicles to remote hacking" (ZDNet)

Gene Wirchenko <genew@telus.net>
Fri, 18 May 2018 09:31:10 -0700
Zack Whittaker for Zero Day | 17 May 2018
http://www.zdnet.com/article/flaw-connected-alarm-system-exposed-vehicles-remote-hacking/

The researchers said it was easy to locate a nearby car, unlock it, and
drive away.

opening text:

A bug that allowed two researchers to gain access to the backend systems of
a popular Internet-connected vehicle management system could have given a
malicious hacker everything they needed to track the vehicle's location,
steal user information, and even cut out the engine.

In a disclosure this week, the researchers Vangelis Stykas and George
Lavdanis detailed a bug in a misconfigured server run by Calamp, a
telematics company that provides vehicle security and tracking, which gave
them "direct access to most of its production databases."


Syrian hackers who tricked reporters indicted (WashPo)

Monty Solomon <monty@roscom.com>
Thu, 17 May 2018 20:55:36 -0700
The pair used phishing schemes to compromise news organizations.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/local/public-safety/syrian-hackers-who-allegedly-tricked-reporters-indicted/2018/05/17/069ef328-59e7-11e8-858f-12becb4d6067_story.html


"Cisco critical flaw warning: These 10/10 severity bugs need patching now" (ZDNet)

Gene Wirchenko <genew@telus.net>
Fri, 18 May 2018 08:57:22 -0700
Liam Tung, ZDNet, 17 May 2018

http://www.zdnet.com/article/cisco-critical-flaw-warning-these-1010-severity-bugs-need-patching-now/

Cisco critical flaw warning: These 10/10 severity bugs need patching now
Cisco's software for managing software-defined networks has three critical,
remotely exploitable vulnerabilities.


Is technology bringing history to life or distorting it? (WashPo)

Monty Solomon <monty@roscom.com>
Thu, 17 May 2018 21:01:00 -0700
  From a digitized JFK speech that he never gave to colorized Lincoln and
  Holocaust photos, scholars are debating a wave of historical re-creation
  and manipulation.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/news/retropolis/wp/2018/05/10/is-technology-bringing-history-to-life-or-distorting-it/


Massachusetts ponders hiring a computer to grade MCAS essays. What could go wrong? (The Boston Globe)

Monty Solomon <monty@roscom.com>
Tue, 22 May 2018 09:26:21 -0400
http://www.bostonglobe.com/metro/2018/05/21/mass-ponders-hiring-computer-grade-mcas-essays-what-could-wrong/D7fX11PReUWzVsAAdqC1qN/story.html


Grocery store censors cake with request for 'summa cum laude' (The Boston Globe)

Monty Solomon <monty@roscom.com>
Tue, 22 May 2018 09:18:13 -0400
http://www.bostonglobe.com/news/nation/2018/05/22/grocery-store-censors-cake-with-request-for-summa-cum-laude/npFzLAzg2b7w54247o3MIO/story.html

  [I won't insult long-time RISKS readers with pointers to the predecessors
  of this item.  There are too many.  PGN]


The surprising return of the repo man (WashPo)

Monty Solomon <monty@roscom.com>
Wed, 16 May 2018 07:47:04 -0400
New technology and bad auto loans mean more cars are being taken back.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/business/economy/the-surprising-return-of-the-repo-man/2018/05/15/26fcd30e-4d5a-11e8-af46-b1d6dc0d9bfe_story.html


Trump feels presidential smartphone security is too inconvenient (Ars Technica)

Gabe Goldberg <gabe@gabegold.com>
Tue, 22 May 2018 15:59:15 -0400
Report: President Trump clings to his Twitter phone, reluctant to allow
security checks.

http://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2018/05/trump-feels-presidential-smartphone-security-is-too-inconvenient/

Security ... inconvenient. Who knew?


Trump Jr. and Other Aides Met With Gulf Emissary Offering Help to Win Election (NY Times)

Lauren Weinstein <lauren@vortex.com>
Sat, 19 May 2018 10:22:51 -0700
NNSquad
http://www.nytimes.com/2018/05/19/us/politics/trump-jr-saudi-uae-nader-prince-zamel.html?smid=tw-nytimes&smtyp=cur

  Three months before the 2016 election, a small group gathered at Trump
  Tower to meet with Donald Trump Jr., the president's eldest son. One was
  an Israeli specialist in social media manipulation. Another was an
  emissary for two wealthy Arab princes. The third was a Republican donor
  with a controversial past in the Middle East as a private security
  contractor.


