STE WILLIAMS

But it can’t operate in a bubble, a new Washington Post study indicates.

It has been nearly six months since the Trump administration issued an order granting the military more authority to launch offensive cyber operations against American enemies. Sixty percent of cybersecurity experts approve of the decision, a new Washington Post study indicates.

Researchers polled The Network, a group of 100-plus government, business, and academic leaders who weigh in on security topics. Most applauded the government’s decision to let the defense secretary authorize offensive hacking. Several arguments supported the move, which was called “common sense” and “long overdue” among supporters. When used in combination with other military tactics, cyber operations can level the playing field, said one respondent.

Still, even those who back the government’s plan are wary of giving the military power to deploy offensive measures without communicating with other government agencies. The 40% of respondents who disagreed with the decision voiced the same worries. Acting solo, the military could launch operations that cause harm to US businesses or intelligence operations.

Collaboration is imperative if the military is going to launch attacks against foreign enemies, disapprovers said. Operations should first be vetted to ensure it doesn’t interfere with foreign policies, law enforcement, and the United States’ alliances and long-term interests. Many also fear if the US launches offensive attacks, its targets could respond with threats of their own.

Read more details here.

 

 

Join Dark Reading LIVE for two cybersecurity summits at Interop 2019. Learn from the industry’s most knowledgeable IT security experts. Check out the Interop agenda here.

Dark Reading’s Quick Hits delivers a brief synopsis and summary of the significance of breaking news events. For more information from the original source of the news item, please follow the link provided in this article. View Full Bio

Article source: https://www.darkreading.com/endpoint/security-pros-agree-military-should-conduct-offensive-hacking/d/d-id/1333840?_mc=rss_x_drr_edt_aud_dr_x_x-rss-simple

Users on the dating website report hackers breaking into their accounts, changing email addresses, and resetting passwords.

Dating is tough as it is, but some OkCupid users are reporting a new kind of challenge: Hackers are breaking into accounts, changing their email addresses and passwords, and locking them out. However, the dating website states it has not been affected by a security breach.

One user whose account was hacked contacted TechCrunch, which reports a hacker accessed his account, changed his information, and sent him strange text messages. Several other users reported similar situations. Some had difficulty regaining account access, stating OkCupid did not alert them when their information was changed and took two days to unlock the account.

In response to the incidents, OkCupid pointed to the prevalence of account takeover attempts, which it noted are common across all websites. Its support pages contain warning signs related to account takeover and guidance for users whose accounts have been breached.

Dating websites have become targets for cybercriminals seeking personal data; however, OkCupid and similar sites (PlentyOfFish, Match, eHarmony, JDate) have not implemented two-factor authentication to protect users from account takeover attempts.

Read more details here.

 

 

Join Dark Reading LIVE for two cybersecurity summits at Interop 2019. Learn from the industry’s most knowledgeable IT security experts. Check out the Interop agenda here.

Dark Reading’s Quick Hits delivers a brief synopsis and summary of the significance of breaking news events. For more information from the original source of the news item, please follow the link provided in this article. View Full Bio

Article source: https://www.darkreading.com/endpoint/okcupid-denies-data-breach-amid-account-hack-complaints/d/d-id/1333842?_mc=rss_x_drr_edt_aud_dr_x_x-rss-simple

Adantium, developed by Google, brings communication encryption to bear on storage security.

Android devices come in a wide range of CPU power and memory configurations. Until recently, those on the lower end of the range weren’t required to offer encrypted storage. The reason? The most common encryption scheme, AES256, requires too much from the CPU: The device’s performance would have become unacceptably slow.

Now engineers at Google have developed a technique based on an encryption technique used in browser security and named for the maidenhair fern (denoting sincerity and discretion) to bring secure storage to these less expensive devices without bringing apps to a standstill.

The new encryption mode, called Adantium, uses the ChaCha stream cipher adapted from HTTPS encryption. The stream cipher is faster on lower-powered devices because its operation is based on the additions, rotations, and XORs available on every CPU; it doesn’t require the built-in encryption primitives common on higher-powered processors.

