What I'm Reading 8/21/2020 - Kamala Harris and Big Tech and How Tech Media Created the Gig Economy
HackRead -
US-Cert warns of North Korean BLINDINGCAN malware -
The report states that in conjunction
with the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) and Department of
Homeland Security (DHS), identified a remote access trojan (RAT)
deployed by the North Korean government-sponsored hacking group referred
as Hidden Cobra by the US government and also infamously known as the Lazarus Group or APT38.
The malware variant ensued by the North
Korean threat actors is called BLINDINGCAN and it was used in
concurrence with proxy servers in order to maintain a presence in the
victim’s system and elongate network exploitation with its built-in
functions.
Politico -
California has first rolling blackouts in 19 years — and everyone faces blame -
Earlier Monday, the California Independent System Operator blamed
Friday's outages on "high heat and increased electricity demand." Yet
some energy experts noted that demand wasn't particularly higher than
normal, as is typical for weekends, and CAISO had predicted it would
have adequate reserves on hand for the 80 percent of California's grid
that it manages.
"What's weird about what happened is they were adequate until they
weren't," said Michael Wara, director of Stanford University's climate
and energy program and a member of the state's Catastrophic Wildfire
Cost and Recovery Commission. "It seems as if certain power plants for
some reason were not able to deliver on the commitments to supply
reserves and also supply energy."
SSRN -
Words Matter: How Tech Media Helped Write Gig Companies into Existence -
When companies like Uber and TaskRabbit appeared in Silicon Valley,
there was a collective media swoon over these new app-based
service-delivery corporations and their products. Pundits and
journalists made it seem like these companies were ushering in not only
an inevitable future, but a desirable one. Their content helped convince
the public and regulators that these businesses were different from
existing corporations—that they were startups with innovative technology
platforms designed to disrupt established firms by efficiently
connecting consumers to independent, empowered gig workers. Those in the
media normalized and at times generated this rhetoric and framing,
which was then taken up by politicians, amplified by academics, and
finally enshrined in laws that legalized the business models of these
companies. The positive, uncritical coverage prevailed for years and
helped pave the way for a handful of companies that represent a tiny
fraction of the economy to have an outsized impact on law, mainstream
corporate practices, and the way we think about work. The force that
powered the swoon was a relatively new and journalistically problematic
trend in media: “tech” reporting.
The Hacker News -
Former Uber Security Chief Charged Over Covering Up 2016 Data Breach -
The federal prosecutors in the United States have charged Uber's former chief security officer, Joe Sullivan, for covering up a massive data breach that the ride-hailing company suffered in 2016.
According to the press release published
by the U.S. Department of Justice, Sullivan "took deliberate steps to
conceal, deflect, and mislead the Federal Trade Commission about the
breach" that also involved paying hackers $100,000 ransom to keep the incident secret.
Threatpost -
Researchers Sound Alarm Over Malicious AWS Community AMIs -
Researchers are sounding the alarm over what they say is a growing
threat vector tied to Amazon Web Services and its marketplace of
pre-configured virtual servers. The danger, according to researchers
with Mitiga, is that threat actors can easily build malware-laced
Community Amazon Machine Images (AMI) and make them available to
unsuspecting AWS customers.
The threat is not theoretical. On Friday, Mitiga released details of a malicious AMI
found in the wild running an infected instance of Windows Server 2008.
Researchers said the AMI was removed from a customer’s Amazon Elastic
Compute Cloud (EC2) instance earlier this month but is still available
within Amazon’s Community AMI marketplace.
Datbreach Today -
Lucifer Botnet Now Can Target Linux Devices -
Lucifer, a botnet that has been infecting Windows devices with
cryptominers and using compromised systems for distributed
denial-of-service attacks, now has the ability to compromise Linux-based
systems as well, according to Netscout's ATLAS Security Engineering & Response Team.
SC Magazine -
Why we need a federal data privacy law – and how CCPA sets the pace -
The country needs to pass federal privacy legislation to establish a
national standard for individual rights. Today, too many state laws
exist, creating confusion and duplication. We need to create a national
standard that would apply to all businesses and organizations.
By not having a national standard, we miss the opportunity to
establish a consistent comprehensive framework for privacy in the United
States. Without a federal law states have passed their own laws. Today,
California,
Nevada and Maine have privacy laws, but many other states have bills
working their way through legislatures. Many of these state efforts are
based in part on the California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA), which went
into effect January 1, 2020.
NY Times -
How Kamala Harris Forged Close Ties With Big Tech -
For Ms. Harris, a Bay Area politician,
connections to tech have been essential and perhaps inescapable. In past
campaigns — her two elections to be attorney general, her successful
run for the Senate and her failed bid for the Democratic presidential
nomination — she relied on Silicon Valley’s tech elite for donations.
And her network of family, friends and former political aides has fanned
throughout the tech world.
Those
close industry ties have coincided with a largely hands-off approach to
companies that have come under increasing scrutiny from regulators and
lawmakers around the world. As California’s attorney general, critics
say, Ms. Harris did little to curb the power of tech giants as they
gobbled up rivals and muscled into new industries. As a senator,
consumer advocacy groups said, she has often moved in lockstep with tech
interests.
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