The AI, Privacy, and Security Weekly Update

From splashing in cold waters to baking in hot homes we cover the whole temperature range. After a good headcount of our critical drinking water infrastructure, we give you the lowdown on tracking, bots, faces, and fingerprints. We update you on compliance, regulations, and (sadly) taxes, before delivering really bad news for our RedHat Linux and Docker users. Finally, we unbork your iPhone before...

“There’s only one thing I never did and wish I had done: climbed over a fence.” Mary of Teck This week we start in El Salvador and end in mid-air. In between those fence posts, we find: Breaches for airlines and autos and then discover one already being served up with a side of fries. We find out how Google really motivates their staff, learn about Facebook suing a whole government, malware “photo...

This week we start with the Danish spying on the Germans. The Germans hacking .PDFs. The Cook keeping things private. The Tag"ee" smashing things with hammers. ..and you… now with 8.5 billion reasons to use 2-factor authentication for your logins … oh, and a very special article just for teens. Aw. Then, a story about how the coppers recovered loads of Bitcoin from the Colonial Pipeline ransomware...

We prescribe an update that’s just chock full of news that could very well help you see more clearly or leave you blind, wondering why you just bought those really dear headphones. We start with tracking, move on to toothpaste, and then get a nosebleed from hits the ransomware group Conti has inflicted before we have our use of a certain term validated. We discover how to tell the difference betwe...

On the first anniversary of the murder of George Floyd, we’d like to take a moment to pause and reflect. Changing social bias is an evolution, just as realizing and changing our own. But with continued effort, we can make a difference. Just as ignorance promotes prejudice, we can all learn to be kinder, gentler, and more accepting of the differences of those around us. This week we start IT Privac...

This week we take apart the various elements of ransomware so you know what the stats are upfront. Costs, protective steps, and tooling so that if the unthinkable ever were to happen you would know your options. We remind you that although ransomware is (literally) stealing the headlines, there are a few other gremlins out there that you might also want to sidestep. We end with some entertaining q...

Through the acrid smell of trouser fires we bring you an incredibly varied line up of stories. We start with a zero day that burned the world’s most popular .PDF reader, the dirt around the pipeline, a not-nice new activity for Apple Tags and early results of Apple’s app tracking option. We flame out with proof that you should not trust ransomware developers, another government attempt try and get...

We start with the  true  story of May the fourth, and end up with a suggestion that might just prevent injury. In between those lovely layers of freshly baked updates are sandwiched some very tasty servers, Russian Dressing, some NY rye, something else that smacks of dog food, doublestuff and an apple. After you finish, your mum will be waiting for you. Now on our best behavior: Let’s or...

This week we start with a uniquely Canadian turn of events that has absolutely nothing whatsoever to do with privacy or security but was essential nonetheless, and end up chasing the cat around the office. In between we find out why the C-suite of gaming companies are themselves becoming targets, a newly developing jab / job relationship, just what the new MacOS update stops, what’s behind the Lin...

We confess we wrote this intro with the Apple product announcement running in the background. We saw the new iPad, iMac, tags, TVs, and M1 features, and “Oh my word” nothing about the privacy update in iOS 14.5!!!. Grrr… So swiftly moving onto other matters of very little privacy, we have a couple of FBI stories, one about e-mail and another about iPhones (Grrr…). Shocking revelations about online...

The best IT Privacy and Security Update … served with perhaps the most questionable intro and outtro music ever! And he’s right. We follow the food theme again this week and go from Apple to Cheese. We start with an outright rejection of the UK government’s second expensive attempt at a Covid-19 tracker, then we move over to the app that really should not be on your phone anymore. Next: a crazy st...

This week we go from Peking to Duck (literally), and we are sure you’re going to find the tastiest treats anywhere. We take you crashing down a staircase with a wireless data communication company, add more evidence for spellchecking your child’s tweets, and an idea why this team won’t be looking like Tony Stark (Iron Man) any time soon. We give you a light pole update. Yes, we got that right, a l...