Re: Securing Elections (RISKS-30.69)

"Mark E. Smith" <mymark@gmail.com>
Thu, 17 May 2018 10:00:20 -0700
PGN cites Bruce Schneier:

  "Elections serve two purposes. The first, and obvious, purpose is to
  accurately choose the winner. But the second is equally important: to
  convince the loser. To the extent that an election system is not
  transparently and auditably accurate, it fails in that second purpose.
  Our election systems are failing, and we need to fix them."

Elections serve a third purpose, one which I think is much more important
than accurately choosing a winner and convincing the loser: US elections are
intended to make people think that they have a say in government when they
don't.

Some of the framers of the Constitution were concerned about the possibility
of the "mob and rabble" eventually getting the vote and using it to obtain a
voice in government. So they made no Constitutional provision that the
popular vote had to be counted (Bush v. Gore 2000). They also took other
precautions. They made Congress the sole judge of the "Elections, Returns,
and Qualifications" of its Members, and the only venue where the loser of a
rigged election could appeal. But by the time they file that appeal, the
"winner" has usually already been sworn into office, and Congress doesn't
like to remove sitting members, so if anyone is aware of an appeal that has
been successful, I'd like very much to know about it.

We are so accustomed to a losing candidate taking office, that it isn't even
noteworthy these days. The Supreme Court can intervene to seat the loser, or
the winner can concede and throw the election to the loser. In a democratic
system, such events would result in a new election, not in handing over
office to somebody who wasn't elected.

These realizations and others led me to informally poll the groups of
election integrity activists I was part of at that time, with shocking
results. I asked if they would still vote if the only permissible voting
machine was a flush toilet. Approximately 50% stated that they would
continue to vote, even if they knew for a fact that their vote would not be
counted and would be flushed away as soon as they cast their ballot. Some
angrily accused me to trying to take away their precious right to vote, for
which their ancestors had fought and died.

So I repeated the poll online and got the same result. About 50% of voters
appear to be concerned with casting their votes, not about whether their
votes are actually counted, no less counted accurately.  They associate
democracy with elections, so they believe that if they vote, whether or not
their votes are counted accurately (or at all), they are participating in
democracy.

If votes are not counted, or are not counted accurately, voters are not
electing anyone. But for a political system to be called democratic, voters
would have to have a way to hold their elected officials accountable. Our
system does this by allowing voters to cast more uncounted, miscounted, or
overruled ballots once the incumbent's term of office is over. So if someone
is elected, whether legitimately or fraudulently, and then decides to
destroy the country (perhaps by nuking a few cities to end the homelessness
and poverty problems, or some other ill-conceived ventures), the voters can
do nothing but wait until their term in office is over, if anyone has
survived, to try to hold them "accountable" by "electing" another
unaccountable official.  There is no right of recall at the federal level,
therefore no means of holding "elected" officials accountable in a timely
way.

With mail-in ballots, which seem to predominate these days, there is no
chain-of-custody possible. The offices of election officials are closed to
the public between the election and the certification, and official
observers aren't always notified when votes are counted, so corrupt
elections officials have plenty of time to manufacture phantom votes, stuff
the electronic "ballot boxes," and manipulate the actual results to match
the results they want. As for audits, you can't ask for an audit until after
the election has been certified (election officials certify only that an
election was held in accordance with law, not that it was accurate), by
which time the fraudulent "winner" has usually already been sworn into
office and cannot be removed except by Congress. Many Members of Congress,
like Nancy Pelosi, believe that it is more important that constituents be
represented, than that they be represented by the person they voted
for. Members of Congress are very well aware that voters have no way to hold
them accountable, so they see no difference between people being
"represented" by candidates who will and candidates who won't actually
represent their interests. Once you vote (and hopefully donate to the
campaign war chests of a few billionaires), your job is done and the
elections have been a success. People who vote believe, at a minimum, that
there might be a slight chance that their vote could be counted and that
someone willing to represent them might be elected, so the primary purpose
of elections, to make people think that they have a voice in government when
they don't, has been achieved.

Even if we could somehow manage to get them, transparent, auditable
elections wouldn't eliminate risks to democracy. Our system, under a
Constitution where the votes don't have to be counted, the Supreme Court can
intervene to change the outcome, and those elected can't be held
accountable, isn't electoral democracy, it is electoral tyranny, and your
vote is your consent.


