Julian Assange: Google Is Hillary Clinton’s ‘Secret Weapon’

MEXICO CITY — When Wikileaks founder Julian Assange told an open government conference Thursday that “Google was now Hillary’s secret weapon,” he provided ample fertilizer for a year’s worth of conspiracy theories in this overheated election season.

Assange was referring to The Groundwork, a stealthy startup funded by Google Chairman Eric Schmidt that’s providing consulting services to former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s campaign. According to Quartz, The Groundwork is building digital infrastructure like the Obama campaign did in 2012, laying “the groundwork’ for personalized, data-driven electioneering in 2016.

While Schmidt has said that he would not work in a Clinton administration, he does support her presidential campaign. Google also has a number of close ties to the Obama administration, with a number of former employees serving in top positions, from U.S. Chief Technology Officer Megan Smith to the head of the U.S. Patent Office, Michelle Lee. The chief technology officer of Clinton’s campaign, Stephanie Hannon, was also hired from Google.

Assange isn’t the first person to raise concerns about a search algorithm stealing the presidency. Harvard Law professor Jonathan Zittrain has explored how Google or Facebook could influence an election by customizing search results or news, swinging undecided voters to one side or another.

To date, however, there’s no evidence that any engineers or executives currently working for Google or Alphabet, Google’s parent company, are doing anything to support Clinton’s campaign. For the full article click here 

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Cyberhack crooks hit 14 more firms: Users personal details at risk from hackers

Brands Vodafone, Visa, Sky TV, Amazon and Ticketmaster have all fallen victim to the cyber attackers.

Personal information including names, addresses, phone numbers and bank details of customers are being bought on the internet for as little as 10p.

Mobile phone accounts for O2, Vodafone and EE, and subscriptions for Sky and BT Sport are also being offered for sale.

Passwords and user names for Amazon, Uber, Ticketmaster and Ocado have also been stolen and are being flogged.

While Nectar card and Boots Advantage card loyalty points, as well as Airmiles, are being sold.

It also emerged that Visa debit card details of Halifax bank customers can be bought for just £10 each. For the full article click here 

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Toronto’s hackers ponder the lure of a million-dollar prize

The exterior of 1266 Queen St. W. is unassuming, but the doorbell gives away the kind of community that’s nestled between its walls.

Upon ringing the button for unit six, a voice immediately greets the visitor with phrases such as: “I want to change the world, but they won’t give me the source code,” or “If you give somebody a program, you can frustrate them for a day. Teach somebody to program, and you’ll frustrate them for life.”

Inside, Daria Juniper sits in front of her laptop, surrounded by the various projects her colleagues at hacklab.to have created. Above her, a traffic light that changes when given a command over a chat program hangs from the ceiling.

Juniper is a developer who has discovered holes in programs and systems at major companies and helped fix them. In other words, she understands computer security.

She is also part of a large community in Toronto whose members are trying to figure out exactly what they would be willing to do for $1 million. For the full article click here 

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Why The Time Has Come For Penetration Testing On IBM i

Home Depot’s point of sale (POS) system was breached in 2014, comprising information on 53 million accounts. A year before, Target’s POS was breached, putting data from at least 40 million customers in jeopardy. In both cases, the retailers were deemed “compliant” with Payment Cardholder Initiative (PCI) data security standards. But obviously there’s a big difference between complying with security regulations and actually having good security, and that’s true whether your shop runs on IBM i or any other platform.

As cyber criminals get better at penetrating computer systems (and it’s worth reminding you that they are getting very, very good), it’s becoming increasingly clear that companies need to step up their game in the security department. After hackers had free reign in the PCI-compliant systems of Target, Home Depot, and other victims–often for months before anybody even noticed something was wrong–it prompted the folks behind the PCI standards to do something about it.

That “something” included mandatory annual penetration testing of critical systems, which was implemented as part of PCI DSS 3.0 in June 2015.

Penetration testing has been commonplace in the network security world for quite a while, where ethical hackers poke and prod firewalls and other outward-facing security components for any sign of weakness. The Internet is a wild and wily place, and without that effort, e-commerce would never have matured to the level it is at now. For the full article click here 

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Cyberhack crooks hit 14 more firms: Users personal details at risk from hackers | hacker samurai

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Toronto’s hackers ponder the lure of a million-dollar prize | hacker samurai

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Why The Time Has Come For Penetration Testing On IBM i | hacker samurai

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