ChaCha20 has been the basis for Google’s HTTPs encryption since 2014, so its engineers have experience with the protocol and a high degree of certainty that using it for disk or file encryption will be both fast and secure. A paper on the implementation, Adiantum: length-preserving encryption for entry-level processors, will be presented at the Fast Software Encryption conference (FSE 2019) in March.

Read here and here for more.

 

 

Join Dark Reading LIVE for two cybersecurity summits at Interop 2019. Learn from the industry’s most knowledgeable IT security experts. Check out the Interop agenda here.

Dark Reading’s Quick Hits delivers a brief synopsis and summary of the significance of breaking news events. For more information from the original source of the news item, please follow the link provided in this article. View Full Bio

Article source: https://www.darkreading.com/mobile/new-encryption-mode-brings-sincerity-and-discretion-to-low-cost-android-devices/d/d-id/1333844?_mc=rss_x_drr_edt_aud_dr_x_x-rss-simple

If you have ever felt a full-body cringe after sending a message to the wrong recipient, you can see the merits of being able to unsend that message.

But many services don’t allow unsending of messages, mainly because well, once people see it unsending doesn’t do a whole lot for you. There’s also the potential for something like this to be abused – imagine a bully sending cruel messages and then unsending them, allowing them to plausibly deny any culpability.

Nevertheless, Facebook Messenger has made available the ability to unsend, or in their terminology “remove for everyone” a message that you may have mis-sent. WhatsApp has also had similar capabilities for a while.

There are some important caveats should you ever want to remove a message from Facebook Messenger:

• You have ten minutes to decide you’ve made a mistake. After 10 minutes, that message is permanent, you can’t remove it.
• When you’ve removed the message, there will be a placeholder where your old message used to be. It will say that you had removed a message, and if your message was somehow breaking the Facebook Community Standards, they’ll still be able to report it. (No “dirty deleting”!)

(And alas, Facebook hasn’t yet made available the technology to wipe a mis-sent message from the actual memory of the recipients’ brains, but who knows, watch this space.)

Here’s how to do it:

• When logged into Messenger on your phone, tap-hold on the offending message in question, to bring up the Remove option at the bottom of the screen. Remove (note, if you see Delete instead of Remove, you might need to install the latest version of Messenger – Delete only hides the message from you, not your recipient!)
• If you’re logged in to Messenger on your desktop, hover over the message to bring up more options ... It will show a Remove button.
• When you select Remove you’ll be given the option to choose between Remove for everyone or Remove for you.
• After you’ve removed the message for everyone, a greyed-out placeholder will appear in the chat where your message used to be that says “(your name) removed a message”.

If this brings back memories of the much-maligned “email recall” option from Outlook clients of the past, you’re not alone – but unlike email recall, this feature actually seems to work as advertised.

Article source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/nakedsecurity/~3/VLqm-Stfmp4/

In a recent investigation by Sky News, it was revealed that fraudsters are increasingly preying on young people, turning teenagers into money mules by promising them easy money via ads on Instagram, Snapchat and other social media platforms.

Via social media get-rich-quick ads, the criminals talk victims into using their own bank accounts to launder the proceeds from crimes. They promise their victims a cut of the proceeds, but all too often, the victims don’t get anything. Rather, the victims get less than nothing: their bank accounts wind up being used to launder funds, and the victims wind up becoming money mules… a crime that’s called “misuse of facility fraud.”

UK fraud prevention agency Cifas explains:

‘Misuse of facility’ fraud is where an account, policy or product is misused by the genuine account holder. The most common example is when an individual allows their bank account to be used to facilitate the movement of criminal funds. Often described as a ‘money mule’, individuals commit fraud by moving money through their own account and then to a third party, who is usually located in another country.

Victims can also find themselves guilty of committing this type of fraud when they sell their bank account; knowingly make a payment they know will bounce; or open up credit card, retail accounts or mobile phone contracts with no intention of honoring the credit agreements.

Simon Dukes, chief executive of Cifas, said that even if mules get a percent of the criminal proceeds, it’s not worth it:

Criminals may make it sound attractive by offering a cash payment, but the reality is that letting other people use your account in this way is fraud, and it’s illegal. You may end up with an extra £200 at Christmas, but you could also end up with a fraud record. It isn’t worth it. We want to send a clear message to try and deter young people from getting involved in this kind of activity.

