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Security News for the Week Ending December 27, 2019

Russia Claims to Have Successfully Disconnected from the Internet Russia has been planning to install an Internet kill switch for a couple of years now.  Of course, we have no clue what that means.  Likely, it means that they have their own DNS servers so that they do not have to resolve web site addresses […]

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Universities Collect Thousands of Location Data Points Per Student Per Day

To call this big brother is watching would be polite. Universities are using apps on students phones and either Bluetooth beacons or WiFi to track students location including class attendance and, I would guess, how much time their spend in local bars. The attendance part is to “encourage” students to attend class.  Students who do […]

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Oh What a Tangled Web Spies Weave

After the 9-11 attacks on The World Trade Center Twin Towers, the Pentagon and Shanksville, PA,  Congress quickly and without much discussion, passed the Patriot Act, the single biggest spying operation likely ever.  Under the Patriot Act, the government was able to collect information on Internet traffic, mostly of foreigners.  The amount of data that […]

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Senate Republican Proposes Federal Privacy Bill

In an interesting turn of events, Republican US Senator Roger Wicker’s staff has written a draft federal privacy bill.   It’s main goal is to overturn California’s privacy law that goes into effect in January. Of course, there are only 28 days between now and January 1, so I would be really surprised if the bill […]

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Security News for the Week Ending November 22, 2019

Huawei Ban – Is It A National Security Issue or Bargaining Chip? Back in May, President Trump issued a ban on US companies buying from or selling to Huawei (see here).  Since then, the government has issued an extension to the ban 90 days at a time and the government just issued another extension.  They […]

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Yet Another Hosting Provider Hit By Ransomware Attack

SmarterASP.net, a web hosting provider with over 400,000 customers, was infected by ransomware over the weekend. They are, at least, the third provider to be hit by such an attack. Affected user web sites are down and the company’s website was also down. Customers logging in might see a directory listing that looks like this […]

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