WOO ON TECH
Technology News for Busy People
Supermarket Chains Hacked
Supermarket chains Supervalu, Albertons and Jewel-Osco have joined the illustrious list of large retailers hacked (presumably) for their vast datastores of shopper identities and credit card information. Investigation is still ongoing in both cases as to whether hackers actually managed to retrieve shopper data during the breaches, and whether the data is being used illegally
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Data breach of hospital network exposes 4.5M patients
Four and a half million patients treated within the hospital network Community Health Systems now have something else to worry about aside from having to see a physician: identity theft. The 28-state network revealed today that its servers had been breached by Chinese hackers who gained access to CHS patients’ names, birthdates, social security numbers,
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Internet of Things, meet Twitter of Things
Confirming something that many of us already suspected, Twitter has revealed in its most recent SEC filing that almost 9% of all Twitter accounts aren’t used by actual humans. Given the social media’s 271 million accounts, that’s nearly 23 million Tweeters posting content at the behest of some form of automation or algorithm.
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Long, complex passwords not necessarily better
Common sense tells us that a long, complex password is inherently better than short, simple password primarily because it makes it harder for humans to guess what it might be based upon what they know about the user. However, when computers can brute-force a solution to even the most complex passwords within minutes, a lot
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Google algorithm catches child porn emailer
Any day we can take a purveyor of child pornography off the streets is a good day in my book. In this case, we can thank Google for discovering a Texas man sending images of child sex abuse through his Gmail account. As you might have guessed, a search algorithm rather than a human spotted
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Internet-enabled appliances weak on security
When it first occurred, connecting things to the internet seemed more like a gimmick than anything practical. Remember that fridge that was supposed to know when you need to buy more milk and would email you a reminder? Even though that particular concept still hasn’t really caught on (though it should!) plenty of other things
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