Re: Dark code (DW, RISKS-30.69)

Kelly Bert Manning <bo774@freenet.carleton.ca>
Sat, 19 May 2018 11:56:43 -0400
I never had any problem getting COBOL to interact with other languages, from
PL/I to FORTRAN, C, and assembler. If you Read the Fine Manual and followed
the guidance it worked even before IBM Language Environment united them into
a single run time environment. Legacy COBOL didn't have function calls, but
those could be replaced by a parameterized subroutine call with the output
variables as named arguments in the call parameter list.

At the 2014 IEEE International Conference on Software Maintenance and
Evolution I was struck by the absence of any interest or work in applying
the very effective techniques developed for refactoring C and Java code to
COBOL. I would have thought that there is a huge market for something that
can process legacy COBOL code and refactor it into COBOL or newer languages,
recovering and improving the design along the way.

COBOL is a relatively orthogonal language. There is usually only one
obvious or builtin way to do something, In PL/I there are usually 10
different ways, few of which give optimal performance. Once you have
considered
   ADD GIN TO VERMOUTH GIVING MARTINI;
there aren't a lot of other options beyond
   COMPUTE MARTINI = VERMOUTH + GIN;

http://ieeexplore.ieee.org/xpl/mostRecentIssue.jsp?punumber=6969845

Working with Honeywell COBOL was something of a challenge, because byte size
varied from 4 to 9 bits, depending on the Data Type. That could give some
surprising 4 bit to 8 or 9 bit text conversion results when Group moves were
interpreted as text based moves of a number of bytes. Packed Decimal data
fields were considered to be 4 bit text, with every 9th bit a slack bit to
restore alignment on a 9 or 36 bit boundary on those 36 bit word
machines. Going through an IBM structured EBCDIC, binary and decimal tape
master file deciding how to convert series of bytes to an appropriate HIS
COBOL ASCII, binary or decimal format, depending on the context and data
segment prefix was challenging, but doable. Ditto for the reverse process
creating a tape to send back to the IBM computer in the same data centre.


Re: Dark Code (DW, RISKS-30.69)

"Richard O'Keefe" <raoknz@gmail.com>
Mon, 21 May 2018 22:44:51 +1200
The article noted by Wendy Grossman says things like "COBOL has to evolve"
and implies that interoperation with new systems is especially different.

COBOL *has* evolved.  The current standard is from 2014.  If you want to
interoperate with Java, there are COBOL compilers that do that (like Elastic
COBOL).  If you want to interoperate with .Net, there's NetCOBOL to do that.
And since standard COBOL has been an OO language since 2002, those are
better fits than you might think.  Modern compilers are catching up with the
standards, but it always takes time.  What if you want to interoperate using
XML or JSON?  IBM's COBOL for z/OS, release 6.2 supports XML and has JSON
PARSE and JSON GENERATE statements.

Of course modern COBOL is still COBOL underneath and while I'm OK reading
it, I would have to be paid large sums of money to write it.  Though the
various Eclipse plugins that exist for COBOL should make that a lot easier
than it used to be.

So if COBOL *has* evolved and *does* interoperate and *does* have modern
development tools, what's the problem?

Well, COBOL has evolved, for one thing.  I rather liked the compatibility
remark in the Brand X documentation: a certain aspect used to be
incompatible with the standard, but the standard has changed, and now we are
compatible.  And COBOL interoperates: if you have a COBOL program that used
DMS II or IMS adapting it to a different data base system won't be easy.
There's one large COBOL system I'm aware of where out of (operating system,
data base system, programming language) COBOL is the *best* known part
today.

As for training, COBOL is verbose in the extreme and the standards and
reference materials combine long-windedness with less precision than I'm
comfortable with, BUT it's really not that hard to learn.  And if people
succeeded in writing useful programs that are still running decades later,
that says *something* positive about the language.

I suspect the problems are mostly mundane ones of poor documentation,
inadequate test sets, institutional knowledge lost when people resigned,
retired, or died, all of which have nothing to do with the language.


Fitness App Leads To Arrest For Attack On McLean Cyclist (McLean, VA Patch)

Gabe Goldberg <gabe@gabegold.com>
Fri, 18 May 2018 16:45:12 -0400
http://patch.com/virginia/mclean/fitness-app-leads-arrest-attack-mclean-cyclist

Not quite a risk to the user—more a public service finding him as violent
assailant.  But more details would have been nice, e.g., how police
identified tracker used, then person wearing it.


Man Is Charged With Hacking West Point and Government Websites (NYT)

Monty Solomon <monty@roscom.com>
Sat, 19 May 2018 17:54:44 -0700
http://www.nytimes.com/2018/05/10/nyregion/hacker-west-point-nyc-comptroller.html

The man, who is thought to have hacked thousands of sites around the world,
was arrested in California and could face up to 21 years in prison.