”The easiest way now is to go on Instagram and type in ‘instant cash’”

Sky News talked to both the victims and the scammers who scoff at the notion that they’ll be caught. One of the scammers was “Dan,” from London, who told the news outlet that he’s been scamming social media users for several years now.

It’s like taking candy from a baby, Dan said:

They want to make easy money. They just think they’re handing over a bank card with their details.

They don’t realize they’re not going to see any of this money at the end of it.

The mules-to-be find their way to these scammers by responding to ads for get-rich-quick schemes that claim it’s “easy money.” Dan said that all you have to do to find them is to run a quick search:

The easiest way now is to go on Instagram and type in ‘instant cash’ or something like that.

There’s so many following these groups, advertising the exact same thing you are. There are thousands who want to get rich.

You just drop them a line saying ‘do you want to make easy cash? have you got a card?’ and you’re quickly inundated with lots of takers.

”I can’t believe I actually thought that I was going to get this money”

One of the victims whom Sky News spoke with was Rochelle: a teenager who says she was only 15 when a scammer approached her on Instagram and offered her the chance to become a money mule.

She was young. She was broke. Why not share her bank details in exchange for a few hundred pounds? It seemed “too good to resist,” as Sky News put it.

It was, in fact, far too good to be true. A criminal gang laundered money through her account. The funds were quickly withdrawn, and she got nothing… except a blocked account, after her bank got suspicious and questioned her.

Rochelle’s embarrassment explains why crooks like Dan act with impunity, safe in their belief that they won’t get found out. Sky News quoted Rochelle:

I felt really humiliated, because I can’t believe I actually thought that I was going to get this money.

I think people are actually afraid to say that it hasn’t worked, because they feel humiliated and embarrassed.

I know my sibling got scammed, my best friend got scammed and a lot of my other friends got scammed.

The platforms are being accused of not doing enough to stop these and other scams, but it would be easier for them to do so if people weren’t too embarrassed to report it, as the platform requests. Instagram’s statement to Sky News:

Criminal activity is not allowed on Instagram and our community guidelines clearly state that people must follow the law. We encourage people to report content they think is against our guidelines using our in-app tools.

Paul Curtis, from the financial investigation unit at the City of London Police, told Sky News that social media users have to use their common sense when faced with online offers of what’s basically free money.

There is, ultimately, no free money, Curtis said, and if somebody wants to pay you to use your account, it’s illegal and could put you at risk of prosecution for money laundering.

Wise words, but who’s listening?

Dan told Sky News that as long as there are willing victims, he’s going to keep exploiting them. Unfortunately, the internet is not running low on willing victims, he said:

If you keep going online and you keep seeing these accounts with 7,000 people on it… that’s like 7,000 potential people that would willingly hand over their bank card. Once they hand over their bank card, that’s it.

Stay away from Dan and his mule traps

Cifas says that doing any of these things will put you at risk of becoming a money mule:

• Responding to job ads or social media posts that promise large amounts of money for very little work.
• Accepting a job from an “employer” who asks you to use your own bank account to transfer their money. Legitimate companies don’t do that, so don’t take the bait.
• Failing to research a potential employer before handing over your personal or financial details to them. This holds true especially for overseas companies, given that it’s that much tougher to find out if they’re for real.
• Giving your financial details to anyone you don’t know and trust.

Article source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/nakedsecurity/~3/w7rQatNLzu0/

Air-gapping important computers and data is a security idea that has run its course and urgently needs to be replaced with something better.

That’s according to the US Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), which armed with up to $1.5 billion of funding has started canvassing for better ideas through a program appropriately called the Guaranteed Architecture for Physical Security (GAPS).

As DARPA’s briefing points out, air gapping is conceptually simple but has a fundamental problem – getting it to work comes at a heavy cost:

Keeping a system completely disconnected from all means of information transfer is an unrealistic security tactic. Modern computing systems must be able to communicate with other systems, including those with different security requirements.

In other words, for today’s computers to do useful work, they need to be connected to other computers in some way, the very thing that renders air gapping or data isolation insecure. Adding special protocols to compensate for this ends up making life expensive and difficult.

Interfaces to such air-gapped systems are typically added in after the fact and are exceedingly complex, placing undue burden on systems operators as they implement or manage them.

