What I'm Reading 2/16/2020 - A bunch of math I don't understand and more on Equifax

US News via AoS - 10 Books Donald Trump Loves -

Goodreads compiled a list of books Trump recommends in his books "Trump 101: The Way to Success" and "Think like a Champion: An Informal Education in Business and Life."

Number 1 is "The Art of War" followed by "The Prince" and  5 books on China. 

Yahoo - Israel says Hamas used 'attractive' women in thwarted cyberattack - 

Israel's military said on Sunday it had thwarted an attempted malware attack by Hamas that sought to gain access to soldiers' mobile phones by using seductive pictures of young women.

...

These apps, which the military identified as Catch&See, ZatuApp and GrixyApp, sought to infect the soldiers phones with malware that would give Hamas total access to the device.

Hacker News - RSA Algorithm -

In this article, I will systematically discuss the theory behind the RSA algorithm. The theory guarantees that the cryptosystems built on the top of the RSA algorithm are relatively safe and hard to crack, which is fundamentally interesting.

Quanta - Mathematicians Discover Prime Conspiracy - 

Two mathematicians have uncovered a simple, previously unnoticed property of prime numbers — those numbers that are divisible only by 1 and themselves. Prime numbers, it seems, have decided preferences about the final digits of the primes that immediately follow them.

Among the first billion prime numbers, for instance, a prime ending in 9 is almost 65 percent more likely to be followed by a prime ending in 1 than another prime ending in 9. In a paper posted online today, Kannan Soundararajan and Robert Lemke Oliver of Stanford University present both numerical and theoretical evidence that prime numbers repel other would-be primes that end in the same digit, and have varied predilections for being followed by primes ending in the other possible final digits.

Wired -  To Bolster Cybersecurity, the US Should Look to Estonia - 

In 2008 Estonia set up a unit of cyber volunteers composed of average citizens from outside government to protect Estonian cyberspace. Put in place out of need after 2007 cyber incident, and out of historical precedent, since the voluntary national defense organization, the Estonian Defence League (EDL), has existed since 1918 , this unit has endured, but continues to undergo refinements.

Within the EDL’s volunteer Cyber Defence Unit, tasks are crisis management exercises and training the public. This includes conducting exercises for policymakers and civil servants, including members of the government, and cybersecurity awareness courses in Estonian schools. Its two responsibilities that build long-term resilience are capacity building and operations. This includes securing Estonians’ online lifestyle, distributing cybersecurity-related knowledge and strengthening cooperation across sectors.

 Cyberscoop - How the suspected Equifax hackers covered their tracks -

The charges announced Monday outline a conspiracy to not only steal a massive trove of information on 145 million Americans but also get away with the theft. Unlike prior indictments filed against other hackers allegedly working on Beijing’s behalf, the 24-page filing details how the thieves routed their internet traffic through 34 servers in nearly 20 countries, extracted data in compressed files, and wiped the computer logs from a leased server on a daily basis, among other techniques.