"But some social media watchers said they were still surprised at the speed
with which the Santa Fe shooting descended into information warfare.
Sampson said he watched the clock after the suspect was first named by
police to see how long it would take for a fake Facebook account to be
created in the suspect's name: less than 20 minutes."

If, as a hypothetical, Facebook required formal authentication of identity
for account creation, such as confirmation of applicant's existence via a
national birth registry, bona fide biometric comparison, and revenue/tax
authority check, fake users would approach zero. This assumes these
credentials are not stolen, or these government entities are not
man-in-the-middle attack subjects.

Internet anonymity would become harder to achieve along with criticism and
free discussion of important global, national, and local issues that
anonymity often promotes.

Authentication, in a democracy, appears strongest for convicted criminals
and individuals possessing security clearances. Expense and the law
forestall establishment of mandatory, nation-wide authentication
identification franchise.

Will future political expedience compel adoption? An informed electorate
should possess the wisdom and exclusive right to decide on this ominous
subject.


Fake Facebook accounts and online lies multiply in hours after Santa Fe school shooting (WashPo)

Monty Solomon <monty@roscom.com>
Sat, 19 May 2018 15:24:51 -0700
It has become a familiar pattern in the all-too-common aftermath of American
school shootings: A barrage of online misinformation, seemingly designed to
cloud the truth or win political points. But some were still surprised at
the speed with which the Santa Fe shooting descended into information
warfare.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-switch/wp/2018/05/18/fake-facebook-accounts-and-viral-lies-multiply-in-hours-after-santa-fe-school-shooting/

  [See also: Russian Trolls Instantly Spread Fake News Online About Alleged
  Santa Fe School Shooter (Dimitrios Pagourtzis),
http://www.inquisitr.com/4905300/dimitrios-pagourtzis-russian-trolls-facebook-santa-fe-school-shooter/
  PGN]


Re: "Warning: Dangerous Fake Emails About Google Privacy Changes" (RISKS-30.69)

"Wol's lists" <antlists@youngman.org.uk>
Thu, 17 May 2018 11:29:20 +0100
I am to some extent involved (in that I have some minimal legal liability)
in the implementation of the GDPR, and all I can say is that whole-heartedly
approve. In Europe we seem to have this belief - apparently unheard of to
Americans - that openness and fair dealing is much better all round.

The GDPR enshrines good practice in law. It merely forces organisations to
do what they should have been doing anyway. It also outlaws a bunch of sharp
practices - which is why it's causing so much grief because those sharp
practices were also common practice.

The law divides into two groups, data USERS and data SUBJECTS. It places an
obligation on data users to obtain *informed* consent. It also places an
obligation to have a *record* of such consent. Which is why you're getting
all these emails and letters to opt back in.

Because so many permissions were granted by data SUBJECTS who didn't realise
that the data USER had kindly pre-ticked a bunch of permission boxes giving
the data user permission to do pretty much anything they wanted to. This
sharp practice is now illegal.

It also reinforces the right of the data SUBJECT to have any data the data
user holds about them to be corrected or deleted (subject to other legal
constraints, of course).

In summary, if you are a decent organisation (the law doesn't apply to
individuals), doing things properly, and keeping a decent paper trail, this
legislation is pretty much a non-event.

Of course, this summary does not account for incompetent implementation of
the directive by politicians (par for the course, sadly), or incompetent
CxO's who don't understand the legislation (sadly also par for the
course). And sadly also apparently true for the person in charge of the
directive at my organisation :-(


Re: Not So Pretty: What You Need to Know About E-Fail and the PGP Flaw (EFF, RISKS-30.69)

Yooly <naha_x@yahoo.co.jp>
Wed, 23 May 2018 12:47:09 -0700
This is not a PGP flaw but a problem arising from using HTML in email, the
consequence of a stupid choice made years ago. I had assumed nobody would
bat an eye upon seeing the term "HTML" being mentioned in the same breath as
"mail client", but fortunately I was proven wrong: Atlantic Magazine's May
21, 2018, issue carries an article with the title "Email Is Dangerous", from
which I quote the following:

"Matt Blaze, an associate professor of computer and information science at
the University of Pennsylvania, took to Twitter after the Efail announcement
to say, 'I've long thought HTML email is the work of the devil, and now we
have proof I was right. But did you people listen? You never listen.'"

http://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2018/05/email-is-dangerous/560780/

Alternative URL, if the original URL for the article ends up broken in the message you read:
http://shorturl.at/gltZ6

Years ago, after someone had started using HTML with email, I tried to
convince people to refrain from using software that inserted HTML into their
messages, but this turned out to be a lost cause, so I have instead been
focusing on protecting myself: my mail software reliably strips all
JavaScript and HTML from messages before they end up in my Inbox - and I am
still alive and manage to communicate via email for work and pleasure (who'd
a'thunk?).