This isn’t just about physical air gaps but isolation of all kinds, for example keeping data in secure, encrypted enclaves so it can’t be exfiltrated on the quiet.

DARPA’s job is to come up with viable solutions and on that front, it appears there is no lack of ambition.

Although still very high-level in nature, what DARPA seems to be asking clever engineers to invent is close to an entirely new security architecture for connecting systems together while moving data between them.

This will be defined by:

1. New hardware components and interfaces capable of isolating data during communication.
2. New software tools integrating this without reinventing current development platforms.
3. Validating that what they come up with works when used by “exemplar” Department of Defense (DoD) systems.

DARPA adds:

Commercializing the resulting technologies is also an objective of the program. The verifiable security properties created under GAPS may also help create safer commercial systems that could be used for preserving proprietary information and protecting consumer privacy.

Then again, commercializing whatever GAPS turns into could turn the technologies that emerge into something anyone can buy.

With five years to come up with something, DARPA held a proposer’s day on 23 January – the upshot of which has yet to be made public.

GAPS is a huge undertaking, tinged with the irony that the very thing that causes so many problems on physical air-gapped networks is the way computers are connected to one another via global internet protocols – famously a DARPA invention.

And then there’s the fact that one of the spectacular demonstrations of how to beat a physical air gap is widely believed to have been carried out by the US’s own National Security Agency (NSA) during its campaign to sneak Stuxnet into Iran’s Natanz nuclear installation in 2010.

In recent years, researchers have come up with a wide range of increasingly ingenious suggestions as to how air gaps might be defeated by a determined hacker.

In addition to obvious methods such as infected USB sticks, these include using speakers as ultrasonic transceivers, hijacking LED-equipped surveillance cameras for command and control, and perhaps even utilising fan noise for data transfer.

Most of these are complex and far from easy to pull off. If air-gapping security is really on its way out, expect its demise to be a very long goodbye.

Article source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/nakedsecurity/~3/yhtZOPrPGZY/

You’re poring over ads for a good, dependable, not too expensive car for your kid. You try Craigslist.com, or eBay, or Auto Trader.

Inevitably, you’ll hit the jackpot and stumble on a deal that’s just too good to be true. Like, say, this sweet ride:

2000 HONDA Accord EX V6
LEATHER SUNROOF 200 Horse Power V6 Automatic Transmission Naples Gold Metallic Exterior Soft Plush Leather Interior In Dash CD Radio Remote Entry… Perfect CarFax History… No accidents no damage no problems…

It’s a steal at only $2960!

Yes, it’s a steal. Literally. The US Department of Justice (DOJ) announced on Thursday that it’s indicted 20 people – that includes 15 Romanians, one Bulgarian and four people from the US – for these swindling “I’m in the military and being deployed overseas and have to sell it fast” scams.

In the three unsealed indictments – here’s one, here’s the second, and here’s the third – prosecutors allege that the international gang defrauded US consumers out of millions through online auction fraud.

They also allegedly laundered the money via cryptocurrency.

The indictments come out of a multi-year, international investigation, launched in Kentucky and led by the US Secret Service.

The investigation led to a 24-count indictment, filed in July 2018, that charged 14 Romanians and one Bulgarian with RICO conspiracy, wire fraud conspiracy, money laundering conspiracy, and aggravated identity theft. The most recent indictment, filed on Wednesday, charges another foreign national, plus four people from the US, with 11 counts relating to alleged involvement in the crime ring.

Out of the 15 non-US people charged, 12 have been extradited to the US and are awaiting trials, which are currently set for 18 June and 7 August, 2019.

Running on fumes

Here’s how it worked: alleged conspirators in Romania posted fake ads on popular online auction and sales websites, including Craigslist and eBay, for high-cost goods (typically vehicles) that ran on air because they were figments of the imagination.

They’d con people in the US with, among other lies, stories of how they were in the military and needed to sell their car before being deployed.

Sound familiar? These car scams have been around for years. As the FBI has reported, sometimes it’s a military imposter, sometimes the fictional vehicle is purportedly coming out of a divorce settlement, and sometimes the fraudsters tell victims that they inherited the car.

