Brace for a new wave of ransomware attacks Monday morning, global authorities are warning computer users and organizations today. So far, one of the worst cyberattacks in recent memory has hit computers in 150 countries, Europol said, with a virus named WannaCry encrypting files and demanding ransom from victims. The [Keep reading]
For a long time, many health care providers have been worried about the wrong thing — compliance rather than patient safety. Today, we see the most frightening example yet of the devastating consequences. A widespread ransomware attack in the U.K. has hospitals turning away ambulances and canceling appointments, according to [Keep reading]
Facebook should release secret research it has done to psychologically analyze teen-age users, U.S. consumer groups demanded on Wednesday, after reports surfaced in Australian media that the social media giant had come with up techniques to predict kids’ emotional states — placing them in buckets like “defeated,” “overwhelmed,” “stressed,” “stupid,” “useless,” and [Keep reading]
Did the new leader of France win because he outsmarted the very hackers who tried to tip the scales in last November’s U.S. election? Security professionals are trying to sort out this very possibility right now, following a storyline that sounds right out of a Michael Crichton novel. It’s going [Keep reading]
Many of you know how much I care about independent journalism. Not just the not Republican or not Democratic kind. I mean truly independent, like me. What I sometimes call “sustainable journalism.” Solo or small groups of journalists working to get the news out without the support of a major [Keep reading]
(Here’s my second in an ongoing series about what we’ve learned by browsing Insedia’s Pitchfork database of 4 billion stolen records. You can read Part 1 here. Visit Insedia.com to read part 2.) Bill Gates appeared on The Daily Show with Jon Stewart back when Windows Vista was released, and Stewart [Keep reading]
Premature release of Orange is the New Black by hackers is no big deal. Really. You can see why producers made the calculation that stopping the “hack” was not even worth the alleged $66,000 or so the hackers demanded as “ransom,” according to TorrentFreak. Why? Online show fans are very [Keep reading]
When setting up a new online account, we are all confronted with the frustrating exercise of generating a password. Even more frustrating is the “password critic” we often encounter at the point of account creation – the password strength meter. (This story originally ran at Insedia.com. Read it there.) If [Keep reading]
Spam calls have basically killed cell phones. At least, the “phone” part of cell phones. If you’re like me, you just don’t bother answering calls from unexpected numbers any longer. The FCC says Americans get 2.4 billion fake calls every month. I think I got that many last week on [Keep reading]
It’s tempting to ignore the warning sirens that blared Dallas out of bed Saturday night — but that would be a very serious mistake. We hear so much about the importance of securing America’s critical infrastructure systems. Then you find out that the company responsible for maintaining the Dallas outdoor [Keep reading]
Bob Sullivan