Re: Deadly Convenience: Keyless Cars and Their Carbon Monoxide Toll (NYT)

<>
Thu, 17 May 2018 11:09:41 -0400
I have such a car myself (not a Toyota, but another brand with "keyless"
operation).  It does have an audible and visual warning when I exit the
running car and take the key with me. But, I've exited the car, so what good
is the warning? I don't actually see and hear it until I get back into the
car. What I do hear is the engine running, both before I exit and after I
start walking. Was this model perhaps a hybrid that was in silent electric
mode at the time? And if so, wouldn't a better check be to not re-start the
engine without the keyfob sensed?


Re: Chinese GPS (RISKS-30.69)

Dimitri Maziuk <dmaziuk@bmrb.wisc.edu>
Fri, 18 May 2018 13:33:13 -0500
Nothing new there.

Back in the USSR it was the subject of many jokes, e.g. a foreign spy asking
a local about some landmark marked on his map that isn't there.  The local
answers "these maps are garbage, see that top-secret `nucular' missile plant
over there?—it's right next to that".


Re: The risk from robot weapons (RISKS-30.69)

Amos Shapir <amos083@gmail.com>
Sat, 19 May 2018 10:50:06 +0300
During WWII, the Russians trained dogs to hide under tanks when they heard
gunshots. Then they tied bombs to their backs and sent them to blow up
German tanks. Or so was the plan.

What the Russians did not take into account, was that the dogs were trained
with Russian tanks, which used diesel, but the German tanks used gasoline,
and smelled different. So when hearing gunshots, the dogs immediately ran
under the nearest *Russian* tank.

This tale is about natural intelligence, which we're suppose to understand.
The problem with AI, especially *learning machines*, is that we can try to
control what they do, but cannot control how they do it.

So we never know, even when we get correct answers, whether the machine had
found some logic path to the answer, or maybe the answer just *smells
right*. In the latter case, we might be surprised when asking questions we
do not know the right answer to.


Will You Be My Emergency Contact Takes On a Whole New Meaning (The New York Times)

Richard M Stein <rmstein@ieee.org>
Sun, 20 May 2018 09:42:48 -0700
http://www.nytimes.com/2018/05/17/health/emergency-contacts-genetic-research.html?rref=collection/sectioncollection/health

  "Will you be my emergency contact?

  "When you’re dating, the question is a sign that you’ve made it to the
  this-is-really-serious category. When you’re friends, it’s a sign that
  you’re truly beloved or truly responsible. And if you’re related, it may
  mean that you will now be entered into a medical study together so
  scientists can figure out if sinus infections or anxiety run in your
  family.

  "What? That's right. Researchers have begun experimenting with using
  emergency contacts gathered from medical records to build family trees
  that can be used to study the heritability of hundreds of different
  attributes, and possibly advance research into diseases and responses to
  medications."

HIPPA-restricted information becomes patient-surrendered anonymized
information for research purposes with a right-to-use disclosure form.
Networks of contacts await discovery for correlation with other reference
sources. Medical insurance industry should take note enhance patient
database surveillance activities.


This fertility doctor is pushing the boundaries of human reproduction—with little regulation (WashPo)

Monty Solomon <monty@roscom.com>
Sat, 19 May 2018 17:56:02 -0700
John Zhang produced a three-parent baby, implanted abnormal embryos and
wants to help 60-year-old women have children.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/national/health-science/this-fertility-doctor-is-pushing-the-boundaries-of-human-reproduction-with-little-regulation/2018/05/11/ea9105dc-1831-11e8-8b08-027a6ccb38eb_story.html


As DIY Gene Editing Gains Popularity, `Someone Is Going to Get Hurt' (NYTimes)

Monty Solomon <monty@roscom.com>
Sat, 19 May 2018 17:55:46 -0700
http://www.nytimes.com/2018/05/14/science/biohackers-gene-editing-virus.html

After researchers created a virus from mail-order DNA, geneticists sound the alarm about the genetic tinkering carried out in garages and living rooms.

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