The defendants allegedly created fictitious online accounts to post the ads and chat up victims, often hiding behind stolen American identities. Then they allegedly sent pictures of the vehicles, plus “invoices” that bore the trademarks of reputable companies, to give the swindles an air of authenticity.

After their targets fell for it and sent payment, the conspirators allegedly laundered the money by converting it to cryptocurrency and transferring it to their foreign-based buddies. According to the indictment, the alleged foreign-based money launderers include Vlad-Călin Nistor, who owns Coinflux Services SRL, and Rossen Iossifov, who owns R G Coins.

The indictment charges Nistor and Iossifov with converting cryptocurrency into Romanian currency, Leu.

The indictments detail a long list of how the alleged crooks separated people from their money. Here are a few:

• Liviu-Sorin Nedelcu, 33, of Romania allegedly created legitimate-sounding entities through which he purported to sell vehicles. For example, he used an email address, [email protected], belonging to Aol Autos, to write messages to victims with subject lines like, “America Online Autos Financial Department [Order # 099106592090].” The emails contained invoices that came off as legitimate.
• Ionuţ Ciobanu, 28, of Romania and his co-conspirators allegedly used the email address [email protected] to communicate with victims, signing off as “Sgt. Judith Lane.” They allegedly went so far as to create a Facebook profile for Judith Lane, whom they portrayed as a member of the US Air Force. Ciobanu, acting as “Judith Lane,” also allegedly posted two Facebook ads for the sale of automobiles.
• Marius-Dorin Cernat, 35, of Romania and his co-conspirators allegedly sent victims invoices that appeared to be from eBay Motors and provided an eBay Motors Support Department phone number and the email address of [email protected]. These invoices provided instructions for payment and included reassuring language for secure transactions, such as,

Through OneVanilla Prepaid Visa services we can guarantee you 100 percent protection and insurance in this transaction. eBay Payments will secure the payment until the buyer receives, inspects, and accepts the item. Or, if it will be the case, eBay will refund the payment to the buyer.

• Ştefan-Alexandru Păiuşi, 33, of Romania also allegedly convinced victims to send money via what looked like authentic invoices. One such, which appeared to be sent from “eBayTM Buyer Protection,” provided the victim with an email address for questions, described the seller as a “certified eBayTM third-party seller,” and explained that the buyer will be refunded if he or she refuses the merchandise.

Baby, you can drive my car, AND my phishing scheme

The car-swindle circle went beyond fake car ads. One of the defendants – Adrian Mitan, 34, of Romania, who was charged in the 5 July indictment – was also charged in a separate indictment, unsealed on Wednesday, with allegedly running a credit card phishing and brute-force attack scheme.

Mitan allegedly phished for credit/debit card information of US customers, hacked into the electronic systems of American businesses, and then conducted a brute-force attack on their point-of-sale systems to sweep up the remaining credit/debit card information.

According to the indictment, Mitan then directed American money launderers to create dummy credit/debit cards with the stolen information and to suck money out of the victims’ accounts. Mitan allegedly got his mules to pay him via Bitcoin.

Granted, maximum penalties are rarely handed out. However, the defendants are looking at up to 20 years in prison, a fine of $20,000, and three years of parole for each of the RICO conspiracy and wire fraud conspiracy charges. Those same penalties apply to the money laundering conspiracy charges, except that the maximum fine goes up to $500,000.

An identity theft charge against Dimitrious Antoine Brown, 37, of Macon, Georgia, entails a maximum stint of 15 years in prison, a fine of $250,000, and three years of supervised release. If convicted of aggravated identity theft, there’s a mandatory minimum sentence of two years in prison, to be served consecutive to any term of imprisonment ordered for the other counts of conviction.

Don’t get taken for a ride

The US Attorney’s Office in the Eastern District of Kentucky, where these indictments were handed down, is encouraging people who think they’ve been victimized by scam online sales to visit its website to find out more.

The Secret Service is offering up these tips on how to steer clear of online auction fraud.

