Ta-ta, security: Bungling Tata devs leaked banks' code on public GitHub repo, says IT bloke

Found on The Register on Monday, 12 June 2017
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Staff at Indian outsourcing biz Tata Consultancy Service uploaded a huge trove of financial institutions' source code and internal documents to a public GitHub repository, an IT expert has claimed.

The documents related to programming work Tata was carrying out for six big Canadian banks, two well-known American financial organizations, a multinational Japanese bank, and a multibillion dollar financial software company. The data is a boon for rival organizations developing similar features, as well as criminals who could exploit any weaknesses in the designs to potentially steal millions.

Someone will really regret outsourcing such work to India, just to save a few dollars.

The tech world is rallying around a young developer who made a huge, embarrassing mistake

Found on Quartz on Sunday, 11 June 2017
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On the first day as a junior software developer at a first salaried job out of college, his or her copy-and-paste error inadvertently erased all data from the company’s production database.

The company made several. It didn’t back up the database. It had poor security procedures and a sloppily-organized system that encouraged the very error cscareerthrowaway567 made. Then, rather than taking accountability for those problems, the CTO fired the rookie who revealed them. Of all the errors this company made, that last might be the most destructive to their future success.

Errors happen, and yes, this one is amongst the most catastrophic and embarrassing a rookie can make on his first day. To blame however is soley the company, who put the passwords to their main production database into a manual that's handed out to newbies and let him work on their network without anybody next to him to help. What's worse, their backup strategy was obviously non-existant too and instead of blaming those who were in charge, the CTO took it all out on the rookie who stumbled into the problem.

BBC Says It May Contact Your Boss If You Post Comments It Finds Problematic

Found on Techdirt on Friday, 19 May 2017
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There are all sorts of different ways that websites that allow comments have dealt with trollish behavior over the years, but I think the BBC's new policy is the first I've seen in which the organization threatens that it may contact your boss or your school.

To be fair, it does seem to limit this to cases where it believes you've violated the law, but even so, it seems like a stretch to argue that the BBC should be calling your boss to tell on you for being a dipshit online, even if you break the law.

Anybody with $0.02 worth of white matter between their ears will just use a VPN; and nobody who falls into this category would register with their real names anyway.

Ransomware cyber-attack threat escalating - Europol

Found on BBC News on Sunday, 14 May 2017
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In England, 48 National Health Service (NHS) trusts reported problems at hospitals, GP surgeries or pharmacies, and 13 NHS organisations in Scotland were also affected.

What occurred was an "indiscriminate attack across the world on multiple industries and services", Mr Wainwright said, including Germany's rail network Deutsche Bahn, Spanish telecommunications operator Telefonica, US logistics giant FedEx and Russia's interior ministry.

Don't forget to thank the NSA for not filing a bugreport to get this problem fixed before all this happened.

WhatsApp offline for several hours

Found on BBC News on Thursday, 04 May 2017
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A second statement from the company, released after the service had been restored, said: "Earlier today, WhatsApp users in all parts of the world were unable to access WhatsApp for a few hours.

Dave Anderson, a digital experience expert at Dynatrace, told the BBC he believed it was likely that an update to the app had caused the problem.

That's wghat you get for relying on a centralized system; there is no "too big to fail".

20,000 Chinese writers will create their own Wikipedia competitor

Found on Ars Technica on Tuesday, 02 May 2017
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The third edition of the Chinese Encyclopaedia will be "the nation's first digital book of 'everything,'" featuring 300,000 entries of about 1,000 words each, according to the South China Morning Post, which reported the news on Sunday.

Wikipedia has a long history of partial and sometimes full blocks in China. Currently, the SCMP reports that most of the Chinese-language Wikipedia is available in mainland China, but searching for articles on sensitive topics, such as the Dalai Lama, will lead to a lost connection.

The results will probably be as accurate as the local copy inside North Korea.

Facebook lets advertisers target insecure teens, says report

Found on CNet News on Monday, 01 May 2017
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Leaked documents from Facebook's team in Australia allegedly show the social giant's ability to help advertisers target teens who feel "worthless." The documents, first revealed by The Australian, say Facebook can spot when teens "need a confidence boost."

Studies have shown that social media has been linked to lower self-esteem for young people, with strong ties between using social networks and body image issues.

Farmers use their sheep to maximize profits. News at eleven.

Cloudflare Debuts Orbit Security Service to Protect IoT Devices

Found on eWEEK on Friday, 28 April 2017
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IoT devices can sometimes be difficult to update and might not be patched as rapidly as new exploits are discovered, which can expose users to risk. With Orbit, Cloudflare provides a barrier that will restrict IoT device communications to the Cloudflare platform, as well as providing a virtual patch.

Prince explained that instead of a device connecting directly through the public internet, an IoT device is routed through a buffer network (in this case Cloudflare) to provide security.

Maybe, just maybe, it would be better to make IoT manufacturers responsible for the crappy and bug-ridden devices they throw onto the market. Curing the symptoms is the wrong approach; even more so if you are routing your traffic through a company which can do in-depth analysis of possibly private and confidential data.

Can Twitter save itself?

Found on CNet News on Wednesday, 26 April 2017
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CEO Jack Dorsey proclaimed two months ago that Twitter is working harder than ever. There's been numerous tactics to make people and tweets to follow easier to find. The platform has also taken steps to curb abusive behavior from anonymous users. And, it's still hoping streaming events, ranging from sports to music to political satire, will bring success.

Twitter's numbers could be even lower, according to study released last month by the University of Southern California and Indiana University, which found that as many as 48 million Twitter accounts are fake.

There is no infinite growth, and at some point the market is saturated. A lot of people on the globe don't even have Internet access, and another big number just does not care. If Twitter would remove all fake accounts, and those who have multiple accounts, the numbers would be reduced quite a bit.

Instagram is back up, please resume your shameless food pics

Found on CNet News on Monday, 24 April 2017
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The social network, which boasts more than 500 million daily active users and 200 million users of its Stories feature, experienced several issues starting around 1:30 p.m. ET. Instagram didn't clarify what the cause was but said it was aware of issues with the app on Twitter.

It's so ridiculous; all the millenials claim that they are special little snowflakes, yet they all use the same services, like a good herd of sheep. That's not the diversity the fathers of the Internet envisioned.