Smart lighting security flaw illuminates risk of IoT

Credit to Author: Jonny Evans| Date: Fri, 07 Feb 2020 06:35:00 -0800

The latest smart home security nightmare sheds light on the risk you take each time you add another connected item to your home, office or industrial network – and even market leading brands make mistakes.

The story of Hue

Philips Hue smart lighting systems are probably among the most widely installed smart home solutions in the world, so plenty of people deserve to learn about the latest Check Point research which warns of a major security flaw in them.

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Is Apple's iCloud folder sharing a shadow IT problem?

Credit to Author: Jonny Evans| Date: Thu, 06 Feb 2020 06:35:00 -0800

After a long delay, Apple is preparing to introduce iCloud Folder Sharing across both its Mac and iOS platforms. This is a big blessing for collaboration, but is it safe?

What is iCloud Folder Sharing?

iCloud Folder Sharing was first announced at WWDC 2019, but delayed until – well, at present it is still delayed and was only recently made available inside the latest iOS and macOS developer betas. Which means it should be on the way.

Probably.

How it works?

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Iowa Caucus chaos likely to set back mobile voting

Credit to Author: Lucas Mearian| Date: Tue, 04 Feb 2020 12:51:00 -0800

A coding flaw and lack of sufficient testing of an application to record votes in Monday’s Iowa Democratic Presidential Caucus will likely hurt the advancement and uptake of online voting.

While there have been hundreds of tests of mobile and online voting platforms in recent years – mostly in small municipal or corporate shareholder and university student elections – online voting technology has yet to be tested for widespread use by the general public in a national election.

“This is one of the cases where we narrowly dodged a bullet,” said Jeremy Epstein, vice chair of the Association for Computing Machinery’s US Technology Policy Committee (USTPC). “The Iowa Democratic Party had planned to allow voters to vote in the caucus using their phones; if this sort of meltdown had happened with actual votes, it would have been an actual disaster. In this case, it’s just delayed results and egg on the face of the people who built and purchased the technology.”

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The problem with mobile and app voting


It's the day after the 2020 Iowa caucuses, and the Iowa Democratic Party has yet to announce the winner. The app that precinct leaders were supposed to use to report final tallies recorded inconsistent results. Party leaders blamed a "coding issue" within the app, not a hack or attack. Computerworld's Lucas Mearian joins Juliet to discuss the problem with mobile voting and how this snafu may affect the reputation of app voting in the future.

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Galaxy users, take note: Samsung's probably selling your data

Credit to Author: JR Raphael| Date: Wed, 22 Jan 2020 03:00:00 -0800

Relying on Google services, as most of us Android-carrying primates do, comes with a certain tradeoff. It’s no big secret or anything: Google makes its money by selling ads, which are more effective when they’re catered to our interests — the subjects we tend to search about, the things we buy (when Google knows about ’em, at least), and often even the places we go with our location-enabled phones in tow (and/or in toe, for the monkeys among us).

That’s all par for the course, as I frequently say — part of the deal we all accept when we use Google services. That’s what makes it possible for Google to give us top-notch apps for free, and it’s also what opens the door to certain advanced features that wouldn’t be possible without that information’s presence.

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Feds may already have found a way to hack into Apple iPhones

Credit to Author: Lucas Mearian| Date: Thu, 16 Jan 2020 14:05:00 -0800

After Apple turned down a request by U.S. Attorney General William Barr this week to unlock two iPhones used by a terrorist suspect in a recent deadly shooting, the FBI appears to already have the tools needed to access the smartphones.

Apple turned down a request from U.S. Attorney General William Barr saying it would  not help unlock two iPhones used by the shooter, 21-year-old Mohammed Saeed Alshamrani. He is believed to have acted alone when he shot and killed three service members and wounded several others at the Naval Air Station in Pensacola, Fla. last month.

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Breaking iPhone encryption won't make anyone safer

Credit to Author: Jonny Evans| Date: Wed, 15 Jan 2020 05:06:00 -0800

Imagine all your tax documentation could be examined by officials from any government merely on suspicion. That’s the future some governments are pushing for when they demand Apple puts security backdoors into its products.

Making no one safe

Think about the nature of security backdoors:

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Apple refuses latest government iPhone-unlock request

Credit to Author: Lucas Mearian| Date: Tue, 14 Jan 2020 12:30:00 -0800

Apple turned down a request from U.S. Attorney General William Barr this week,  saying it will not help unlock two iPhones used by a terrorist suspect last month in the deadly shooting at the Naval Air Station in Pensacola, Fla.

Barr said the shooter, 21-year-old Mohammed Saeed Alshamrani, acted alone when he shot and killed three service members and wounded several others, including two sheriff’s deputies responding to the attack. Alshamrani, a member of the Saudi Air Force and an aviation student at the base, was shot dead on the scene by police.

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