From the what-is-the-world-coming-to department:
Attention parents of teenagers. This story has made the front page of Slashdot: Teens Share Passwords as a Form of Intimacy. First, you had to talk to your teens about alcohol and drugs. Then, the birds and the bees. Now add another item to your list of topics during The Talk: abstinence from pre-marital password sharing!
For the past week, BEAST has been the talk of the InfoSec community. BEAST stands for “Browser Exploit Against SSL/TLS” and is a new way to execute an attack against CBC mode encryption algorithms. The attack has been theorized for quite some time (2006 seems to be about the time it became known), but until BEAST, an attacker had no practical way to execute the attack, and even with BEAST, the attack against CBC is still difficult to execute.Read more
With yesterday’s introduction[reuters.com] of Google Health, we can now add personal health records and related information to the types of data Google is storing. This service includes connections to pharmacies, like Walgreen Co. and CVS Caremark, and other health groups. It will “allow patients to schedule appointments, refill prescriptions, receive diagnostic results online, and instantly add their doctors’ email addresses to a list of contacts.”
This service sounds very useful and is likely to be used by many people. My concern is that as the diversity and sensitivity of data Google is storing increases, so does it’s attractiveness as a target for those with malicious intent. According to Marissa Mayer, Google’s vice president for search services and user experience, the service involves an additional layer of security and the data is stored separately from Google’s other data. Mayer stated that, “We certainly have put in place the foremost privacy policy[google.com] that we could construct.” We all hope so!
Reuters is reporting[reuters.com] that Canadian soldiers have been ordered not to post personal information to social networking sites like MySpace[myspace.com] and Facebook[facebook.com]. The apparent motive is safety – “Al Qaeda operatives are monitoring Facebook and other social networking sites.”
Many have heard of the potential effects that sharing the wrong information online can have on our careers and social lives, but few would view death as one of those potential effects. “This may seem over dramatic … (but) the information can be used to target members for further exploitation. It also opens the door for your families and friends to become potential targets as well.”
Are these soldiers and their families really in danger or is this an exaggeration or a command with a hidden motive?
We can all breathe a collectively sigh of relief – terrorists now have the ability to communicate securely[reuters.com]. I was really starting to be concerned for their privacy…
