New US Law to Require Cyber Incident Reports

The US Congress is poised to pass the Cyber Incident Reporting for Critical Infrastructure Act of 2022. Once signed by the President, it will become law. The law will require critical infrastructure owners and operators to report cyber incidents and ransomware payments. The legislation was...

A New Cybersecurity “Social Contract”

The US National Cyber Director Chris Inglis wrote an essay outlining a new social contract for the cyber age: The United States needs a new social contract for the digital age -- one that meaningfully alters the relationship between public and private sectors and proposes a new set of obligations...

Google and Facebook fined $240 million for making cookies hard to refuse

French privacy watchdog, the Commission Nationale de lInformatique et des Libertés CNIL, has hit Google with a 150 million euro fine and Facebook with a 60 million euro fine, because their websites—google.fr, youtube.com, and facebook.com—dont make refusing cookies as easy as accepting them. The...

New German Government is Pro-Encryption and Anti-Backdoors

I hope this is true: According to Jens Zimmermann, the German coalition negotiations had made it "quite clear" that the incoming government of the Social Democrats SPD, the Greens and the business-friendly liberal FDP would reject "the weakening of encryption, which is being attempted under the...

CVE-2021-41185

CVE-2021-41185 affects Mycodo (environmental monitoring system) with a path traversal vulnerability in versions prior to 8.12.7. The issue arises from insufficient filtering of file paths, allowing an endpoint-accessed user to download files outside the intended directory. A fix was released in 8...

CVE-2021-41185 Download file outside intended directory

Mycodo is an environmental monitoring and regulation system. An exploit in versions prior to 8.12.7 allows anyone with access to endpoints to download files outside the intended directory. A patch has been applied and a release made. Users should upgrade to version 8.12.7. As a workaround, users...

What special needs kids need to stay safe online

Online safety is hard enough for most adults. We reuse weak passwords, we click on suspicious links, and we love to share sensitive information that should be kept private and secure. Just go back a few months to watch adults gleefully sharing photos of their vaccine cards. The consequences of...

Commercial Air Transport EFB Regulation

Introduction The Electronic Flight Bag EFB is a device pilots use to gather information. This includes viewing airport charts ground and in-flight, calculating take-off and landing performance, as well as multiple other uses as detailed in our other EFB blog posts. EFB regulation is, in a word,...

Experts: WH Cybersecurity Summit Should Be Followed by Regulation, Enforcement

Cataclysmic breaches and a woeful shortage of a trained cybersecurity workforce prompted the Biden Administration to haul a collection of the biggest names in business into a White House cybersecurity summit this week, to talk about what they plan to do about it. The outcome of the talks falls...

Banning Surveillance-Based Advertising

The Norwegian Consumer Council just published a fantastic new report: "Time to Ban Surveillance-Based Advertising." From the Introduction: The challenges caused and entrenched by surveillance-based advertising include, but are not limited to: privacy and data protection infringements opaque...

Russia bans VyprVPN, Opera VPN services for not complying with blacklist request

Russia's telecommunications and media regulator Roskomnadzor RKN on Thursday introduced restrictions on the operation of VyprVPN and Opera VPN services in the country. "In accordance with the regulation on responding to threats to circumvent restrictions on access to child pornography, suicidal,...

Privacy compliance for smart meter infrastructure with Microsoft Information Protection and Azure Purview

Smart meters and smart grid infrastructure have been deployed in many of the world’s electric distribution grids. They promise energy conservation, better grid management for utilities, electricity theft reduction, and a host of value-added services for consumers. To deliver on this promise, they...

CISO Challenge: Check Your Cybersecurity Skills On This New Competition Site

InfoSec leaders tend to be a specific type. Their jobs require them to think of possible threats, take actions that may not pay immediate results, plan for unknown security risks, and react quickly when emergencies arise, often before the morning's first coffee. The high-stakes position also mean...

Overview of the EU’s draft NIS 2 Directive

Anticipating stronger security requirements for critical EU sectors A pdf copy of this brief is available here. The EU Commission recently proposed a revision to its Directive on Security of Network and Information Systems NIS. The existing NIS Directive “NIS 1” requires EU Member States to enact...

Afternoon Cyber Tea: Cybersecurity has become a pillar of the business

In a famous two-part episode of “Star Trek: The Next Generation,” Captain Jean-Luc Picard is captured by the Cardassians. During a pivotal scene, a Cardassian interrogator shows Picard four bright lights and demands that he “see” five lights. Picard resists, culminating with him shouting, “There...

Deepfakes were going to change everything. And then they didn’t

For much of 2020, the most visible conversation about the US election and tech was related to deepfakes images or videos where the subject is replaced by another likeness. They could “destroy democracy” generally, and influence the US election in ways we couldn’t possibly imagine. People talked...

Clubhouse Conversations Recorded, Researchers Warn

At nearly a year old, the invitation-only, audio-based social-media platform ClubHouse is grappling with security issues on multiple fronts, but the consensus among researchers is coming into focus: Assume your ClubHouse conversations are being recorded. The company confirmed to Bloomberg that ov...

Privacy predictions for 2021

2020 saw an unprecedented increase in the importance and value of digital services and infrastructure. From the rise of remote working and the global shift in consumer habits to huge profits booked by internet entertainers, we are witnessing how overwhelmingly important the connected infrastructu...

Should There Be Limits on Persuasive Technologies?

Persuasion is as old as our species. Both democracy and the market economy depend on it. Politicians persuade citizens to vote for them, or to support different policy positions. Businesses persuade consumers to buy their products or services. We all persuade our friends to accept our choice of...

IoT Cybersecurity Improvement Act Passed, Heads to President's Desk

Security experts are applauding the recent stamp of approval by the U.S. Senate on a groundbreaking internet-of-things IoT security regulatory effort. The IoT Cybersecurity Improvement Act, which was led in bipartisan sponsorship by Reps. Will Hurd R-Texas and Robin Kelly D-Ill., would require th...