🛡️ Security News
The U.S. and other western countries are selling surveillance technology to authoritarian countries they know will use them for harm. This is very much like exporting weapons in the past—which became illegal for this exact reason. Fundamentally, surveillance technology and weapons are both control mechanisms, and that is how the spirit of the law should characterize them. Whether you're selling missiles or facial recognition technology, the goal is the same—giving certain governments the ability to maintain control of their populations while not giving it to others. That's a policy decision based on who you want to see win, with the added element of likely being willing to sell to most anyone if the money is exorbitant enough. My takeaway: we should be thinking of these surveillance and monitoring technologies as no different than other types of weapons, and should be very cautious about who we're enabling to squelch their own people. Link
The president of the United States evidently wants to pull the United States out of NATO, which would be the epitome of Putin's goals. And we have no way to know if Putin actually directed this action in person, since our president also demanded that records of their face-to-face conversations be destroyed. Like I've said before: we're living in an actual spy novel.
Someone broke into an SEC database and made millions selling stocks based on insider information. This database had future filings, called "test filings" that included upcoming mergers, acquisitions, and other key information that gave the attackers an advantage in trading. They made around $4 million dollars with the information. Link
The Pentagon has released a major report plainly stating that climate change is a threat to the security of the United States. It details the various effects that come from climate change, and how they will affect our various bases and capabilities. Link
A California judge has ruled that authorities cannot force suspects to unlock their mobile devices using biometrics. The argument was that it would violate Fifth Amendment protection against self-incrimination. Sounds logical to me. Link
A province in China is launching a WeChat app that shows you people (including their personal information and national ID number) within 500 meters that owe money. Why? So you can shame them. It's part of the overall Chinese social credit system that punishes bad behavior and rewards good behavior—with the definitions of good and bad being defined by the government, of course. It's like China took Black Mirror and 1984 and used them as architecture documents. Link
Russia is evidently using LinkedIn as a tool for information gathering on U.S. people of interest. This isn't surprising to me, as we've also seen China doing the same thing. It's not so much that it's LinkedIn as that it's a place where important people maintain updated and detailed information about themselves. If you're a potential target of any kind of corporate or other types of espionage, keep in mind that your LinkedIn profile can reveal a lot about you, and that it's already being used by two of our main adversaries. Link
There is significant evidence that North Korea's bio-weapons program is active and thriving, and many think their danger from biological weapons is greater than from nuclear. Link
Google has been fined $44 million dollars for violations of GDPR by a French company claiming that Google didn't sufficiently provide information on the data it collected as part of its ads program. Link
The Girl Scouts now have a Cybersecurity badge, which is a move designed to get more girls interested in STEM. Love it. Link
Advisories: BlueHost
Leaks: BlackRock Advisor Data, FBI Data (3TB),
⚙️ Technology News
Netflix is raising its prices. 8->9. 11->13. 14->16. Link
Google is closing Hangouts in 2020. This solidifies a clear lesson I've picked up over the last several years: Don't adopt new Google products. They either have abysmal UIs (have you seen GMail lately), or are basically run like half-baked experiments doomed to be shut down in couple of years (or both). Google Reader was amazing, but they killed that too. At this point they just seem to have an R&D team that throws out ideas. Then they go build it with the same ridiculous interface that lead to the downfall of all the other products, do a big announcement, and then they watch it die for a few years before they discontinue it. It's remarkable how predictable it is. Link
Google is buying Fossil's smartwatch technology, which feels to me like they're launching the next version of Google+. Link
Google is rolling out Material Design on Google Docs, Sheets, Slides, and Sites. I give Google a lot of crap, but I'm glad to see them consolidating their interface, and I think Material is the best thing they've made so far. Link
CERN is looking to build a new collider that's four times the size (and 10 times the power) of the LHC. Link
Netflix says they get beat in ratings by Fortnite more than by HBO. Link
DJI—the leading drone manufacturer out of Shenzen China—has fired dozens of employees for fraud and said that the damage they did will result in around $150 million in losses for the company. They were evidently inflating the cost of parts and taking the extra for themselves. Link