The FBI also offers some tips to avoid bogus online car sales:

• If it appears too good to be true, it probably is.
• Use the internet to research the advertised item and the seller’s name, email addresses, telephone numbers, and other unique identifiers.
• Use the internet to research the company’s contact information and its shipping and payment policies before completing a transaction. Ensure the legitimacy of the contact information and that the company accepts the requested payment option.
• Avoid sellers who refuse to meet in person, or who refuse to allow the buyer to physically inspect the vehicle before the purchase.
• Ask for the vehicle’s VIN, license plate (if possible), and the name of the individual to whom the car is currently registered. And make sure to look up the VIN to see if it matches the car you’re inquiring about. Years ago, a swindler sent me a VIN that had no resemblance to the car we were communicating about. The conman dropped communications like a hot potato when I pointed that out.
• Criminals take extra effort to disguise themselves and may have recognizable words in their email name or domain. If you are suspicious or unsure about an email that claims to be from a legitimate business, locate the business online and contact them directly.

Article source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/nakedsecurity/~3/_lyUmMOLALA/

At least two users of the McDonalds mobile app aren’t lovin’ it after thieves hijacked their accounts and ordered hundreds of dollars of food for themselves.

Lauren Taylor of Halifax, Nova Scotia was shocked to find her bank account almost empty after someone used the McDonald’s mobile app to buy $500 of fast food over 1200 kilometres away in Montreal, Quebec.

The crook managed to compromise her account to run up the bills in a five-day period from 25-29 January. Every time the hungry hijacker scored a Big Mac and fries, a receipt showed up in her inbox. Unfortunately, she doesn’t check her email that regularly. By the time she did, she had just $1.99 left. She explained that she had to find rent, and presumably someone in Montreal had to find a larger pair of pants with an elasticated waist.

After ordering food through the McDonalds app, customers can check in when they reach the restaurant. The app then charges the debit card that they registered onto the system, and a member of staff will deliver it to them curbside. To get the food, the customer has to provide a four-digit code given to them by the app.

McDonalds Canada denied that there was a security problem with the app in an email to Canada’s CBC. A spokesperson said:

We take appropriate measures to keep personal information secure, including on our app. Just like any other online activity, we recommend that our guests use our app diligently by not sharing their passwords with others, creating unique passwords and changing passwords frequently.

Taylor claims that she did, though, arguing that she changes her passwords regularly, never shares them, and keeps them strong. The McDonalds app requires passwords to be eight to 12 characters long, with upper and lowercase characters and at least one number.

Taylor’s isn’t the only case. CTV also found a woman in Ontario who saw McDonalds purchases in another city racked up on her account. Then there were another two incidents involving Halifax residents Tracy Creaser and Brett O’Donnell.

Tasty customer data

It wouldn’t be the first time that McDonalds has served up hot, tasty customer data. In March 2017, McDonalds India urged people to upgrade its McDelivery app after it was reported that it was leaking the personal details of 2.2m users, including their name, email address, phone number, home address and coordinates and social profile links. Attackers could harvest the information by serially incrementing user ID parameters passed to the API, the security researchers said.

In January 2017, cybersecurity engineer Tijme Gommers disclosed a vulnerability showing how to steal customer passwords from the McDonalds website, drawing flak from readers of YCombinator’s Hacker News for not giving the fast food merchant enough time to serve up a response. However, that vulnerability was closed after the fast food chain upgraded its version of Angular to 1.6.

Article source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/nakedsecurity/~3/HJn9orvgF2U/

A recent BBC TV series entitled Icons asked the question, “Who was the greatest person of the 20th century?”

That’s a huge and controversial question in any country, in any language, in any category – and, as you can imagine, the answer’s even bigger, and no doubt even more controversial.

There were seven categories: Artists Writers, Sports Stars, Activists, Entertainers, Scientists, Explorers and Leaders.

The nominees had to be both important and influential – people whom you’d recognise not only for being top in their field, but also for the significance of what they did.

For example (these are off the top of our head): George Orwell, Jesse Owens, Mohandas Gandhi, Dame Vera Lynn, Rosalind Franklin, Sir Edmund Hillary and Nelson Mandela.

In fact, only one of the people listed above made the final seven…

…and didn’t win.

Popular votes of this sort should always be taken with a pinch of salt – especially when they’re presented by the BBC and the majority of people voting are British.

Indeed, the final winner was British, but we’re still pleased and proud that he won, no matter how reasonably our transatlantic friends might complain that he enjoyed a unfair home-ground advantage.