We start this week’s adventure with a tribute to women’s safety as we come to the end of National Women’s History Month in the US. We move on, not to home building, but cybersecurity, with a backdoor disguised as a Typo fix. In the days of the George Floyd murder trial in the US, we find one legal reviewer in the UK that is of the opinion that people should get anywhere from 2 months to 5 years fo...

This week we invite you to join us as we make a bunch of long-distance calls, starting with India, moving across the world, and finally ending up in Egypt. During our phone dialing journeys we find over five hundred, sixty-seven thousand good reasons not to be vengeful, we tell you about how the FBI tried to make friends with us and failed on the first click, and we share the EU’s new strategy tha...

Welcome to the update that never sleeps… “king of the hill”, “top of the heap”. This week we get non-fungible with our fungibles … and … just look at the results. We save you the FOMO by ELI5 to help you DYOR so you can BTFD. Then, just as you spend your last fungible, LastPass your “hey, all my passwords are in there…” app, announces they are going to charge you or force you to make a choice...

We have a galloping great IT Privacy and Security Update for you this week! We help the Mac users come to terms with why it seems like they have been getting more updates than their Windows counterparts. We provide you a sense of self-worth, and just as a note… apparently, that friend of yours from Gozo really does rate higher than the one from Idaho. We update you on the dangers of supporting Wes...

How are you feeling today?  Good, we hope!  We are starting this week’s update with healthcare and ending with an insurance story in a journey that blows right past the doctors’ office. In between buildings, your coveted iPhone 12 gets a lesson in how to improve battery life and then gets hacked. We have great gossip about the Gab hack and one more amazing story about SolarWinds that wil...

This week we move from the farm to the hospital, and all hopefully injury-free. We’ve got another “kikerikii, jippiyayyeyyy, boomchikahwoowoow”from Zoom, stalking Favicons, and why you might not want to do your personal banking during your conference calls. We even have the lowdown on the hot new invite-only app that you… somehow got an invite for… and have been using non-stop for the last couple...

What do you do if you’re in a country where there are zero officially reported cases of Covid-19 and you have no vaccine research budget? Officially, you don’t need the vaccine, but unofficially… you might be open to the idea of stealing the secret recipe for one! This week we have a supply-side chain attack that could hit anyone using open source software pretty hard. A French sequel to the Solar...

Happy  ITPaSWU * Tuesday! Valentine’s Day is coming up and we’ve got gifts for you. Lots of them. The first is a great story on just how much precise data your phone shares about you with whoever cares to pay. We then move on to a collection of your data that’s so big, they just may know more about you than you know about yourself! From there it's furballs and kitties with a new ethnical...

Happy Identity Theft Awareness Week! In celebration, we move from stories about a 7 year old to a 30 something, the first an agent, and the last a real operator… to a mischievous creature that is causing some real worry in the security community. We get the lowdown on the face off between Mark Zuckerberg and Tim Cook and more crazy stats on social engineering with tips on how to avoid trouble. Thi...

We start with a guy who’s got reporters, lawsuits and a Stock Market darling chasing him, and he didn’t even know it until a reporter from the New York Post told him! We show you the price you pay for something free. Then we move on to more breeches than Levi Strauss… and a sombre message about trust on the Internet. We finish with a shocking story about our kids getting hacked. Think it’s implaus...

Tom Jones sings the Burt Bacharach classic, as a tip off to our first story as we move from sunspot, Sunburst, Teardrop onto "Raindrop". From there we go X-rated before hurtling into the Good and the Ugly. Finally we end in outer space were one institute is even starting to realize that Cybersecurity has its place in space too! This is the best Privacy and Security update yet, so put on your rain...

This week we start our stories to the background tune of Prince with a story that just keeps getting bigger. We move onto politics and the permanency of the Internet and a do at home project, you too, can perform if you have the time, the dosh, a few tools, and a supercomputer sitting around. We have a cautionary tale about a leak and all the data about you,  yes you , that was exposed (and t...

Following on from last year’s collection of the Best IT Privacy and Security stories yet, we up your ROI (return on investment) in this section with what these stories mean to you. There’s no better way to drive a story home than with a message of “what’s in it for me?” and that’s what we deliver. We start our journey across the world with a criminal complaint and we end at the doctor’s office, in...