👧🏼 Human News
Americans are now more likely to die of opiates than in a car accident. Link
China is experiencing its slowest growth in 28 years, which is having an economic impact around the world. The good news is that while their exports are slowing, their consumption is increasing, which helps other countries providing services to their new upper classes. Link
There's an interesting breathing technique that's talked about in this article: breathing in for 5 seconds, and breathing out for 5 seconds—for 5 minutes. Link
60% of the world's coffee plants are very close to extinction. This is one crisis I'm not too worried about actually, because if it actually starts causing a drop in coffee availability the whole world will basically react overnight to fix the problem. Climate change? Meh—probably a hoax, they say. But threaten their daily coffee and we'll go to space and build a new planet from scratch designed for nothing but growing coffee. Link
China has a massive number of empty homes (20%, or 55 million), and if people figure this out and realize it means prices are inflated, it could lead to a massive selloff that seriously damages the Chinese economy. Link
Never forget that 50 years ago the sugar industry paid scientists to blame fat, which has helped cause an epidemic in obesity today. If you want to find evil, look for quiet influencers with lots of money who whisper into the ears of people we trust (see lobbyists). Link
China has confirmed the birth of two gene-edited babies, and the presence of another woman who's still pregnant with another. The scientist who ran the study is in Chinese custody for violating regulations. I can't help but think that if the kids die or make China look bad he'll be punished, but if they start shooting lasers out of their eyes or learn Calculus before age 3 the guy will be a national hero. Link
“Between 1983 and 2016, the median Black family saw their wealth drop by more than half after inflation, compared to a 33% increase for the median White household. The median Black family today owns $3,600 — just 2% of the wealth of the median White family. The median Latino family owns $6,600 — just 4% of the median White family.” Link
💡 Ideas, Trends, & Analysis
Those Bashing Smart Locks Have Forgotten How Easy It is to Pick Regular Ones — In this essay I do a basic threat model on smart locks using various target neighborhoods and attacker types. Link
My favorite simplified definition for Artificial Intelligence is: “Any technology that can do what previously could only be done by humans." This neatly incorporates the whole range of what we think of as AI—from facial recognition, to cancer diagnosis, to an AGI like Her or Skynet. So it doesn't matter how trivial or specialized it is—if it could previously only be done by Homo Sapiens (and not any other kind of tech), then it qualifies as AI for most practical purposes.
In a spot of good news, book sales are up, and physical books are doing really well. In the U.S., independent bookstores grew by 35% between 2009 and 2015. Link
🔭 Discovery
The best-selling fiction books of all time. Link
The FBI's full file on MLK Link
🔥 a16z's Joel de la Garza's Notes on Security in 2019 Link
This is an ICS Security Assessment Scorecard. Link
HyperScience is a startup that makes human-readable data and makes it machine-readable. This is how AI replaces jobs. It's not through Skynet—it's hitting a tipping point regarding hundreds of monotonous tasks that previously could only be done by humans. Link
A visualization of which rappers had the largest vocabularies. Link
How to detect hidden cameras and spy gear. Link
A Bash Scripting Cheatsheet Link
PortPush — A Bash utility for pivoting inside a compromised network. Link
Domained — A multi-source domain enumeration tool with EyeWitness integration. Link
📓 Notes
💡 Major announcement this week: I am now going to be doing a podcast for every episode—both member versions and regular versions. I was previously only doing every other week, but now every member episode will have a podcast with it as well. The podcast will be embedded in the blog post for each member episode, since I have no way of doing authentication in a regular podcast feed. Here's last week's member episode as an example, complete with its own accompanying podcast. Now subscribers can get the content every week either by newsletter or via audio! Link
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Do me a favor and go rate the podcast for me on iTunes. Link
Currently Reading: This Will Make You Smarter
Up Next to Read: Industry of Anonymity, The Master Switch, The Daily Stoic
🖊️ Recommendations
This is a portable, fold-out solar energy charging system that can be used to charge electronics via USB, or even a car battery. Link
A Security and Privacy checklist. Great for friends and family not in security or tech. Link
🦉 Aphorism
“None of us are getting out of here alive, so please stop treating yourself like an afterthought. Eat the delicious food. Walk in the sunshine. Jump in the ocean. Say the truth that you're carrying in your heart like hidden treasure. Be silly. Be kind. Be weird. There's no time for anything else.”
~ Anthony Hopkins
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