For better or worse, all the finalists were men, so you can immediately rule out Rosalind Franklin (who died too young to receive the Nobel prizes she surely deserved) and Vera Lynn (the Forces’ Sweetheart) from our off-the-cuff list above.

Nevertheless, we’re delighted at the identity of the ultimate winner for several reasons: he was a scientist, he pretty much invented both the theory and early practice of the entire field we work in, and he made a profound contribution to the defeat of the Nazis during World War Two, despite working in inauspicious circumstances in a collection of rank, damp huts at Bletchley Park in England.

Like three of the other six finalists, he suffered from the hypocrisy of his own government during his lifetime; like one of the other finalists, the prejudice against him led to his own tragic and sudden death.

How much more he might have achieved had the establishment not turned its back on him!

You’ve probably guessed who we’re talking about: the man who pretty much invented the field of computer science and the concept of machine intelligence, before modern computers even existed.

If that weren’t enough, he went on to become a pioneer in the development of early electronic computers, after the years he spent serving both his country and the field of cryptography during World War Two.

And the winner is…

That’s right – the BBC Icons winner, the most important and influential person in the 20th century, was Alan Mathison Turing.

In case you’re wondering, the BBC’s Top Seven were, in the same order of categories as above: Pablo Picasso, Muhammad Ali, Martin Luther King Jr., David Bowie, Alan Turing, Ernest Shackleton and Nelson Mandela.

We’re delighted to see a scientist win, rather than a sports star or politician – you have to admit that beating Messrs Ali and Mandela is a tall order! – because…

…well, because science.

So, in case you were wondering, scientists really can change the world, and change it for the better, too.

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Image of Bletchley Park courtesy of Wikipedia

Article source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/nakedsecurity/~3/UoEGsy8R2ZQ/

The bosses of lead-generation firms Lad Media and The Lead Experts have been slapped with four and six-year bans on forming companies respectively after they fell foul of direct marketing laws.

Aaron Frederick Stalberg, the 27-year-old former director of The Lead Experts, was banned after his business was found to have made more than 115,000 automated marketing calls to people who hadn’t consented to receive them.

The UK’s data protection watchdog issued the biz – which initially denied using automated dialling – a £70,000 fine for the nuisance calls in October 2017.

However, the firm didn’t pay up or appeal the fine so the Information Commissioner’s Office handed the case to the Insolvency Service, which last month slapped a six-year ban on Stalberg.

“Despite the company protesting they had made only a small number of calls, investigations by the ICO confirmed that they had made more than 100,000 unsolicited calls, amounting to a serious breach of the regulations and people’s privacy,” said Insolvency Service chief investigator David Brooks.

It’s a similar story for the 51-year-old Lad Media boss, Keith Hancock, who came under fire from the ICO after more than 100 people complained about unsolicited texts from his firm.

Lad Media even claimed they were an “ICO regulated partner” and authorised to provide lead generation and data to the financial services sector.

An ICO probe found Lad Media had sent more than 393,000 text messages to the public, including people who had specifically asked not to be sent SMS marketing bumf.

The firm was fined £20,000, but it failed to pay and in April 2018 a winding-up order was made and Lad Media shut down. At this point, the Insolvency Service stepped in, concluding that Hancock played a central role in the breach of marketing regulations, and handed him a four-year ban.

“Keith Hancock clearly failed to ensure Lad Media carried out sufficient checks on who was being sent direct marketing, even if it was done by a third party,” said Brooks.

“There is clear guidance on the internet about what communications you can send to people when it comes to marketing so there is no excuse about not knowing what your responsibilities are.”

The men have been banned from directly or indirectly becoming involved, without the permission of the court, in the promotion, formation or management of a company, for the length of their respective bans.

As of 17 December 2018, the ICO has even greater powers over dodgy dialling directors whose companies breach the Privacy and Electronic Communications Regulations (PECR), including the ability to hand out personal fines of up to £500,000.

The move was the result of years of lobbying from the ICO, and followed hot on the heels of a report from El Reg that found the ICO had recouped just £2.2m of the £8.5m fines handed out under PECR between 2010 and April 2018. ®

Article source: http://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.co.uk/2019/02/11/pecr_boss_violations_banned_forming_companies/